Book 17 Victoria & Shannon #2
Exhausted, Victoria heads home and finds Shannon sitting at the kitchen table icing his hand.
He says he got into a fight and was sent home but won’t tell her more.
Victoria goes to lie down and get some sleep but hears Shannon’s bike start up and is immediately wide awake.
She realizes his fight was with Seamus, and she rushes to Seamus and Carolina’s house.
Shannon eventually stops at Seamus’s house, where he and Victoria talk.
She wants more, but he’s not capable of more.
He refuses to answer questions about his past. Victoria decides she cannot live like that.
She wants a husband and children. She wants the fairy tale.
Shannon cannot give her the fairy tale, so he ends their relationship. He will move out of the house.
Shannon leaves Victoria devastated. Seamus ushers Victoria into their home and convinces her to lie down and rest. She cries herself to sleep.
Shannon drives too fast on the island’s windy roads, being careless of his own safety.
No, he did not want to talk about Fiona.
It took years for him to be able to take a deep breath around the searing, agonizing pain in his chest after she died.
It’s taken years to do anything other than relentlessly grieve.
The last fecking thing in the goddamned world he wants to do is talk about Fiona or what it’d been like to lose her.
That would be like pouring battery acid on a festering wound that’d never truly healed—and never truly would.
He returns to the home he shared with Victoria and packs his belongings. He removes his house key from the ring, leaves it on the table and walks out. Seamus offers him the room at the Beachcomber that the Ferry company keeps for employees.
Victoria thanks Carolina and Seamus for letting her crash and leaves.
She quickly realizes she doesn’t want to go home alone.
She calls David, who invites her over. When she arrives at David and Daisy’s apartment, they’re seated on the stairs waiting for her.
They hug her, and she breaks down in sobs.
They take her into their cozy home, and she tells them what happened with Shannon.
“Dear God,” Daisy says. “His girlfriend was murdered?”
Victoria nods. “Nine years ago.”
“You’ve known all along there was something,” David says, sitting next to her on the sofa while Daisy takes one of the chairs. “I remember a few times when you’ve wondered whether he would ever want more with you.”
“There was definitely a wall I kept butting up against,” Victoria says, swiping impatiently at tears that refuse to quit. “And now that wall has a name, and I’m so heartbroken for her and for him.”
“You were right to force the issue. It was either that or spend forever in this odd state of limbo.”
“Well, I got what I was looking for. Some of it, anyway. Not that it matters now.”
“It matters, Vic,” Daisy says. “You love him, and I believe he loves you, too. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. If that’s not a man in love, then I know nothing about love.”
Shannon unpacks his bag and finds the envelope he brought with him from Ireland containing pictures of Fiona.
He realizes how long it’s been since he’s seen her face.
He feels guilty for letting a whole year go by without looking at her photos.
He takes them out, kisses her picture, puts them away and heads for the bar.
Of course, everyone asks where Victoria is.
He lets them believe she was tired and couldn’t make it out.
He orders New England clam chowder and is working his way through his third glass of Jameson when Dr. Kevin McCarthy comes in and kisses Chelsea, the bartender.
The two have been together for months. Shannon and Vic have hung out with them a couple of times.
Niall Fitzgerald, a musician from Ireland, comes in from performing out on the deck.
When he returned to the microphone, he played “In the Rare Old Times,” a song made popular by the Dubliners.
Hearing the song that’s packed with so many memories, Shannon fears he’s having a heart attack and asks Kevin to get him out of the bar. Kevin escorts Shannon to his office.
He’s screwed things up with Victoria by keeping something big from her the entire year they’ve been together.
“What did you keep from her?” Kevin asks.
Shannon keeps his gaze trained on the floor, visions of Fiona alive and dead spiraling through his mind like a kaleidoscope of soaring highs and the most crushing of lows.
“Nine years ago,” he begins haltingly, “my girlfriend, Fiona, was raped and murdered in our flat in Dublin. We’d been together since we were fifteen.”
Kevin’s deep sigh says it all. “Start at the beginning.”
The next day, Shannon wakes up to Kevin returning to his office. Kevin hands him a coffee and asks what his plan is. Shannon wants to get cleaned up and find Victoria so he can explain his behavior the day before.
He starts looking for her at the clinic. David says she isn’t there and isn’t at home either. Shannon convinces David that he loves Victoria and wants to make things right.
Victoria wakes up on David and Daisy’s sofa and finds the note David left telling her to take the day off. While making coffee, David texts her to say Shannon is on the way to see her, so she’s ready when she hears his motorcycle pull up.
Shannon tells her about meeting Fiona at fifteen. He shows her the precious pictures, and when she asks, Shannon shares what happened to Fiona. He tells Victoria he loves her and that she’s become home to him.
It is a lot to process, and Victoria needs some time. Although he agreed to give her time, they decided to spend their unexpected day off together. They go to the beach, have lunch, enjoy the water and return to the home they shared. Their day together has reconfirmed their bond.
“Is tú grá mo chroí,” he whispers in her ear.
“What does that mean?” He’s spoken to her in the words of his homeland before, but she’s never heard that particular phrase.
“‘You are the love of my heart’ in Irish, or you might call it Gaelic. We call it Irish at home.”
She closes her eyes against the burn of tears. “Is tú grá mo chroí,” she says, tightening her hold on him. “Always.”