“Okay,” I said, but my voice finally broke, and I pushed my face into his chest and sobbed.
Chapter Forty-One
Teo
Ididn’t sleep much that night; I dreamed, off and on, so I must have lost consciousness. But I woke early, even before the time Aidan usually rose, but he stayed fast asleep, his face peaceful at last.
I couldn’t look long at him because it felt like my heart was ripping in two right there in my chest. I’d known last night that if I was going to get through this day, I couldn’t see Aidan. I wouldn’t be able to walk him into that Cathedral without falling to my knees in front of him and begging him to choosemeinstead.
And I knew just as well that if I did that, he would. He’d turn his back on the very thing that made him who he was, and it would destroy both of us, destroy any chance of love between us.
Because we were not meant to be in love.
I slid out of the bed, took up my clothes and went to the bathroom down the hall to shower and dress. And then I went downstairs, out the door, and into the street. The air was still cool with a pre-dawn chill, and I breathed in deep, letting my lungs expand and holding it until they hurt.
I gave a wave to the camera as I passed, but as on the ball as O’Hara was, I didn’t think he’d be upthisearly, so I kept walking. I walked far enough that I made it to Boston Common, just as the sky began to change from black to merely dark, and the odd bird rustled in the trees as I listened, the earliest of their kind.
Aidan would be coming around, too, I figured. This was his usual rising hour.
I stayed there watching until the sky began to change, like a black-and-white outline being colored in by God’s paintbrush. I watched as scarlets, pinks and oranges spread wider. It was one of the most beautiful sunrises I’d ever seen. It only added insult to injury as far as I was concerned.
How could I ever compete with something like that?
“You can have him,” I muttered to the sky. “I give in. But You gotta promise to take care of him.”
I made my way back up the street, banking on O’Hara being awake by now. I was right; he came out of the house before I even reached it and leaned against the lintel with his arms crossed. “Why are you prowling around?”
“Need to make some changes today,” I told him, ignoring the question.
“Oh, yeah? Lovers’ spat?” The look I gave him made him hold up his hands defensively. “Shit, I was only kidding, Vitali.”
I looked away, pulled myself together. “I need you on the priest today. Someone else on his parents, the best you have. I’ll take Ms. Donovan.” When O’Hara started giving me a bullish look, I held up my hands, mirroring his. “Sorry. I’m in a shitty mood. I’m not trying to steamroll, I just…I can’t take O’Leary, and I only trust you with him.”
O’Hara gave me a hard stare for another few seconds before he shrugged. “Ms. Donovan’s not attending. I told her no way.”
“Nice that yours actually listens to you,” I said wryly.
“Heard yours is starting to. No New York visitors after all?”
“I’m half expecting Mr. D to turn up anyway,” I sighed, but for the first time that morning, I smiled. “But he’d have to get away from the Boss first.”
O’Hara gave a sniff and looked over my shoulder, scanning the roads. “I can take the priest. You gonna be there at all, or you planning a whole vacation?”
“I’ll take the perimeter.”
O’Hara looked back at me, sizing me up. He seemed to come to a decision. “Still pretty early. Come in for coffee?”
“Yeah.”
“Good man.” He waved me in. “I have some shit I want to talk about, too.”
* * *
O’Hara wasn’t kidding.
We were alone in the house and after making me a coffee he laid out a bunch of printed emails, texts, even handwritten letters, all with the same essential message: that Tara Donovan would collaborate with the Irish Freedom Fighters, or she would die. The methods of death suggested ranged from imaginative to sickening.
Most of them were signed the same way:We will avenge the murders of the martyrs Fearghus Donovan and Margaret Fincher Donovan.
