30. Olivia #2
Then there was my half of our fight. With the distance of a few days time, I could forgive him for not telling me he was @DBCoder.
I had my own emotional baggage about my online world and my real world intersecting, and I’d projected those fears onto his actions in a way that wasn’t fair to him.
With my new perspective, I could see that he’d been trying to protect our relationship.
What worried me was that his version of “protecting our relationship” involved withholding information from me. If this was going to last, we needed to be able to communicate with each other.
But by definition, we couldn’t last. Even if Declan was the relationship type—which he wasn’t—I was going back to America in less than a month. The distance scared me, and the last thing I wanted was to be together but apart. Maybe I could stay here in Ireland. Maybe I could—
No, Olivia, don’t play with fire, my inner voice chimed. Don’t break your own heart.
“Stop it,” Declan mumbled sleepily.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re staring at me and overthinking everything. I can feel it.” He cracked one eye open and glared at me accusingly.
I couldn’t help it. I giggled.
He smiled and tugged me closer, tucking me under his chin. He sighed elaborately. “Go on. Tell me what you’re worried about, so I can convince you you’re wrong.”
Admitting there was a part of me that wanted our relationship to last felt far too personal, so instead I said, “Tell me about your handle. @DBCoder. Why’d you pick it? It’s a reference to that plane hijacker you like, right?”
“DB Cooper,” he confirmed. “Hijacked a plane in the 70s without hurting anyone, then parachuted away with a bag of stolen cash never to be seen again. I’ve always liked the idea of someone who broke the rules, got rich, and made a clean getaway.”
I wiggled my toes, liking the feel of our limbs tangled together in the soft hotel sheets. “You got what you wanted. You got rich. And you didn’t even have to hijack a plane.”
“Yeah.” He trailed his hand up and down my spine in a lazy path. “I used to envy the money the most. Now I envy the clean getaway.”
I rolled back far enough to see his face clearly. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just… Running Snug comes with a lot of power, but it also comes with certain responsibilities. Sinead could run away to the States when she wanted to. And I…can’t.”
My heart skipped a beat. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?
“I never realized you wanted to live anywhere but Ireland,” I said carefully.
“I didn’t. I don’t. My mum’s there. My friends are there.
Plus, if I leave, there will be no one to stop O’Rourke from bullying the whole bloody village.
” He sat up and swung his legs over the bed, turning his back to me.
“But…you know. The thought crossed my mind about a week ago. And as soon as it did, I realized it wasn’t an option. ”
A week ago, I thought, feeling a little breathless. That was a little after we’d started sleeping together.
Had Declan thought, even for a second, about moving to the US for me?
Declan stood and tugged on his pants. “The less interesting answer is that @DBCoder is just my initials plus my job.”
I blinked. He was right. Declan Byrne, computer coder. “When you say it like that, I feel stupid for not putting it together sooner.”
He laughed.
I reached for my robe. “Aren’t you going to ask me about my username?”
He looked up from buttoning his shirt. “@1000words? It’s a reference to that saying, ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words’ because you review children’s picture books. Right?”
“Right.” I wrinkled my nose. “I guess I’m not particularly mysterious.”
His smile was crooked. “You’re mysterious enough for me.” He reached for the belt of my robe and tugged me in for a kiss. I fell against him, tempted to give in to the pleasure his mouth offered, but something nagged at me. Something I needed to know the truth about.
“You said you recommended my blog for sponsorship because I was good and deserved it. Was there any other reason? Anything at all?”
Something I couldn’t read flashed in his eyes.
I waited.
If this was just about money and him thinking every joy-filled hobby had to be turned into a side hustle…
“I wanted you to have options,” Declan said at last. “In case you decided you were tired of fixing other people’s lives and wanted to stay somewhere long enough to build a life of your own.”
“Oh,” I said.
He wasn’t outright telling me he wanted this thing between us to last. But in his own way, he’d made a plan to make it possible.
Hope flooded through me. He wants a future, too.
But if we were going to try to hold on to each other, then I couldn’t brush aside everything that had driven us to take a break. The gap between affair and real relationship felt full of questions that could tear us apart again.
“It’s just one sponsorship,” I hedged. “And they could still say no.”
“They want a video of you reading, right? I could help you film it,” Declan offered. “When we get back home.”
When we get back home. He probably didn’t even notice his words. The casual way he offered his home to me.
I reached up to touch his face. “Thank you.”
This time, when Declan leaned down to kiss me, I ignored everything but him, and kissed him back.