Chapter 42 Shattering
“A chuisle mo chroí.”
He was chopping vegetables in the kitchen, and I’d handed him a gin and tonic I’d made him just the way he liked it, and I’d stretched up to kiss him on the cheek. The sound of Tadhg’s Irish was creeping in more and more, and it made my toes curl.
I rumbled a soft sound. Sometimes his Irish was foreplay. “What does that mean?”
“It means . . .” He stilled but didn’t turn around. His shoulders were tight, and I almost moved instinctively to massage them, to rub his back, but stopped when I heard him swallow. Then he started chopping again very slowly. “It means ‘you are the pulse of my heart.’”
I froze. Ice trickled down my spine.
“It means,” he went on, even though I didn’t want to hear any more, “that I’m falling in love with you.”
He still hadn’t turned around, as if he couldn’t look at me. I knew he’d had to fight to get those words out. I knew what they had cost him.
But he’d spoken them anyway, as if they wouldn’t bring this world crashing down around us while we were trapped here together, wouldn’t irrevocably break the spell that had so happily consumed us.
He was chopping cucumbers for a salad, and the crisp green smell of their broken skins was suddenly painful—the stark contrast between the moment before, when we were happy, and the moment after, when we never could be.
“What did you just say?”
Finally, he put the knife down, took a breath, and turned slowly until our eyes caught with all the sharp pull of a fishhook.
“I’m falling in love with you, Maya.” He waited. His eyebrows drew together. “It’s okay, darlin’. You don’t have to say anything.”
I couldn’t have said anything even if I’d wanted to. I couldn’t move. I just stared. Pain sliced through my stomach. I missed him already.
I had known this would have to be over soon.
The storm had quieted. The water was still not safe for boats, but it would be soon, and we’d be heading back and I’d be flying back home.
We both knew we couldn’t keep this going.
There was no future there. Neither of us had room in our life for another person.
And even if our lives could change, even if the whole goddamn world were different, I wasn’t different.
I was the same Maya. I wasn’t in love. I didn’t know how to love him like that, even if I wanted to.
“But I . . .” I started. What could I say?
“I can’t . . . I don’t . . . feel that way.
It’s not something I can control, Tadhg.
It’s not something that I can will into existence.
” I saw it cross his face like a slap. “Which is good, right? Because you have your life, and I have mine. And I’m leaving soon. ”
“I know that.”
“Well, then I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I didn’t ask you to say it back, Maya.” His voice was calm and even, but he turned and started chopping again, slow and steady.
“Then why say it at all?” I flung it at him, I nearly shouted.
I never shouted at anyone. But Tadhg had just said the single most vulnerable thing a person can say to another person, and I was attacking him for it.
I was a fucking monster. Unshed tears prickled my nose.
I was back in college again. Crushing someone’s feelings under the heel of my cold, dead heart.
“I can’t. I’m so sorry, Tadhg. I can’t do this. Not here. Not with you.”
“It’s all right. Look, I’m sorry, but I had to be honest. I couldn’t just keep this from you, Maya.”
“Yes, you could!”
“Maybe. But I didn’t want to.”
My chest crumpled. I hated myself. “We can’t . . . we can’t keep doing this, Tadhg. We . . . I don’t want to hurt you, and I already have, and . . .” The tears broke then, and my voice cracked as their salt slid into my mouth. I never cried. “It’s only going to get harder.”
He was such a big, strong, self-assured man. I wouldn’t give him hope, try again to love someone only to stand by and watch as week after week, or month after month, he grew more hurt and confused, more insecure, more bitter, because I couldn’t make myself feel the way he wanted me to.
I brushed my tears away with an angry hand, moved around to his side and turned him to look at me.
I took a deep breath and calmed my voice.
I needed him to hear this. I needed him to know that I meant it.
I did not look away, as much as it pained me.
I stared into his eyes, mine blurry with tears, and spoke very slowly.
“There is no future between us.”
He nodded. Once.
“You know that. We talked about it. You don’t want to give up your life and career, your family, for me, and I don’t want to give up my life and career for anyone. We both have lives that we love. And even if we didn’t . . .” I choked back a breath that shook my chest.
“Even if we didn’t, you couldn’t fall in love with me anyway.” He nodded again. “That’s okay, sweetheart. I just needed to hear you say it.”
I nodded too, some ridiculous, voiceless contract that we were signing. And then I couldn’t breathe for the tears and for the shattering pain pushing in on my chest, cracking my ribs.
Instead, I ran. To my own room. The room I’d never slept in. And I locked the door. And cried myself to sleep.
Sometime later, I was woken up by a voicemail alert.
Eight of them in a row, all finally getting enough signal to burst through to my phone all at once.
I pressed play. It was my mom. My father had had a heart attack and collapsed dead on a tennis court.
He’d been revived with a defibrillator and was in the ICU.
And I was trapped on an island in the middle of the angry Irish sea.