12. Caius
CAIUS
The duffel bag sits open on my bed, half-filled with wrinkled t-shirts I pulled from the dryer three days ago and never bothered folding.
I throw in another pair of jeans without looking, my movements mechanical.
Robotic. Like if I keep my hands busy enough, my brain won't catch up to what I'm doing.
Running away like the coward I've always been underneath all the bravado and crooked grins.
Running from Ryan and the years of brotherhood I've just torched.
From the wedding that's probably cancelled by now, flowers wilting in their arrangements while the Millers scramble to explain to two hundred guests why there won't be a ceremony.
From the betrayal in my best friend's eyes when he realizes I've been lying to his face for months, maybe years, about what his sister means to me.
But mostly, I'm running from the look on Hallie's face when I told her I lied about choosing her.
That moment when hope crumbled into confusion, then understanding, then something worse than anger, resignation.
Like she'd expected it all along. Like she'd known, deep down, that she was never going to be anyone's first choice, and I'd just confirmed her worst fear about herself.
That look is going to haunt me for the rest of my goddamn life.
My phone buzzes for the fourteenth time in the past hour. I don't check it. Don't need to. It's either my mom demanding answers or Ryan telling me to stay the hell away from his family. Maybe both, trading off in shifts.
I grab a handful of socks from the drawer, stuff them in the bag's side pocket.
My knuckles brush against something papery.
When I pull it out, I find the library card Hallie made me get three years ago, laminated and pristine because I've never actually used it.
She'd cornered me at Sunday dinner, insisted that everyone needed to read more, and I'd agreed just to see her smile.
The photo on it is terrible, one of those standard-issue library card pictures that always manages to capture people at their absolute worst. I look half-asleep and annoyed, caught mid-eye-roll at something she'd said behind the camera, probably some joke about how mechanics needed culture or how I'd actually enjoy reading if I gave it a chance.
I can almost hear her voice, teasing and warm, the way it got when she was trying to get me to do something for my own good.
I peer at it for too long, thumb brushing over the faded edges, the lamination slightly peeling at one corner. I should throw it away. Should leave it here on the dresser, another piece of a life I'm walking away from.
Instead, I shove it in my pocket, the plastic sharp against my knuckles.
The plan is simple. Drive north to my buddy Jake's place in Portland, crash on his couch for a week until the wedding fallout settles. Let everyone cool down. Give Ryan space before I try to explain the unexplainable.
Give Hallie time to realize she dodged a bullet.
I zip the bag closed with more force than necessary, the sound loud in my too-quiet apartment.
My phone vibrates again. This time I grab it, ready to turn the damn thing off completely.
Mom: Kitchen. Now.
Not a request. A summons.
I close my eyes, count to ten in Irish the way she taught me when I was eight and too angry to use words. It doesn't help. Nothing's helped since I watched Hallie's face crumble in that parking lot, since I fed her the cruelest lie I could think of just to make her let go.
I lied.
The words still taste like poison.
I grab my keys and head for the door, the duffel forgotten on the bed.
Mom's house is a five-minute drive I could do blindfolded.
The truck knows the way on its own, turning onto familiar streets lined with maple trees and chain-link fences.
This side of town never got the gentrification treatment the downtown area did.
The houses still have peeling paint and chain-link fences, cars on blocks in driveways.
My kind of neighborhood. The kind that reminds me where I came from.
Mom's waiting on the porch when I pull up, arms crossed over her floral print dress. She's wearing her church shoes, which means she was planning to go to the wedding until I screwed everything sideways.
"Inside," she says before I'm even out of the truck.
I follow her into the kitchen that still smells like the soda bread she bakes every Saturday.
The same kitchen where she fed me breakfast before school when my own father refused to remember I existed.
Where Mr. Miller taught me how to fix a leaky faucet and told me I was smart enough for college if I wanted it.
The kitchen where, for the first time in my entire life, I learned what it felt like to belong to something real, something whole, a family that actually wanted me around.
Mom doesn't ask. She just points one decisive finger at the worn wooden chair tucked under the table, the same one I've claimed as mine since I was fourteen years old. "Sit."
