I knew that look in her eyes. “Why?” I asked, dragging out the word.
“I’m excited to meet his woman,” Freyja said.
I narrowed my eyes at her while she tried to look innocent. “What did Lucille tell you?” Rian groaned beside me and left out the back door. Freyja just smiled.
Mom and Aunt Caity came into the kitchen, and any questions I thought I might be able to get Freyja to answer were forgotten.
“He’s an asshole,” Aunt Caity said.
Mom chuckled. “He’s not that bad. He didn’t want your father to know about us.”
“My father has been dead for twenty-five fuckin’ years.”
“You’re here now, Caity. And you’ll get to know your great niece or nephew.”
Caity sighed and looked at me. She broke out into a smile, and everything I’d ever heard about her didn’t seem to fit. Caitlin Kelley wasn’t the angry, bitter woman I heard she was. And I wondered if years of denying herself from being with the man she loved was the reason why she was so unhappy.
It made me wonder if I was setting myself up for years of heartache. I watched my mother as she talked with Freyja and my aunt. She was always happy when I was growing up. Even now she didn’t seem as though she was lonely; she certainly wasn’t bitter that my father hadn’t married her.
It just reenforced what I’d known in my heart. My mother wasn’t in love with my father.
But I was in love with Jude. There would never be anyone else for me. When I was my aunt’s age, would people call me mean and bitter? Would decades without him make me a shell of who I really was?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chasm
I sat at the bar watching O’Malley at the other end, talking with Smokey. Anyone with eyes could see Smokey had a thing for Benny, and I couldn’t help but wonder how O’Malley would react.
Cian sat down on one side of me and Duncan sat on the other. Mac sat halfway down the bar, his head swiveling back and forth between me and his boss.
“You’re a lucky man, Chasm.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?” I asked, taking a drink of my beer.
“Because if you’d done to my daughter what you did to Morgan, you’d be dead.”
Duncan chuckled beside me. “Ci doesn’t have a long-lost son he’s trying to connect with. King is the only reason you aren’t dead.”
“I think Morgan would have something to say about that,” I argued.
“Would she?” Mac said from his stool a few seats away.
I wanted to believe she would. I wanted to believe she still loved me and was just afraid I would leave again. Afraid she would lose me a third time.
I wouldn’t let that happen. I was done being afraid myself. Done trying to be selfless and keep her out of this shit. It was time to be fucking selfish and lock her down so she couldn’t leave me.
I opened my mouth to say something when the door opened again. King and his entourage had arrived. I groaned, and Duncan snickered beside me.
“The fun has just begun,” he whispered as he slid off his stool and walked over to the group.
“Lannie!” He shook Declan’s hand and then pulled the woman next to him into his arms. “Hey, little sister.”
“Hey, Duncan,” Maureen said behind her hand as she yawned.
O’Malley greeted his son and then pulled Grace into his arms. I was surprised when she hugged him back willingly. I was more surprised to see Darcy, King’s mother, and two old timers from the Soulless Sinners.
Popeye didn’t surprise me as much as Snoopy did. Then again, Popeye was Grace’s father, and Snoopy... well, he had a son with Darcy.
