Chapter 40 #3
"Your names." I went still. She felt it. Didn't retreat.
"Okay?"
"Aye." She turned slightly so she could see me better.
"Everyone here calls you Irish."
"Aye."
"Brigid, Eamon, and Niamh call you Rory."
"Mostly."
"I met Callum." That landed differently. She continued.
"You introduced yourself as Callum O'Brien outside Alderwick because that was the name you had chosen when Rory felt impossible and Irish didn't mean anything to me yet." I looked at her.
"Been analyzing this?"
"I'm a designer. We obsess over naming things."
"That's not true."
"It should be." Her mouth curved. Then she became serious.
"I don't want you thinking one of them has to disappear." My chest tightened. I looked down at our hands.
"I've been wondering."
"About?"
"Which one I am now." Skye didn't laugh. Didn't tell me identity was complicated and therefore irrelevant. She waited. I exhaled.
"Irish is me here."
"Yes."
"The brothers gave me that."
"They did."
"Rory..." The name still did something to me, not pain exactly but recognition.
"Rory is home." Skye's expression softened.
"Which home?" I looked toward her. She smiled slightly.
"Exactly." I thought about the farmhouse and Mam's kitchen, about Eamon, Niamh, and Brigid, then about the clubhouse, Toxic, the brothers, and Skye sitting beside me.
"Wherever I'm not hiding." Her eyes brightened. I swallowed.
"And Callum?" That was harder. For years, Callum had been the road out. A middle name turned first because I needed something close enough to myself to answer without giving strangers the part that hurt. I had treated him like disguise. Maybe that wasn't fair either.
"Callum was the road between them." Skye looked at me. I continued before I could decide the sentence sounded ridiculous.
"Rory couldn't stay in Ireland. Irish didn't exist yet. Callum got me from one to the other." Her hand tightened around mine.
"Then we keep him too." I stared at her. She said it as though the answer was obvious. Maybe it was.
"All three?"
"Why not?"
"Seems excessive."
"You contain multitudes." I groaned.
"You're never letting that go."
"Absolutely not."
I laughed, and when the sound faded, something inside me felt unexpectedly quiet.
The quiet inside me wasn't emptiness but something settled: Irish here, Rory when we were home wherever home happened to be, and Callum as the road between them.
None of those names was false or buried, and none required another version of me to disappear. Skye leaned closer.
"So what do I call you?" I looked at her.
"Whatever gets my attention."
"Very risky answer."
"Aye."
"Old Man?"
"Absolutely not." She smiled.
"Rory?" My entire body softened.
"Aye."
"Callum?"
"Also."
"Irish?" I looked around the clubhouse.
"Aye." Her expression turned mischievous.
"Darling?" I stared at her. She burst out laughing.
"Don't."
"Oh, that's staying."
"Skye."
"Darling."
I caught her around the waist before she could escape the chair.
Her laughter filled the quieter corner of the clubhouse.
Several heads turned. I didn't care. I kissed her until she stopped trying to speak, which only encouraged the brothers who noticed.
Raze shouted from somewhere near the hallway, "Get a room!
" I broke the kiss and looked over Skye's shoulder.
"Find something useful to do."
"Already did. Camera works." Cipher's voice came from farther away.
"No, it doesn't."
Raze swore. Skye laughed against my chest. There it was again: life, messy and loud and complicated enough to stretch across countries, names, and families that should never have fit together as easily as they somehow did.
The Order wasn't finished, and neither were we.
Ledger had just learned there might be a sister somewhere in America who had grown up without knowing what had happened before her adoption.
Hawkeye was still working toward the patch everyone already treated him as though he wore.
Isla would arrive soon, bringing her own choices and whatever future she eventually decided she wanted, while Trigger was already helping shape the next phase of the fight against the Divine Order.
There would be more compounds to expose, more files to untangle, and more people to bring home.
But for once, I could look toward the future without treating every danger inside it as evidence that I should keep the people I loved at a distance.
Skye rested her head against my shoulder.
I looked around the clubhouse and thought about a stone farmhouse on the other side of the Atlantic waiting for surveys, arguments about bathrooms, and whatever chaos followed when Raze eventually discovered I'd invited the brothers to Ireland.
Home no longer meant a single place, and neither did family.
And I no longer needed one name to contain every version of the man who belonged to both.
I was Irish here. Rory when we were home.
Callum had been the road between them. Skye had been right. We would keep him too.