Chapter Thirteen
Ronin
I wake with a groan and roll onto my back.
My head feels like someone took a swing at it and didn’t bother finishing the job.
I force my eyes open. The room’s dim. What time is it?
I turn my head and squint at the bedside clock until I can make out the time.
I haven’t been asleep long. No wonder I feel like hell.
I close my eyes again and lie still. Maybe if I don’t move, the pounding behind them will let up. But all I can see is Alannah’s beautiful face, pale and streaked with tears, her blue eyes full of hurt as she asks me, Why? My eyes snap open. Goddammit. I need to get to her.
I shove myself upright. The room tilts, and I grip the edge of the mattress until it stops moving.
Then I swing my legs over the side and force myself to my feet.
My suit lies crumpled where I dropped it last night.
I step over it and head for the dresser.
Most of my clothes are already at the new house, but I find an old pair of dark jeans and a white T-shirt shoved into the back of one drawer.
They smell musty, but they’ll do. I pull them on and shove my feet into yesterday’s dress shoes.
I head downstairs, raking a hand through my hair as I go.
By the front door, the keys to the Cadillac and the Ford hang side by side.
I take the Ford’s. The Cadillac can sit in the garage until after Italy.
Then I’ll get rid of the fucking thing. I don’t want Alannah in it again.
Not after what happened in the back seat.
On the drive to the hotel, yesterday comes back in pieces.
Danny’s scoff. Dragging Alannah into the ballroom.
Her crying beside me while I took Kathleen’s hand in front of the whole room.
Then the hours I spent alone in that hole-in-the-wall bar, working my way through a bottle of Jameson until they closed.
I fucked up. I took it too far.
Still, it had to be dealt with. Alannah couldn’t question me like that in front of one of my men. We needed to get this straight before we started our life together.
By now, she’ll have had the whole night to cool off in the honeymoon suite. Things always look different in the morning.
I’ll go straight to our room, keep my temper in check, and apologize for the scene. Then I’ll explain what happened with Kathleen at the stag—that it was a drunken mistake and didn’t mean anything. It’s not as though I slept with her again last night. I left the reception and went drinking alone.
Alannah is my wife. She’s the one I chose. From here on out, I’ll do better. She loves me. She knows what we have is real. Once she hears me out, she’ll understand. She’ll be relieved I came back for her.
By the time I pull up outside the hotel, I’m certain I can fix this. I head straight for the elevators, keeping my eyes fixed ahead as I cross the lobby. Some of our guests stayed overnight, and the last thing I need is one of them cornering me over what happened. I hit the call button and wait.
When the doors open, I step inside and press the button for the top floor.
The ride feels endless. I watch the numbers climb, going over how I’ll handle it when I see her.
Keep it calm. Keep it simple. Don’t let it turn into another fight.
By the time the elevator reaches the top floor, I’ve convinced myself I can do that.
The doors open, and I step out. I turn toward the honeymoon suite—and stop.
Mick is sitting on the floor outside our door, his chin resting on his chest and his legs stretched out in front of him. I stare at him, trying to make sense of what the hell he’s doing there.
The elevator doors slide shut behind me with a dull thud, and Mick’s head snaps up. His eyes lock on mine, sharp, his jaw tight. He braces one hand against the wall and pushes himself to his feet, straightening stiffly. “You,” he growls.
“Me?” The word is out before I can stop it.
A door opens behind me. I turn at the sound and see Da step into the hallway, Seamus close behind him.
Their expressions harden as they take us in.
I’m about to ask what the hell is going on when Mick’s hand closes around my shoulder and hauls me back around.
Before I can react, his fist slams into my cheek.
Pain explodes across my face, and I go down hard on my hands and knees, blood filling my mouth.
“Jesus—” Da’s voice cuts in.
Mick lunges for me again, but Seamus grabs the front of his shirt and pins him against the wall. “That is enough!” he snaps, getting right in his son’s face.
I wipe the blood from my mouth with the back of my hand and get to my feet as Seamus forces Mick back down the hall.
