Chapter 22 #3
I realized only after the invitation was out that I'd connected the two halves of my life without meaning to. The village and the club. Rory and Irish. People who had known me before the worst night and people who had known me only after it.
The thought should have made me want to retreat but it didn’t. At least not as much as it once would have.
Niamh slipped her phone back into her coat.
"You still have friends here."
My chest tightened.
"I know."
"Do you?"
I looked at her.
She had asked gently, but the question landed clean.
I thought about Brigid feeding us without asking whether we wanted food, Kathleen touching my shoulder, men in the pub remembering Da, people who had watched me return and offered warmth instead of punishment.
"I'm starting to."
Niamh smiled.
"Good."
Eamon took the pram handle while Niamh adjusted Orla's blanket.
"We need to get her home before she declares war on the weather."
I nodded.
"It was good seeing you."
Niamh looked almost offended. "That's what you're going with?"
"What do you want?"
"Don't disappear again."
The sentence carried no demand that I stay in Clare.
No request that I become Rory exactly as I had been.
Only that I stop using silence as a weapon against everyone who cared whether I existed.
"I'll try not to."
Eamon's expression hardened immediately.
"Do better than try."
The old response rose automatically, bringing sarcasm and deflection with it, anything that would allow me to turn the seriousness of Eamon's demand into a joke before it could touch somewhere uncomfortable. I swallowed it.
"Aye."
He nodded once.
Niamh hugged me before leaving and this time I didn't hesitate before returning it.
"You look happy," I said quietly.
She pulled back.
"I am."
"I'm glad."
Her eyes searched mine, perhaps looking for the question beneath it.
There wasn't one.
She seemed to realize that.
"I'm glad you're here," she said.
Then she and Eamon walked away with Orla between them, their shoulders touching as they moved toward the row of houses beyond the church.
I watched until they disappeared around the corner.
Only then did I remember Skye standing beside me.
She said nothing. I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets.
"Go ahead."
"With what?"
"Whatever observation you've been storing for the last twenty minutes."
She looked genuinely thoughtful.
"I have several."
"Of course you do."
"You have excellent taste in ex-girlfriends."
I turned toward her.
"That's what you took from that?"
"Niamh is lovely."
"She is."
"And Eamon clearly adores her."
"He does."
"You aren't jealous."
"No."
She studied my face.
"Not even a little."
"I left fifteen years ago, Skye."
"That doesn't always stop people."
I looked in the direction they'd gone.
"There was a time I thought Niamh would be part of the rest of my life."
Skye didn't react.
I continued because somehow the truth felt easier after seeing her.
"That man died before she got the chance to find out whether she still wanted him."
"Rory?"
The name stopped me and Skye's expression changed instantly.
"I know. You told me not to."
I waited for the panic, anger, or instinct to shut the conversation down.
It didn't come as sharply as before.
"Aye," I said quietly.
Skye nodded and didn't use it again.
We started walking.
For several minutes, only our footsteps and the soft hiss of tires against wet pavement filled the space between us.
Then Skye said, "They loved you."
I looked ahead.
"Past tense?"
"No."
That made me glance toward her.
She held my gaze.
"They loved you then. They still do now. Different kinds of love, obviously, but you walked away for fifteen years and neither of them looked at you like someone who abandoned them. They looked at you like someone they were relieved had finally come home."
I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets.
"You've known them twenty minutes."
"I read people too."
"Thought you read rooms."
"People are easier."
"That's bullshit."
"Usually."
Her mouth curved, but her expression remained gentle.
"You didn't lose them, Callum."
"I left them."
"Those aren't the same thing."
The words echoed something she'd told me before, and I understood where she was going long before she reached it.
"I didn't know how to let them."
"Let them what?"
I stopped walking.
The village continued around us, ordinary and wet and alive.
I looked toward the distant line of hills where the farmhouse sat beyond view.
"Love me after."
Skye's expression softened.
I looked away.
"After the house. After my family. After everything I did when they tried to help. I didn't know how to let them."
She stepped closer without touching me, leaving only enough distance to remind me that she was there if I chose to close it.
"So, you decided for them."
The observation wasn't cruel.
That made it harder.
"Aye."
"You're very consistent."
I let out a humorless laugh.
"Apparently."
"Good news."
"What?"
"You can learn."
I looked at her.
"You're basing that on what?"
"Me."
That startled a real laugh out of me.
Skye smiled.
"You've gone from trying to remove me from an investigation to voluntarily admitting you trust me."
"Temporary lapse."
"You kissed me twice."
"Poor judgment."
"You just introduced me to your childhood best friend and former girlfriend by telling them I'm with you."
I stared at her.
Her eyebrows rose.
"That one's harder to explain away, isn't it?"
"Aye."
"Thought so."
She started walking again.
I caught up.
"You enjoyed that far too much."
"Immensely."
"You and Brigid are going to be unbearable together."
"Maybe I'll stay."
The sentence was mostly a joke, but my body reacted to the possibility as though some part of me had heard something far more serious.
Skye noticed the sudden silence and looked over.
I had no answer to whatever she saw.
My phone vibrated before I needed one.
Cipher.
The message appeared across the screen.
Think we found Saint Brigid's. Need you back.
The shift from past to present happened instantly.
Skye read my face.
"Work?"
"Aye."
"Saint Brigid's?"
I nodded.
Her expression sharpened.
We turned back toward The Blackthorn together.
This time, when Skye fell into step beside me, I didn't think about whether she belonged there.
That question had started answering itself long before I was ready to hear it.