I sit without argument, without hesitation, because when Maura O'Connor tells you to do something in that tone, you do it.
She doesn't. Just stands there looking at me with those sharp green eyes that have always seen too much, known too much. The eyes that caught me stealing cookies at age nine and sneaking out at sixteen and lying about where the bruises came from when my old man was still alive.
"You're running," she says flatly, not a question but a statement of fact that lands in the space like an accusation I can't dodge.
"I'm taking a trip," I counter, but the words sound hollow even as they leave my mouth, defensive in a way that proves her point better than any confession could.
"Same thing." She moves to the stove, pours herself tea from the kettle that's perpetually warm. Doesn't offer me any, which tells me exactly how much trouble I'm in. "Want to tell me what happened at the rehearsal dinner?"
"Ryan probably already did." I keep my voice carefully neutral, but I can hear the edge creeping in anyway.
"I want to hear it from you." There's no budge in her tone, no wiggle room. This is non-negotiable, and we both know it.
I lean back in the chair, feel the old wood creak and groan under my weight—the same protest it's been making for over a decade, familiar as my own breathing.
The sound fills the kitchen for a moment, buying me a few seconds I don't really have.
"Kyle outed us," I finally say, the words tasting bitter on my tongue.
"Told everyone at the rehearsal dinner that the whole relationship was fake.
A setup. Ryan heard it, confronted me in the parking lot, and punched me.
" I touch my jaw reflexively, even though the ache has mostly faded. "End of story."
Mom's eyes narrow, cutting through my bullshit with surgical precision. "And you let him think it was fake because...?"
"Because it was. Is." The correction sounds weak even to my ears. "We made a deal. Fake dating to get everyone off our backs. That's it."
Mom sets her teacup down with a sharp clink. "Caius Fionn O'Connor, I have known you for twenty years, and you have never been a good liar. Don't start now."
My jaw clenches so hard I can feel the muscle jump beneath the skin, a familiar tension that's been living there since the wedding went to hell. "It doesn't matter what it was," I say, the words coming out flat and final. "Ryan made his position crystal clear when his fist connected with my face."
"Ryan was angry, hurt, caught off-guard in front of a crowd of people," Mom counters, her tone gentler now but no less insistent.
She's studying me like she's trying to see past all the armor I've built up over the years.
"You honestly think he's never going to forgive you? That boy loves you like a brother."
"Loved," I correct, the past tense feeling like a stone dropping into my gut.
"Past tense. I broke the code, Ma." I drag a hand through my hair, feeling the same helplessness that's been dogging me since everything fell apart.
"I went behind his back with his little sister.
That's not something you just get over. That's not something you forgive. "
"The code." She says it like it's a curse word, her lips twisting around the syllables with undisguised disdain.
The way she draws out the word makes it sound ridiculous, like I've just told her I believe in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.
"You mean the made-up rule boys create so they don't have to deal with complicated feelings?
The convenient excuse that lets you avoid actually being honest about what you want? "
I straighten in my chair, feeling defensive heat crawl up the back of my neck.
"It's not made-up," I insist, my voice harder now, more forceful.
I need her to understand this, even if she doesn't agree.
"It's respect. It's about loyalty. It's about not crossing lines that shouldn't be crossed, about honoring the people who've had your back when no one else did. "
"It's cowardice dressed up as honor, and you know it." She moves closer, grips the back of the chair across from me. "That girl has been in love with you since she was old enough to understand what love meant. And you've been in love with her just as long, no matter how hard you pretend otherwise."
My throat constricts, the muscles tightening until it feels like I can barely draw breath.
The words come out strangled, defensive.
"You don't know what the hell you're talking about.
" I grip the table hard enough that my knuckles go white, hard enough that I can feel the grain of the wood pressing into my palms. "You don't understand the situation. "
"I saw the way you looked at her at Sunday dinner. The way you've always looked at her." Her voice softens, loses some of its sharp edge. "I saw through your little fake dating scheme the second you walked through my door holding her hand. You want to know why?"