Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, I wish that I could turn back time and walk away from Ruairi when he orders a drink without saying please. I wish that I could go straight home when my shift finishes, climb into bed, and forget all about the sexy Irish accent. I wish that the condom hadn’t split, and my birth control had worked, and I’d allowed Declan to terminate my contract when he realized that he had feelings for me.
But real life is never that easy, and the York women own their mistakes, pick themselves up, and get on with it.
“Because I went back to Ruairi’s hotel room,” I whisper like a coward. “We…” I can’t say it.
“You what, Amelia?” His voice is so cold I shudder. “What happened when you went back to my son’s hotel room?”
“We… We had sex.”
He rolls away and sits on the edge of the bed with his back to me. His shoulders are hunched. I can count the bumps and ridges of his spine, but I can’t touch him through the anger and disappointment emanating from him.
The moments stretch on endlessly. I’m afraid to disturb him, but at the same time, I want to get up, get dressed, and get out of thishouse. I don’t know where I’ll go. I’ll just keep on walking until my legs stop working. Maybe then, this will all look different.
I know what he’s going to say even before the question hangs in the air.
“What about the baby, Amelia?” He pauses, finding the strength to finish. “Is this baby even mine?”
“I-I don’t know. The condom Ruairi used split. I was taking birth control, but I’d had food poisoning, and I guess it failed.”
He stands up so abruptly, the bed shakes. He drags on yesterday’s clothes without looking at me and crosses the room to the door.
“I guess it did.”
His eyes graze mine, but they’re cold. He doesn’t even look like the man I fell in love with, the man who, until thirty minutes ago, had me wrapped in his warm arms. The man who promised to love and protect me, no matter what.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Out.”
He closes the door softly behind him as he leaves.
14
DECLAN
I drive without thinking.Without seeing the road beneath the wheels or the villages that I pass through. My body operates on muscle memory, gears, pedals, steering wheel, and rearview. I don’t know where I’m going until I pull up at the beach I came to with Amelia.
I sit in the car with my forehead on the steering wheel, until my brain hurts.
Amelia and Ruairi.
Amelia and Ryan Connor, the name that my son always used when he wanted to remain incognito.
Me and my son.
She allowed me to believe that the baby was mine. I don’t even know if she directly told me that she was carrying my baby or if I simply jumped to the natural conclusion that it was mine. But either way, she didn’t tell me that there was a question mark over the paternity.
She didn’t tell me that it might be my son’s child.
Fuck!I slam the top of the steering wheel with the flat of my hand. She might’ve been pregnant with my grandchild when she arrived.
I get out of the car and half-stumble, half-slide down the sandy, overgrown path to the beach. I walk down to the water and stare out across the sea. Rain is coming. The horizon is invisible between the hazy gray overhead and the darker gray reflection of the water’s surface.
The harder I try to wrap my head around what Amelia told me, the deeper I fall.
The baby. The child that I believed was mine, created from love and passion and something unbreakable, could be my grandchild.
A beautiful reminder of my dead son.
