“Yeah. Sometimes it’s good to just let it all flow out. Music helps move the melancholy when it feels stuck in my chest.”
“I made you cry.”
She moved her head back some and searched my eyes. “I missed you that much.” Another tear slipped down her cheek, and I used my mouth to dry it. I started for the bathroom.
“What are you doing? Cian?”
I set her down on her feet and started to undress. “Get dressed,” I said before I stepped into the shower. A few seconds later, she was in with me. She traced her fingers around the pattern of the buck’s antlers on my stomach.
My eyes found hers, and she reached up and wiped droplets of water from my face. “Where are we going?”
“I’m takin’ you out,” I said, but first, I set her against the wall and forced out the cold longin’ in our blood.
* * *
I hit the brake,and the car came to a smooth enough stop. Maeve smiled at me and squeezed my hand. From the backseat, Keenan ran a hand down his face, shakin’ his head, and Fiona clutched the arm, her knuckles white. When she met my eyes through the mirror, I could’ve sworn she was cursin’ me. If I lost my balls, or somethin’ equally as important, by the time the night was through, I’d know for sure.
Maeve looked away from me, toward the window, and was tryin’ not to grin. Keenan and Fiona demanded to go on what Maeve was callin’date nightwith us, but it looked like they were on a date instead. Keenan wasn’t used to people drivin’ him around, and Fiona only trusted a few. I hadn’t earned that part of her trust yet.
She popped the back of my seat when we stopped again. “Not enough space, you heathen! You’re almost up that car’s arse. What do you want to give them? A rectal exam? See what’s inside of their boot? I’m tellin’ ya now, it ain’t nothin’ that belongs to you! Stay back. You’d think your Da taught you how to drive.”
The car went quiet, but I could see Maeve was grinnin’. She liked when Keenan or Fiona brought up my parents. She said they would have liked it. Then she turned on the radio, and Keenan groaned.
“Not this fecker again!”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.” Maeve held her hands up, laughin’ like a loon. She motioned to the dash. “It’s the radio. He’s popular here in Boston.”
“I don’t see ya changin’ it, Queen O’Callaghan.”
“No,” she said. “Because I like it!”
Keenan met my eyes through the mirror, and I knew what he was thinkin’, because I was thinkin’ the same thin’. I shoulda killed the fecker when I had the chance.
I did a double take in the mirror when I noticed Fiona movin’ her shoulders some. Keenan followed my narrowed-eyed gaze, and his mouth fell open. When Fiona noticed us watchin’, she rolled her shoulders like they were sore.
“Weather must be turnin’ bad,” she said, rubbin’ the left one. “I’m feelin’ stiff.”
“Fiona, do you want to come with me to the bookstore after dinner? Del has so many books on knifery.”
Knifery?There wasn’t such a fuckin’ thing. I glanced at my wife. The way she’d said the fake word made me think it was a codeword for somethin’ else. Keenan looked at me again, like somethin’ was up, and again, I agreed. Not that a bookstore couldn’t carry books onknifery, but Maeve had told me Delaney carried more stories in the romance genre.
Keenan and I waited to see what Fiona was going to say.
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I do need new books on the subject.”
“You’re going to love it!” Maeve seemed to have a permanent smile on her face. “Turn here!” She pointed to a street at the last second.
“Argh!” Keenan ripped his cap off, runnin’ a frustrated hand down his head after he busted shoulders with Fiona. He started mumblin’ and complainin’, but I tuned him out as Maeve showed me where she and Pauric had lived.
I’d been there before, followin’ Pauric home. He was such an odd man, though, that I’d just left. Keenan always said I’d spared him because he was wearin’ old-lookin’ goggles.
I was thinkin’ I had spared him because the beautiful woman inside his house had always been mine.
The memory of it stirred up a funny feelin’ in the pit of my stomach. It was fuckin’ odd, like I felt somethin’ at work in that second that I never had before. I grew quiet, tryin’ to place it, tryin’ to figure it out. Maeve went on about different places in the neighborhood, things she’d done, until we passed Craig’s house. I remembered what she’d told me, how I was there with her even when I wasn’t.
She went quiet.
I was thinkin’ it was for the same reason I had.
