CIARA
My book sits on shelves now. Real shelves, in real shops, with my actual name on the cover. Sometimes I still stop mid-errand just to check it’s there, like it might vanish if I don’t look.
I wrote it about a woman who spends her whole life being careful.
Polished. Quiet about the bits of herself that never quite lined up with what people expected.
By the end she realizes the mess was never what needed fixing.
I didn’t plan to write my own story. It just came out that way, the way true things do when you finally give them room.
The woman who wrote that book isn’t the girl who showed up here five years ago with a suitcase full of secrets and a journal she never once wrote in.
Back then I did what I was told without asking why.
My mother’s version of me. Right clothes, right grades, right smile.
Never questioned anything, because questioning felt scarier than staying small.
I don’t live like that anymore. I write what I want.
I say Cillian’s name in rooms full of people and I don’t flinch.
I’m not ashamed of any of it, least of all my place beside him.
My mother and Declan didn’t just walk back into our lives the second Saoirse was born.
It took longer. A card first, polite and a little awkward.
Then a visit, both of them standing in our kitchen like they weren’t sure they’d earned the right to be there.
It took a year, maybe closer to two, before it stopped feeling like something we were managing and started feeling normal.
Now it’s just how things are. My mother teaching Saoirse how to plait bread the way she does.
Declan getting down on the floor to build towers with our son like he’s a completely different man from the one who once tried to marry his own son off to settle a business feud.
I don’t know if I’ve fully forgiven him.
I know we’ve built something real in place of all the secrets, and most days that’s enough.
Our boy came two years after Saoirse. He’s already built like his father, same stubborn set to his jaw even at two, same quiet watchful way of looking at a room before he decides what he thinks of it.
This house used to feel too big for one girl hiding a secret in a locked suitcase.
Now it’s loud in the best way. Footsteps everywhere, someone always calling out about this or that, the dog going off in thin air, Saoirse talking through every single thing she does whether there’s an audience or not.
These stone walls used to be completely silent.
Now they’re full of all the noise that comes with a real family.
Cillian finds me on the back step most evenings once the kids are down, and tonight feels different. Heavier. Like he’s been holding something all day and it’s finally ready to come out.
He doesn’t say much on the way upstairs. He doesn’t need to. Five years in, I know that quiet. It’s the one that means he’s already decided how this ends.
He undresses me slowly, but there’s nothing distant about it.
Every button he undoes feels like its own small decision, like he’s not in any hurry to get anywhere but exactly here.
I’m full again by evening most days, our youngest still nursing, and he knows my body so well he doesn’t wait for words.
He lays me back, settles over me, and when he pushes into me his eyes never leave mine.
The stretch is familiar and still overwhelming, heat blooming low and deep the second he’s fully inside.
One hand cups my breast, thumb brushing the sensitive skin in time with his hips, while his mouth closes over the other.
He sucks slow and deep, drawing milk and a sharp pull of pleasure that shoots straight down between my legs.
I arch into him hard, nails digging into his shoulders, every part of me opening without resistance.
Nothing held back. Nothing managed. Just pure need answering his.
“Eyes on me.” His voice is rough against my skin, almost a growl. “I want you watching when I lose it for you.”
“I’m yours.” The words come out broken already. “All of it. Always.”
He drinks deeper, hips rolling in that same steady, relentless rhythm that makes my thighs shake.
Milk spills warm between us with every thrust, mixing with sweat until the air feels thick with it.
There’s no hiding left in this room. Just the wet sound of him moving inside me, the pull of his mouth, the way he looks at me like he can’t stand to miss a second of it.
“Cillian—” His name tears out of me, loud, because there’s no one left to care. “I’m close.”
“Good.” He switches to the other breast, hand gripping my hip hard enough to bruise as he pulls me tighter onto him. “Come for me. Let me feel all of it.”
The pleasure builds until it’s almost too much, his mouth working, his cock driving deep, eyes locked on mine as I start to fall apart.
Being seen like that, completely open and shaking under him, is what finally tips me over.
I come hard around him, crying out, pulsing so tight he groans against my skin and follows right after, burying himself deep and spilling into me while we both shake through it.
He stays inside a moment longer, breathing hard against my neck, then rolls us carefully onto our sides. Milk and sweat cool between us as he pulls me flush against his chest, arms locked tight like the idea of even an inch of space is unbearable.
“I love you,” he murmurs into my hair, the same three words he’s said every single night for five years, and somehow they still feel brand new.
“I love you too.” I trace slow shapes on his chest, listening to his heart settle. “I don’t think I could’ve pictured this. Not hiding, and completely free.”
“You never had to hide any of it. Not from me.” He kisses the top of my head and stays quiet a second. “I wish you’d known that sooner.”
I lie there a while longer, listening to the house go quiet around us.
The kids asleep down the hall. The sea past the window doing what it always does.
I think about the girl who showed up here five years ago, scared of being seen, sure that anything about her that didn’t fit some polished version needed to stay locked away.
She wouldn’t believe this if you told her.
A husband who loves every piece of what she used to be ashamed of.
A house loud enough that these stone walls, which once only knew silence, now know nothing but the noise of a real family.
A mother and stepfather who finally chose honesty over pretending.
A book with her real name on it, telling the truth instead of running from it.
I chose this life in a barrel room. In a boathouse. In a hundred small moments where I picked him over whoever everyone else wanted me to be. I’d choose it all again. The good parts and the ones that used to feel forbidden. Without a second of hesitation.
This is exactly the life I wanted. I’m living every day of it wide awake, and I’m not ashamed of a single part. Proud of it, even.
Thanks for reading!