Mrs. Morrigan—or Thelma, as she keeps reminding me to call her—laughs as I show her my beloved succulent collection on my phone. We’re still sitting at the dinner table. Taranis made himself scarce the second he finished his last bite of food. Clíodhna and Rhiannon have gone to talk to their father, and me, Aoife, and Mrs.—Thelma are all sitting with half-drunk cups of tea.
It waspainfulwatching Rhiannon during dinner. She made two of her fingers bleed from picking, her shoulders were so curled in on herself they were like a fucking scarf wrapped around her ears, and she looked so deflated and so… limp and lifeless.
“You did all this yourself?” Thelma peers through her glasses at my screen.
A spark of pride blooms in my chest as I nod. “I went to the charity shops to collect the trolls. Most of them had haircuts and were covered in marker or stains. I cleaned them, sliced their skulls off, and planted wee succulents inside.”
She laughs. “They are oddly cute. And a great way to repurpose those long-lost toys from the sixties.”
Aoife stretches her hand out to ask for my phone. “The nineties, Mum.” When she sees the screen, a smile tugs her lips upward. You can’t help but smile at a collection of salvaged trolls with succulents in their heads. They make me smile every single day.
I don’t correct Aoife, her mum’s right, the toys were created much earlier than they became hugely popular here in Northern Ireland.
“What the fuck are you thinking?” Michael’s booming voice makes Aoife jump so hard she drops my phone on the table.
“Sorry,” she mumbles, scrambling to grab it and pass it back to me.
There’s no mistaking who Michael is yelling at. Thelma pats my hand before standing. “I’ll put the kettle on, love. He just needs some time to process.”
The hell he does. The man is a bully; there’s no way to dress that up.
Aoife snorts, then gives me a sympathetic glance. “Sorry,” she whispers again. “But you have zero chance of getting Da to approve of…” She gestures at me like it’s self-explanatory.
I nod. “You don’t need to apologize for him. Neither of you do.” I speak a bit louder so Thelma can hear me too. “I know I put you all through a lot.”
Another snort comes from the youngest Morrigan sister. “Understatement of the century.”
Rhiannon’s voice is a low murmur through the walls, but her father’s is crystal clear as he tears her a new arsehole. I picture her clutching her fingers, her thumbnail working the length of her finger, scratching at skin that isn’t there, rubbing herself raw.
Thelma pats my shoulder. “You don’t regret your actions though, do you, Robert?”
I accept the steaming mug of tea from her with a shake of my head. “I don’t, no, Mrs.—Thelma.”
She sits down next to me with a mug of her own, a knowing, sympathetic stare in eyes that look startlingly like Rhiannon’s. “I’m sure you had your reasons for doing what you did.”
A knot of tension lodged in my rib cage loosens just a smidge, and a lump appears in my throat as I nod but don’t answer.
“Rugby first, Rhiannon. That’s the rule, that’s always been the rule, no matter what your heart tells you. You’ve got to think of your career above all else.Especiallybecause you’re a woman.” Michael’s voice is harsh and condescending, like Rhiannon has no idea of the battles she faces by being a woman in professional sports.
My blood starts to simmer. I may not have wanted to be thrust into a relationship—fake or otherwise—with Rhiannon Morrigan, but she’s not a fucking idiot.
Spending a week with her in Croatia taught me a lot of things that I hadn’t read in the never-ending number of stories about her over the years. Her middle name is Fiadh; she told me that sometimes she uses it as an alias when she doesn’t want people to know who she is—for things like dinner reservations and hotel stays. She’s not a massive, international star by any means, but she doesn’t like to make it easy for the paparazzi to find her.
She teaches Pilates on the side. It’s common knowledge that women get paid less in the sport than men, and their side hustles need to be flexible. Well, it turns out, so is my fake girlfriend. Watching her morning and nightly routines on holiday was a blessing and a curse. She wore a sports bra to train, which made it hard not to stare at the three ravens tattoo. And when she encouraged me to get involved, I also learned thatI’m not nearly as strong from the inside out as I’d previously thought.
“You okay?” Aoife nudges my foot under the table. “I’d love to say he’s all bark and no bite, but he’s definitely got teeth. He’ll flare out, eventually. We just have to let him get it all out.”
Clíodhna slips back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her like she’s sealing a crime scene. “Well, that’s going about as well as expected,” she says, grabbing a glass from the counter. “If anyone’s taking bets on who breaks first, my money’s on Dad. His voice cracked on the wordreporter.”
She glances at me. “You might want to keep your shoes on in case you have to make a run for it.” Tension hums beneath the fragile calm. “You can hear the shouting from the street,” she murmurs, not accusing, justtired.
I nod, not saying what’sactuallyon the tip of my tongue. Why? Why do they have to let him rant and rave about how he feels about the situation? From the lack of muffled replies from Rhiannon, it seems like she’s in there just taking a bollocking. And for what? To make her father feel better? Fuck that for a game of darts.
I flex my fingers before rubbing at my leg, a new sympathy forallthe Morrigan kids developing as my hand moves back and forth over my trouser leg. I rack my brain trying to figure out how to rescue her from the man yelling at her because of me.
“He’s ajournalist…”
“How could you?”
