Chapter 34 #2
But Cillian had the key fob in his pocket, since he’d driven. He followed her, walking around to the passenger door for now. He slid his legs into the cramped floor space as Victoria pulled another key fob from her purse. Of course, she would have a spare with her.
She started the car, then reached for the gearshift.
He laid his hand on her slim arm. “Vicks, wait.” He couldn’t lose her now. Couldn’t let her slip back into her father’s control. Not when she was getting so close to breaking free.
She finally looked at him, hurt and anger mixing in her beautiful eyes.
“Do you ever wonder how life would be different if you and I had stayed together all this time? If you’d chosen me instead of your dad?”
She looked away, staring out the windshield. The line of her jaw tightened.
He made himself wait. Let her think. She had to have wondered. Had to have wished, like he had, that they hadn’t broken up.
“I made the decision. It was my idea to break up. My dad didn’t even know about it.”
Victoria felt Cillian’s stare as she pulled her arm away from his touch.
His intake of air filled the cold silence of the car. “That can’t be true.” Hurt tightened his voice.
She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to hurt him, but he needed to know. Needed to stop hoping and interfering. She needed to reestablish the boundaries she should have kept from the moment he’d stepped back into her life.
“Why?”
She steeled her resolve and forced herself to face him. But she nearly winced at the confusion and pain in his eyes.
Cillian never showed pain. Not to anyone but her. And now she had to hurt him once again. But it had to be done.
“Why do you think, Cillian? I left my dying mother to go out with you.” Her throat swelled with emotion, pinching her tone. But she had to keep going. “She died alone.” Tears blurred her view of him. She looked away, catching the tears before they could fall far.
“She died in her sleep, Vicks. You couldn’t have saved her. You said she’d been peacefully sleeping for days. She was comfortable at home with hospice coming in during the day. You were all just waiting for her to pass.”
“I don’t know if she did die in her sleep.” She threw him a glance. “That’s what I told everyone, but she could’ve awoken and looked for me when I…” her throat swelled, “wasn’t there.”
“You were only gone half an hour, tops. You felt so guilty for going out with me, you wanted to go right back, remember?”
“That was thirty minutes too long. I never should have let you talk me into going out that night.” Just as she shouldn’t have followed him to confront Lawrence Massey. Would she never learn?
“So it’s my fault she died?” Simmering anger laced the question. That was more like Cillian. But he was only trying to defend himself, his reflex when hurt.
She sighed. “No, it’s mine.” She met his gaze.
“That was my decision, too. But I never should have left. And I’ve had to live with the knowledge that I let my mom die alone.
But I couldn’t possibly keep seeing you.
I couldn’t take the chance that I would again allow you to persuade me to do something wrong. ”
“You were a fifteen-year-old kid, Victoria. You shouldn’t have been the one having to sit by your mom’s death bed day and night.
” His eyes flashed, but his frustration wasn’t entirely aimed at her.
“That burden never should’ve been put on you.
It was too much. You were exhausted. I saw it. You needed a break.”
“I needed to be there for my mother.”
“And since you weren’t, you have to pay for it for the rest of your life?” His raised voice bounced off the walls of the car. “By sacrificing everything for your family?”
As if that were a bad thing. Answering irritation rushed through her torso. “No, I choose to honor my mother by doing what she would have wanted, by holding her family together and making sure her children thrive.”
“And making her husband happy at all times? Is that part of the slave-labor penance, too?”
Victoria blinked, trying to absorb the sting of his words. He couldn’t have just said that to her. “I never should have let you back into my life.” She reached to shift the car into reverse.
“Victoria, wait.”
She paused, her heart pounding against her ribs.
“What about you? Wouldn’t your mom want you to be happy and thrive, too? To find someone you love and be free to make your own choices?”
A resurgence of moisture stung her eyes. She would not cry over him again. Not in front of him or anywhere else.
“That’s all I care about, Vicks.” His voice softened, the anger gone. “I still love you. I’ve always loved you.”
The words found the vulnerable spot in her heart and pierced the old wound that had never healed—the place once occupied by Cillian Doherty.
She closed her eyes against the pain.
“We’ve wasted too much time already. Too many years. Let’s not waste another second.” The tenderness in his tone stung like salt in the wound.
Oh, how she wished the situation were different. That her mother was alive to somehow persuade Dad to approve of Cillian. That Victoria had been mature enough all those years ago to demonstrate more Christ-likeness and better explain the Gospel instead of giving him her heart and adoration.
“Come on, Vicks. I know you love me, too. Let’s leave all this behind and build the life we were meant to have together.”
“I can’t.”
A heavy silence, thick and unbearable, filled her car.
“Because of him?” It was an accusation, raw and angry. But he had no right to put her in this position again. To make her choose again.
This time, she would not make the wrong choice. She swung her head to meet his anger head-on.
Hurt swirled in his eyes, too.
She swallowed back the remorse that climbed up her throat.
She lifted her chin. “I will not destroy my family.” Destruction was exactly what would happen if she crossed her father in such a severe way.
He would never forgive her, would cut her off, wouldn’t allow her to have contact with her siblings.
Some of them might be led to cross him, too, because of her, perhaps choosing her over him.
Their family would be in shambles. And her mother’s legacy, the only thing Victoria could still do for her, would be ravaged.
“I can’t believe you want to stay under your father’s thumb for the rest of your life.” The disbelief and anguish in Cillian’s voice matched his expression. “That you’d choose him over me. Again.”
Father, please help me stay strong. Help me to do the right thing.
The silent prayer worked like a shield against her heart’s desire to soften, to end the hurt she was causing Cillian. And to admit that despite being a grown woman who knew better, she’d started to love him again.
She steeled her jaw. He could not persuade her this time. “I choose to do the right thing.” She finally shifted into reverse and drove away from Massey’s house.
She would drop off Cillian at his apartment and return to the task God had given her—to care for her family as her mother would have and live a peaceful life of obedience and faith. And she would never see Cillian Doherty again.