“Sit the fuck down!” he bellows, pointing to the floor outside the honeymoon suite.
Mick sits back down against the wall, his shoulders tight, his chest still heaving, and his eyes never leave me.
Seamus turns away from Mick and strides past us, back into my parents’ suite. “I need a fucking drink,” he grumbles.
“Let’s go,” Da says beside me, his voice tired.
He takes me by the arm and steers me into his suite, away from the room I came here to enter, away from Alannah.
I want to pull free and go straight to her, but maybe she told them she doesn’t want to see me yet.
Barging in there will only make things worse.
The door shuts behind us, cutting off the hallway—and whatever the hell just happened out there.
He keeps hold of my arm until we reach the sofa in the small sitting area, then pushes me down onto it. “You can’t say you didn’t have that coming,” he mutters. “Sit still. I’ll get you some ice for that cheek.”
As Da moves away, I catch sight of Mam and Siobhán at the dining table. Their chairs are pressed close together, Mam’s arm wrapped around Siobhán’s shoulders. Two teacups sit untouched in front of them, thin curls of steam rising from both.
Mam looks at me for a long moment. Her eyes are tired, dark circles beneath them, and her face is drawn. She doesn’t say a word. Then she looks away. My stomach tightens. Mam has never looked at me like that before.
I’m still watching her when Da returns with a hand towel folded around a handful of ice and presses it into my hand. He lowers himself into the armchair across from me and drags a tired hand over his face. I hold the towel to my cheek, the cold biting through the cloth. Damn it. Mick got me good.
Seamus takes the armchair beside Da and sets two glasses of whiskey on the table between them. Da picks one up and drains half of it in a single swallow. No one says a word, and it’s starting to get under my skin.
I know what I did to Alannah at the reception was shitty.
Da was bound to be pissed that I did it in front of everyone.
But he and Seamus both have tempers of their own, and I figured once I explained what set me off, they’d understand.
I expected anger. Maybe a lecture about keeping family business behind closed doors. That I could deal with.
But this? This feels different.
Mick sitting outside the honeymoon suite doesn’t add up either.
He looked like he’d been there for hours.
Waiting for me to show up? No—the surprise on his face when he saw me was real.
And he and Alannah aren’t close, so he sure as hell wouldn’t have stayed outside our door just because she was upset.
Whatever the reason he was there, this feels bigger than the scene I caused at the reception. And for the first time since I woke up, I’m not so sure an apology and a promise to do better will be enough to fix what I did to Alannah.
I keep the towel pressed to my face, waiting for someone to say something. When no one does, I lower it to my lap. “What am I missing here?”
Still nothing. Da stares into his glass. Seamus hasn’t moved, his jaw locked tight. Mam won’t look at me at all.
Something isn’t lining up. If they were this upset with me over what I did last night, they’d be shouting. In my face. Not sitting here in silence.
And Alannah’s mam wouldn’t be here. She’d be with her daughter in our room.
Unless Alannah isn’t there.
The thought sends me to my feet. “Where’s Alannah?” The question comes out strangled.
Before anyone can answer, Siobhán shoves back from the table, her chair scraping sharply across the floor. “Keep my daughter’s name out of your filthy mouth, Ronin Byrne,” she demands, coming straight for me with one shaking finger pointed at my face.
Seamus is out of his chair so fast his knee clips the table, rattling the whiskey glasses.
He catches her around the middle before she can reach me and pulls her back, but she keeps her eyes locked on mine, tears streaming down her face.
“This is your fault!” she screams, her voice ringing through the small room.
I’ve never heard Siobhán raise her voice in my life. The sound stops me cold.
Seamus murmurs something low, trying to calm her, but she turns on him, beating her fists against his chest. “And yours too! You should’ve taken care of her!
She should’ve come first!” She shoves against him until his hold loosens, then pulls free and faces me again.
“My daughter is gone,” she says, her voice breaking. “And it’s because of you.”
Gone.
