A tear slips down the cheek of the smallest boy in the front row as he sings, and I swear it knocks the air from my lungs. The piano and cello intertwine the way the arrangement was written to — two songs that shouldn’t fit, but somehow become more beautiful together than apart.
God. If that isn’t us.
The weight in my chest shifts, molten and aching. I want this. This feeling. This life. Children’s laughter. Music that matters. A city that loves me. A man who bleeds for me.
But I also need to see the manor again. The ruins. The ghosts. The truth of where I come from before I decide where I’m going.
My fingers keep playing even as my thoughts crumble. The children sing louder now, harmonizing in shaky, sweet little clusters:Sleep in heavenly peace…
The cello swells, bow sweeping wide, the notes trembling like snowfall. I play the last run — the sparkled cascade that’s always felt like sunshine breaking through stained glass.
When the final chord hums through the air, it hangs there— soft, slow, sacred.
Then the hall erupts. A roar of applause. Shouts. Cheers. Crying. People standing. Teachers wiping their eyes with their sleeves.
The children rush me. Little arms around my waist, my shoulders, my hands. Someone shoves a candy cane into my palm. Another slips a folded drawing of a piano into my pocket.
I laugh — breathless, overwhelmed, undone. This… this is what love feels like. I close my eyes, letting the applause wash over me, letting their tiny voices tangle around my heart until it hurts.
I love this. I love them. I love him.But I still don’t know if I can stay.And that truth settles inside me like a bittersweet note at the end of a perfect song. The applause is still echoing in my bones long after the final note fades — a tremor that feels like joy and grief braided into one fragile thing. The children cling to me, tiny arms around my waist, their laughter bright as bells. Teachers thank me. Parents wipe their eyes. Cillian stands at the back with Rouge, hands in his pockets, looking at me like I hung the bloody stars.
And I smile. I smile for them all. But something cold slips beneath my ribs, settling where certainty should be. When the hall empties and the stage lights dim, I’m left with the silence… the kind that presses against my skin like memory.
Cillian reaches me first. His hands cup my face, warm, steady, heartbreakingly gentle. “You were magic, dove,” he whispers. “You werehome.”
Home. My heart twists. I wish the word didn’t hurt.
I lean into him anyway — because I love him, because I have always loved him, because loving him has always been the beginning and end of my music. His lips brush my hair, the crown of my head, and I breathe him in like a hymn I’m terrified to forget.
But under the sweetness… the questions gnaw.Can I stay? Can I build a life on the ruins of everything I lost? Everything he didn’t know? Everything his father destroyed?
I look past him, out through the tall auditorium windows at the falling snow drifting like ash. Dublin sparkles under the lamplight — beautiful, broken, familiar. And suddenly… I know what I need. Not the answer. Not yet. Just the next step.
I pull back, my voice small but steady. “Cillian… I need to go somewhere.”
His brows pinch, worry flashing. “Where?”
My throat tightens. He’ll hate this. He’ll fear it. Maybe he should.
“My family’s manor,” I whisper. “One last time.”
Shock flickers in his eyes. Then something darker — fear, protectiveness, a silentplease don’t disappear again. But he doesn’t argue. Not yet.
I don’t know what I’ll find there. I don’t know what it will make me decide. All I know is this: I can’t choose between Dublin and New York, between the past and the future, between running and staying…Not until I walk those halls again. Not until I face the ghosts.
I squeeze Cillian’s hand once, then let it slip from mine. Tonight. I’ll go tonight. Whether I return to him afterward… EvenIdon’t know.
1.My dove
2.My beautiful heart
3.My darling wife
4.Thank you very much
5.Angel Music School
