I sit outside on one of the lounge chairs on the decking and sip my whiskey. The house is in darkness and the only light is from the full moon. I look out into the black night, wondering if he’s watching. Thinking about him and what he did to her makes me feel so much rage it’s like I can’t breathe. All this time the man who was haunting her nightmares was our own uncle. How fucked up is that?
My mum was always a spiritual woman. She was born and raised a Catholic, but she believed in a different kind of God and heaven than the one the priest used to lecture us about every Sunday. She believed in reincarnation and souls being bound together for eternities. I used to listen to her stories about witchcraft and fate, but I never believed in them. But maybe she was right. For some reason, Jessie was bound to us long before we even met her. Maybe it was always meant to be that she would be ours. Maybe Paul and Patrick Ryan were truly put on this earth to test us all, and to bring us all together?
I glance down at my empty glass and shake my head. Surely I’ve had far too much to drink if I’m entertaining such ridiculous notions. There is something about a full moon that brings out my mother’s side of the family in me. Our Aunt Em is a card-carrying Pagan and has always been a believer in all things mystical too.
My thoughts drift to Jessie again. I heard her and Conor in the shower earlier, and for the first time in my life I was jealous of my little brother. Knowing that he was the only one who could give her what she needed sliced through my heart like a blade. She has been polite to me since we got her back, but she can barely stand to look at me. I watched Mikey and Liam with her earlier and it made me as hard as iron. They are so relaxed with her. Their relationship is easy in a way that mine and hers will never be. I thought our time here in Ireland would make us stronger, but I fucked it up completely, and now I wonder if she will ever look at me the same way again.
The sound of the sliding door behind me makes my head snap around. I am on high alert having taken my eye off the ball once already and I will never let it happen again. She must have turned on a light and it illuminates her silhouette as she walks toward me with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
“What are you doing out here?” she asks with a frown as she reaches me.
“Drinking.” I hold up my now empty glass as proof.
“You should never drink alone, Shane Ryan,” she says with a tilt of her head. “So scooch up.”
“What?”
“It’s so chilly out here. I don’t want to sit on one of those cold ass chairs. So scoot.”
These lounge chairs aren’t built for two, but I shuffle over as much as I can and she squeezes in beside me. Lying on her side with her leg draped over mine, she wraps an arm and half the blanket around me and presses her head against my chest. I look down at her and frown because this doesn’t seem like she’s pissed at me, but if she’s not, then she fucking should be.
“That moon is beautiful,” she says with a soft sigh that I feel in my groin.
“Sure is.”
“It reminds me of that night by the lake. Do you remember?”
How could I forget it. It was the night I finally admitted my feelings for her. It was the night she promised she would never leave us. I suppose we have both made promises that we couldn’t keep. I promised her she would be safe with me. I swore that I would never let him hurt her, yet I handed her straight to him. “Of course I do. It seems like a lifetime ago.”
“I think about it all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I think you should build that place out on the lake as soon as we get back.”
“You do?” I look down at her.
“Hmm. So we can have a place just like this when we need to get away from the city.”
I wrap my arms around her and we sit in silence for a while.
“Why have you been avoiding me?” she whispers.
“I haven’t been avoiding you,” I lie.
“Well it certainly feels like it. Does what he did bother you?”
I look down at her with a scowl on my face. “Of course it fucking bothers me, Jessie. I hate what that evil fucker did to you.”
“I don’t mean like that,” she stammers. “I mean…when I was with your brothers earlier, I was hoping you might…”
Fuck! She thinks that I don’t want her. I don’t even know what to say in response to that but she fills the silence with another question.
“Why were you drinking out here alone?”
“I just wanted some time to think.”
“About?”
“About everything.”
“Are you okay?” She looks up at me with those beautiful blue eyes and my heart almost bursts out of my chest. After everything she’s been through, everything I let happen to her, she asks if I’m okay.
“No,” I say. The whiskey must be some kind of truth serum because I should tell her everything is fine and send her back to bed.
“Shane,” she says with a sigh as she rests her warm hand on my cheek. “Please don’t blame yourself for what happened.”
“I should never have let him anywhere near you. He got to you because of me and that’s a fact, Jessie. There is no escaping that.”
“No!” She shifts her position so she can look into my eyes. “He got to me because that is what he does. You didn’t even know who he was. How could you have predicted that?”
“I made you a promise that he would never hurt you again!” I snarl at her although the only person I am angry with right now is myself.
“And I love that you made that promise, Shane, but don’t you see it’s one that you can never keep.” She shakes her head. “Nobody can.”
“I can! I should have.”
“No matter how much we love someone, we can never stop them being hurt. We can’t protect people from hurt and pain, as much as we want to. You have to accept that or you’re going to drive yourself crazy trying to keep everyone safe when it’s an impossible task.”
“Don’t, Jessie! I can keep you all safe. I will.” I feel the wave of emotion crashing over me and I suck in a deep breath. The cool night air fills my lungs but it does little to calm my racing heart. This isn’t just about Jessie anymore. This is about every single time Patrick or Paul Ryan hurt someone I love. I sit up and she sits with me, awkwardly perched on my lap now.
