Up the stairs. Into the apartment with a closed door protecting me.
I made it to the couch before the tears erupted.
Stupid. Letting one comment from one woman reduce me to tears was so stupid. Tammy based her opinion on incomplete information, and she’d been wrong about plenty of things. She’d questioned Ronan about every paint color I’d chosen for the renovations and been skeptical about the menu changes.
She’d told me the light behind the bar looked like it belonged in a hotel.
I’d been fine with all those things because I knew she was an opinionated old woman without much to do with her time and thought she was being helpful.
But she’d looked me specifically with such disappointment.
Pick one and stick with him.
I pressed my face into the couch cushion and screamed out my anger and sorrow.
27
DECLAN
“What the hell was that?” I scrubbed both hands down my face. How was I supposed to fix this?
Ronan tossed the car keys Bree had pressed into his hand right before she ran away. His brows slanted, his anger matching mine. “That was a ridiculous, shitty judgment that I’m refusing to listen to.” He jerked his head toward the car. “I’ll take the car around back.” He slid behind the wheel and took off down the road, turning right at the end of the block and circling into the lot where Bree always parked.
Fuck. Ronan would take his time coming back. He’d sit in the car, or in the shade with the plants, and he’d assess the entire situation. He’d contemplate and decide if he needed to act. By the time he came up with an answer, he wouldn’t second-guess himself.
Sometimes I envied that side of him. Finn would’ve reacted immediately, telling Tammy where to put her condemnation.
I didn’t envy him that, but I could understand why he’d say it.
Rising voices from inside the pub encouraged me to go in and finish the day. Bree wanted space. Was that the right thing to do? I took her word for it and entered the pub, going straight for the bar and the group of regulars nursing their pints and pushing food around their plates in hopes of delaying their return to work.
Yeah, I’d avoid it too. The only thing I wanted was upstairs, and I had zero reasons to track her down. Finn would’ve made one up already.
I picked up a cloth and started on the taps. The knot in my gut had nothing to do with the work, and work did nothing to loosen it.
We’d been so careful…until today.
Bree throwing her arms around each of us shouldn’t have brought out that reaction in Tammy unless she’d seen more than we thought.
Bree had warned us a week ago when she gathered us in her apartment. She’d needed us to listen and make sure the town didn’t find out. We needed to be more careful, so we had been.
I moved from the taps to the glasses. My stomach churned worse than the time I’d eaten bad sushi. Bree deserved better than this town gave her. She deserved the world. I wished I could give her that. My life was here. So was Finn’s and Ronan’s. If we could rip ourselves up by our roots and take off to wherever the hell she wanted to go, we probably would.
Did she even want that? We’d face scrutiny anywhere.
Why did our hometown have to be so close-minded?
“You scrub that glass any more, you’ll wear a hole right through it.” Tom’s loud laughter roared across the pub.
I put the glass away. Six weeks ago, Tammy had sat in this very bar, winked at Bree, and told her age was just a number. She’d told Bree that Finn was a good man. And now, what? Just because Bree spent time with all three of them, there was a problem?
My jaw locked.
A second, louder burst of laughter from the corner table broke through my thoughts. Tom and his buddies, Gerald and Roger, lifted their mugs in a toast, clinking them together and drinking deep. The almost empty mugs meant they’d be asking for another round soon, so I reached for the tap and shoved a mug underneath.
I tried to tune out the conversations swirling around the pub, but the distraction kept me from thinking too much about Bree and how good it would feel to stomp down to Tammy’s house and give her a piece of my mind.
Gerald pushed back in his chair and downed the rest of his drink. “That Sullivan girl is something else.” He hunched forward with a gleeful snort. “Apple fell pretty far from the tree with that one.” This man, who came in three times a week, sat in the same chair, and tipped like a miserly Scrooge, had opinions about Bree?
