“Hung up the…? Fuck. Why the hell did you tell it over the phone?”
“Because she had left for the airport after I returned from abandoning her at the restaurant.”
Cormac’s answering silence only makes me feel worse.
I managed to pile a fuck up on top of another fuck up on top of another fuck up. I really am a bastard. No wonder she left me.
He sighs. “Do you think she’ll come around?”
“I honestly don’t know. She’s not wrong to be pissed. I dropped a fucking grenade into her life, so it’s only natural that she needs some time to process.”
“She deserved to know. Even if it hurt her.”
I glance at him. “You believe that?”
“I do now. Secrets always come out in the end.”
I frown at my brother’s cryptic comment, but I don’tpush him on it. It’s clear from the look on his face that his thoughts are spinning just as much as mine.
His eyes go to someplace distant. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Da lately, about how little I actually knew about him.”
“You and me both.”
“Did we just ignore the signs? I mean, these payments have been here the entire time, but now the secret calls to Callum as well? It doesn’t add up.”
“Dad gave me no reason not to trust him.”
“I’m sure Ciara said the same about her father.”
I frown. “That’s completely different.”
“Not in the sense that we have no idea who he is.”
“I knew him, Cormac.”
“You sure about that? Because as I see it, Ciara will tell you the same thing about her da.”
My lack of sleep combined with Cormac’s comments is putting me in a foul mood.
“What are you trying to do here? Are you just looking for a reason to hate our father, is that it?”
Cormac grips the edge of the marble countertop, his knuckles turning white, as he gazes out of the French windows at the sprawling grounds beyond.
“I guess I just want to figure out the whole truth, of why the hell he needs me back in New York now that he’s gone. All he ever cared about was you. None of us ever mattered to him. So, to me, it makes no sense.”
“He was a still family man. He wants his sons together.”
“Wonder if he cared what we wanted? Because it sure as hell wasn’t this.”
“Is it really so awful to consider coming back?”
Cormac doesn’t answer.
I pat him in the back. “Go through his things if it will make you feel better. But don’t be surprised if you don’t find anything.”
“Thanks. Oh, and, Ronan?”
“What?”
