Chapter 21 #2
His expression closed slightly.
Brigid noticed and moved away from the subject before either of us had to ask her.
"Your mother thought he'd eventually buy every ruin between here and Galway if she let him."
"He tried."
"She threatened divorce over a mill outside Ennistymon."
"She threatened to bury him under it."
"More likely."
The affection in their voices made the loss feel almost physically present, not as something dark hovering over the table but as proof that these people had existed loudly enough to leave themselves embedded in everyone who had known them.
For fifteen years, Irish had apparently carried his family as the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
Brigid remembered them as people who had lived before they died.
I wondered when he had stopped allowing himself to do the same.
A woman from behind the bar came over eventually and placed another pot of tea on the table without asking. She was perhaps sixty, with dark hair threaded heavily with gray and a look that lingered on Irish for several seconds before she touched his shoulder.
"Good to have you back, lad."
Irish looked up at her.
"Thanks, Kathleen."
She didn't ask where he'd been, mention his family, or demand a promise that he would stay. She simply squeezed his shoulder once and returned to the bar, leaving Irish staring after her as though the absence of questions had affected him more deeply than questions might have.
After that, the visits happened gradually.
A man stopped by to say he remembered playing football with Declan.
Another asked whether Irish still rode motorcycles "like a damned lunatic," which earned a dry answer about having improved professionally.
An older woman told him Maeve had taught her granddaughter and then became emotional enough that she left before the conversation could turn into something Irish might not know how to answer.
Nobody treated him like a stranger, and the easy familiarity seemed to make him more uncomfortable than suspicion or resentment would have. By the time Brigid brought dessert, I thought I finally understood why.
Irish had built fifteen years of distance around the belief that leaving severed whatever had once connected him to this place. The village apparently hadn't agreed.
"You have rooms upstairs," Brigid said as she set down two plates of apple tart.
Irish frowned. "We're not staying here."
"You aren't staying at the farmhouse."
His jaw tightened.
Brigid didn't soften the statement. "And unless you've suddenly become fond of sleeping in rental cars, you're staying upstairs."
"Maverick arranged somewhere."
"Near Ennis. Forty minutes away."
"How do you know where Maverick arranged—"
She gave him a look.
He stopped.
I smiled into my tea.
Irish noticed. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You're enjoying this again."
"Very much."
Brigid pointed toward me. "She can stay in Maeve's old room."
The table went quiet.
Brigid seemed to realize only after saying it that the suggestion carried more weight than a simple guest room.
Irish stared at her.
"It's not Maeve's room," Brigid said more gently. "Hasn't been for years. We converted the upstairs after I took over the pub properly. There are four guest rooms now."
He looked toward me.
I could see him preparing to refuse on my behalf.
"I can choose where I sleep," I reminded him.
His mouth flattened.
Brigid looked delighted.
"See? Sensible woman."
"I thought Maeve was the sensible one."
"She was. You need one too."
Irish muttered under his breath.
I pretended not to hear.
We eventually agreed to stay, though "agreed" was generous considering Brigid handed me a room key before Irish actually finished objecting.
Trigger had messaged to say the rest of the team had reached Clare and were settling into Maverick's location, so there was no operational reason to drive out there until morning.
Cipher was still working through the County Clare properties, and nobody expected useful answers before dawn.
By the time we carried our bags upstairs, the pub had grown louder below us.
My room sat at the end of a narrow hallway beneath a sloped ceiling, warm and simple with an iron bed, thick duvet, wooden wardrobe, and a window overlooking the village street. Irish's room was directly across from mine.
Brigid had obviously arranged the rooms deliberately, and judging by the look Irish gave the opposite doorway, he knew it just as well as I did. Neither of us gave her the satisfaction of acknowledging it.
He stopped outside his door with one hand on the knob while I stood opposite him holding my overnight bag.
For the first time since Brigid spoke his full name downstairs, we were alone.
His expression changed immediately.
"You can ask."
The offer surprised me.
I rested my shoulder against the wall. "I know."
"Aren't you going to?"
"No."
His brows drew together.
"I want to," I admitted. "There's a difference."
He looked toward the stairs, listening to the murmur of the pub beneath us.
"You heard enough tonight."
"I heard stories."
"Aye."
"That isn't the same thing as an explanation."
His gaze returned to mine.
I chose my next words carefully. "I've met Irish. I'm getting to know Callum. Whatever the other name means belongs to you until you decide otherwise."
Something moved through his face that I couldn't immediately identify because Irish was very good at hiding the things that hurt and considerably worse at hiding the things that mattered.
"You make that sound simple."
"It isn't."
"No."
"But I'm not going to take it from you just because somebody else gave it to me."
The hallway went very quiet.
He stepped closer without quite touching me, stopping only when the small distance left between our bodies was enough to change the air in the narrow hallway.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why are you being patient?"
I almost smiled. "Don't sound so offended."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
I looked at him for several seconds before answering. "Because you've spent the last few days learning when protecting me becomes deciding for me. I suppose I can learn when wanting to know you becomes demanding something you haven't chosen to give."
His gaze dropped briefly toward my mouth before returning to my eyes.
The heat between us arrived so naturally now that I no longer needed danger to explain it.
Irish lifted one hand as if he might touch me, then stopped before his fingers reached my face.
I waited.
The choice was his this time.
His hand finally settled against the wall beside my head, not trapping me or closing off my escape, but allowing him to stand close enough that neither of us could pretend the attraction between us had disappeared.
"You heard Brigid," he murmured. "I was apparently skinny."
I laughed softly. "Devastating."
"All elbows."
"Hard to recover from."
"She exaggerates."
"She seems extremely trustworthy."
"She's a menace."
"I like her."
"I know. That's becoming another problem."
I smiled.
He watched me for another second before stepping back.
No kiss.
Strangely, the restraint felt more intimate than one would have.
"Get some sleep, Skye."
"That sounded dangerously close to an order."
"A request."
"You're learning."
"Aye."
I opened my door, then paused.
"Callum?"
His hand rested on his own door.
"Aye?"
"I'm glad you came back."
The words changed him more than I expected.
For a moment, the guarded man disappeared and something older looked out through his eyes, someone who had once belonged to this village so completely that fifteen years had not been enough to erase him from it.
He looked toward the floor before answering.
"I don't know if I am yet."
"That's fair."
I stepped into my room and left him in the hallway without asking for anything else.
Later, lying beneath a heavy duvet while the sounds of The Blackthorn drifted faintly through the floorboards, I thought about everything Brigid had given me that evening.
Not secrets, exactly. Memories. A younger brother who chased him everywhere.
A sister who bribed him into taking the blame for frogs in a priest's desk.
A mother who knew everything and a father who loved old buildings enough to wonder what they remembered.
They were small pieces of a life Irish had spent years reducing to the night it ended.
For the first time, I could see the shape of the man who had existed before the grief.
I still didn't know why he had buried that man beneath Callum and Irish, and I wasn't going to ask tonight.
Tomorrow might bring Harrow, the Order, Saint Brigid's, and whatever connection Declan O'Brien had uncovered before his death. It might also take Irish back to the farmhouse door he had been unable to open that afternoon.
Tonight, however, County Clare had done something the Order hadn't managed and I doubted Irish had expected: it had remembered him. Somewhere beneath the armor he had spent fifteen years constructing around himself, I suspected part of him had begun remembering home too.