The word doesn’t make sense. Not like this. “What?” I barely get it out. “What the hell do you mean, gone?”
No one answers. Seamus pulls Siobhán into his arms, and this time she doesn’t fight him. A sob breaks from her as she clutches his shirt. My pulse starts hammering, too fast, too loud. This is wrong.
“No.” I shake my head. “She’s in our suite.
She’s mad at me, that’s all. I fucked up, and she needed the night to cool off.
That’s all this is.” I look to Seamus, then Da and Mam, waiting for one of them to tell me Siobhán is wrong.
“She’s in our room,” I insist. “You’re all angry with me for what I did yesterday. I get it. But she has to be there.”
No one tells me I’m right. Mam rises from her chair and crosses the room slowly, stopping beside Da. “Ronin.” Her voice is quiet, and her eyes don’t quite meet mine. “After you left with Kathleen O’Malley…” The name catches in her throat. She swallows, but before she can continue, Da takes over.
“After the embarrassing shit show you caused at your own wedding reception,” he says flatly, “we contained the damage. We didn’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of a room full of people. We finished the reception.”
“And Alannah?” I cut in. I don’t give a damn about the reception. I need to know where the hell my wife is.
“She left,” he says, like it should be obvious.
“What do you mean, she left?”
“I mean she left,” he snaps. “What the hell did you think was going to happen?” He scrubs a hand down his face, then glares at me.
“You humiliated her. You shamed her in front of everyone over a woman you had no business touching in the first place. Then you took that same woman by the hand and walked out like a big man, leaving your wife to deal with it alone. And now you’re acting surprised she wasn’t here waiting for you when you finally came strolling in?
” He lets out a hard breath and shakes his head.
“Christ, Ronin. I don’t know what the fuck happened to you.
” He turns away and goes back to his chair. I watch him go, wishing I knew.
“What your father’s trying to say,” Seamus says, looking at me over Siobhán’s head, his arms still wrapped around her as she cries into his chest, “is that after we forced my daughter to sit through the rest of the reception—because you’d disappeared with that woman—she said she needed the washroom. ”
He reaches into his pocket and holds out his closed hand. I lift mine without thinking, and he drops something into my palm. I look down.
Alannah’s wedding band.
The sight of it makes me feel sick. The delicate gold band lies in my palm—the ring I slid onto her finger only yesterday.
“When she didn’t come back from the washroom, we searched the hotel,” Seamus continues. “We couldn’t find her anywhere, so we sent Mick to the house. She’d been there long enough to change and pack. Her wedding clothes were left behind. Dress. Veil. Shoes. All of it.”
He looks me dead in the eye. “We stationed Mick outside the honeymoon suite in case she came back. Instead, he found you.”
No. No. This isn’t right.
This was supposed to be our first morning as husband and wife. I was supposed to take her to the airport and finally tell her we were going to Italy. Two weeks, just the two of us. Then we’d come home to the new house and start the life we’d been building toward for years.
I made a mistake. I can admit that. I let my temper get the better of me. I was going to apologize. Tell her the truth about Kathleen. Promise her I’d do better.
I came here expecting tears. A fight. Alannah angry and hurt, but still here. Still waiting for me to make it right.
Instead, I’m standing in my parents’ hotel room with her wedding band in my hand while they tell me my wife is missing.
My knees give out, and I drop back onto the sofa.
My fingers close around Alannah’s ring until its thin edge bites into my palm. My thumb brushes over the knotwork etched into my own band—the Celtic knot Alannah chose, endless lines woven into one another, no beginning and no end. Our lives bound together.
You can’t pull one thread without the other following, she’d said at the jeweller’s, tracing the pattern with her fingertip. That’s why I chose it for you. It means we’ll always be woven together.
I look down at my ring. The lines are still woven together in cold gold, exactly as she said they always would be. But Alannah isn’t here.
She’ll turn up. She’s probably just cooling off. Took a room somewhere. Needed some time away from me after what I did.
That’s all this is.
She has to come back.