“Yer right,” he said with a nod. “I’d just imagined ye dis way so many times before. Our child at yer breast… dough ye did not bot’er coverin’ up in me daydreams. Christ, how did we get here?”

“Life,” I replied with a sad smile.

“I suppose so.”

“Phoenix Gallagher, yer nan is home!” Peg called cheerily as she came in the front door, slamming it behind her. “Where are ye two— Patrick!”

“Hey, Mum.” Patrick said, standing from the couch with a nervous smile on his face.

“My boy!” She stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his waist, and for a split second I was jealous that she got to do so, but I didn’t. “Don’t ye ever do that again!” She slapped him on the belly, then wrapped herself around him again, crying.

“I won’t, I promise,” he replied, meeting my eyes over her shoulder.

“Are ye hungry?” she asked, leaning back to look at him.

“I could eat,” he replied with a chuckle, “And I brought ye photos of yer granddaughter.”

The smile that lit up his face as he mentioned his daughter was so bright that I felt caught in it and unable to look away. It was joy and pride and contentment in physical form.

I’d never do anything to jeopardize that.

***

“So yer in school now?” Patrick asked as he sat on the other end of the sofa that night.

I’d just gotten Nix down for a few hours at least, and I’d pulled out my textbooks to try and get some schoolwork done. I couldn’t put my life on hold, even though there was a man in the house that I could have watched and listened to for hours. Homework didn’t get turned in if I didn’t actually do it, and I couldn’t afford to take any of my classes over again.

“Yeah, I started a couple of weeks ago.”

“I remember when ye couldn’t wait to be finished.”

“Priorities have a way of changing when you’re a single parent,” I replied with a polite smile.

I wished so badly that things could go back to the easy way they were before, but I knew it would never happen again.

Too much had changed since I’d seen him last. Too much had changed since I’d left Ireland for good.

I’d changed.

I no longer knew how to banter back and forth with him.

“What are ye studyin’?”

“Business,” I answered with an exaggerated expression of disgust. “Boring—but it will get me a job when I’m finished.”

“Ye seem like yer doin’ really well,” he said, smiling back slightly. “I’m glad.”

“We’re doing alright,” I said with a shrug, looking back down at my book.

A part of me wanted to look back up, to catalogue every single one of his features so I could replay it in my mind after he’d left. But there was another part, a stronger part, that refused to give him any of my attention. I loved him, I didn’t think that would ever change, but I couldn’t get past the fact that he’d ruined my life and then started a family with someone else.

As if I was so easily tossed away.

“I’m so sorry—” he started quietly.

“Don’t. Don’t, Patrick,” I ordered cutting him off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I love ye—”

“Go back to your family.” I looked at him then, the handsome boy that had turned into a man almost overnight. “We both have new lives, let’s just leave it at that, okay?”

He stared at me, waiting for me to say something else, but I was all tapped out. I knew that one day things wouldn’t hurt so bad. I knew that one day I’d be able to look at him with fondness, remembering what we had and how full of dreams we’d been.

But I couldn’t see any of that now. All I could see was every single thing I’d lost.

He left that night and I didn’t cry. I was stronger than that. It didn’t matter how much I still loved him. At the heart of me, I was still that girl who was used to people disappearing from my life. He was just one more face that I’d have to learn to live without.

And I did. I learned to live without him—until years later, when he came to me. I must have been a glutton for punishment, because the moment he needed me again, I opened my arms wide and let him back in.

It was as if I couldn’t help myself—his emotions still had a way of gaining a reaction from me, even after years apart.

Chapter 44

Patrick

I raced toward Texas like the devil was chasing me.

For the last two months, I’d sat with my eight-year-old daughter while she cried for her mother… and I felt as if I was coming apart at the seams.

I hadn’t started out loving Moira. How could I? I’d loved another so much, there hadn’t been room for the woman carrying my child. There hadn’t been room for anyone but Amy, and I’d so single-mindedly focused on getting her back that I’d had little to give Moira.

It had all changed, though, first when I’d thought Amy had fucked someone else and I’d gone straight home and into Moira’s bed. And then, the moment I’d seen that redheaded beauty placed on Moira’s chest, covered in nastiness, but still the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.

No, I hadn’t started out loving Moira, I’d never been in love with her, but I had loved her. Christ, I’d loved her as much as I was capable with the other half of me living in some small Texas town. My chest felt as if it would cave in at any moment as I got off the highway.