“It’s not your job to keep everyone safe, Shane,” she whispers as she takes my hand in hers. “You are not responsible for your father or your uncle.”
“I should have saved her, Jessie. My mother. I tried to…” I shake my head and stare out into the night as I recall the night my father murdered our mother. I heard him beating her. I heard her crying for help. Liam and Mikey were only one year old when he came home drunker than usual and spoiling to cause some real pain. I’d protected them first, taking them and Conor to a neighbor’s house before going back to our own. My mom could usually talk him round after a while, once he had beaten her black and blue first, but this night he just kept on going. I banged on that door so hard my knuckles were bleeding as I listened to her begging for mercy. Now I know why he never stopped that night, although it’s a secret I wish I’d never learned. When she finally fell silent, my heart broke into a million pieces and it never truly healed, although it had started to with Jessie’s help. And now I have let her down too.
“You did everything you could, Shane. I know what it’s like to watch the people you love in pain and not be able to do anything about it,” she sniffs as a tear rolls down her cheek.
I brush it away with the pad of my thumb. I forget sometimes how much she has endured. She watched her entire family slaughtered in front of her eyes by my evil cunt of an uncle, but she is still so full of compassion and kindness. She is damaged just like my brothers and me, but she’s still the best person I have ever met. Perhaps my mother was right. Some stories are truly written in the stars.
“I’m sorry for everything he did to you,” I say.
“I know, but it is not your apology to make. If you let anything your father or your uncle did close you off from happiness and love, then they have won. You’re capable of such incredible things, Shane. Your love is an amazing gift. Please don’t let them take it from you, or me.”
“You think I could ever stop loving you, Jessie Ryan?” I frown at her as I cup her cheek in my hand.
“I hope not,” she smiles at me. “Because I am completely head over heels for you.”
“Head over heels?” I arch an eyebrow at her.
“Yes. I told you, I love you more than candy.”
“Yes you did,” I smile as I lie back, pulling her with me so that she is lying on top of me now and I have my arms wrapped tightly around her.
We lie in silence for a while and I listen to the sound of her soft breathing. “How are you really holding up, sweetheart?”
“I’m okay,” she whispers.
“Okay isn’t really an answer,” I frown.
“Isn’t it?”
“Well it’s neither a feeling or a state of being, so it tells me nothing really, does it?”
She sighs softly and presses her cheek against my chest. “Isn’t okay a capture all for when you don’t really know the answer? I feel so many things, Shane.”
“So break it down for me.”
She is quiet for a few seconds before she responds. “Right here, I feel happy and safe. Protected,” she whispers.
“Right here in the house?”
“Right here in your arms,” she breathes.
I have to close my eyes and take a deep breath because this girl just straight up put her hand inside my chest and punched me in the fucking heart. If I had any last line of defense against her then she just tore right through it. She has defeated me. Right here in the grounds of this beautiful house in Carrickfergus, I gave her the very last sliver of my soul.
I kiss her head and breathe in the scent of her hair. If I speak right now, if I try to tell her how much I love her, then she’ll know that she has completely fucking broken me.
“But I also feel scared, Shane. Terrified in fact. Not that he will come for me now, but that he’ll do it in two, four or even twelve years’ time, when I let myself feel happy or relaxed. When I’ve stopped thinking about him every minute of every day. I might be walking to the grocery store to pick up something for dinner, or be in a restaurant with you and your brothers and go to the restroom alone, or I might just be walking down the street, and he’ll take me. And then I’ll be gone,” she whispers and her entire body shudders.
I want to tell her that I will never let that happen, but we just spoke about making promises we can’t deliver on.
“I would tear the world apart to find you, sweetheart,” I tell her instead because that is a promise I can keep.
“I know,” she whispers. “Now, are we sleeping out here under the stars tonight then, or are you going to take me to bed?”
My cock twitches at the way she says that and I’m grateful for the distraction. But she yawns as she nestles her head against my chest and I remember it’s the middle of the night and she has been through so much in the past thirty-six hours.
“We’ll stay here a little longer.” I dust my lips over her hair and she sighs contentedly.
“Okay, but I might fall asleep right here.”
“Then I’ll carry you to bed if you do, sweetheart. And to address your earlier question, seeing you with my brothers still makes me as hard as iron and I still want to fuck you as much as I always have.” I kiss her again and pull the blanket all the way over her as I wrap my arms tighter around her body.
“Devil,” she chuckles softly and the sound makes me smile.
Half an hour later she is fast asleep in my arms as I carry her to my bed. Crawling in beside her, I pull her to me and she mumbles my name.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. Go back to sleep,” I whisper in her ear and she smiles sleepily as she wraps an arm around my neck.
We lie in the darkness. I listen to her soft, steady breathing as her heart beats against my own and I have never felt more at peace in my entire life. I only wish that it could last. But my uncle is still out there and I know there will be no lasting peace for any of us until he takes his last breath.
