Page 181 of Sins of Arrogance

A bla­tant state­ment of con­nec­tion. Our con­nec­tion.

“You called me mo chroí on the he­li­copter.” He never has be­fore.

His heart. It’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than call­ing me his pulse. Closer to the word I’m afraid he’ll never use.

Love.

Will he re­mem­ber? Will he ad­mit it if he does.

“Aye. Be­fore you, I had no heart to speak of.”

“That can’t be true. You love your par­ents.” Even as I say the words, I doubt them.

We have been mar­ried seven years and we’ve never gone to visit his fam­ily once.

He’s been to Dublin on busi­ness with­out me, and I’m sure he sees them then, but when I ask about it, he never has much to say.

They came for the wed­ding, of course.

His par­ents came to visit af­ter Fitz was born, but I don’t re­mem­ber a lot about that time. His mom sends gifts for birth­days and Christ­mas. She video calls once a month, but Sheila hasn’t been back to New York.

Brian comes for busi­ness with my fa­ther and Mick a few times a year and al­ways stays at the man­sion. He’s al­ways charm­ing to me and re­spect­ful of Mick.

He’s good with Fitz, but not dot­ing.

I like him, but I don’t have any af­fec­tion for him.

Mick told me once that his fam­ily did not ap­prove of our son be­ing given the sur­name of Shaugh­nessy.

Maybe that’s why Mick and his da aren’t close. They’re not an­tag­o­nist, but if I didn’t know Brian was Mick’s da, I’d never guess it by how they are to­gether.

“No, I don’t love them. I did not ex­pe­ri­ence love be­fore you gave me Fitz.”

“I guess I did give you a heart then.” I re­mem­ber the first time he called me mo chuisle.

It was when I woke up in the pri­vate hos­pi­tal af­ter tak­ing the sleep­ing pills.

He’d told me I had to live be­cause I was the beat of his heart. I’d thought that meant he might love me, but he never said any­thing like that. And he al­ways held part of him­self back from me.

I still clung to the pos­si­bil­ity for the first cou­ple of weeks I was in The Mar­lowe Cen­ter be­cause Mick was there ev­ery day with Fitz. They stayed at a rented prop­erty nearby along with his crew at the time.

It was dur­ing those weeks that my heart fi­nally bonded with my six-month-old son.

And I found a rea­son to live.

I also dis­cov­ered what showed on his face when my hus­band looked at some­one he loved. Be­cause that soft­ness? It only came over his fea­tures when he was look­ing at our son.

Not me.

When we re­turned to the man­sion, Mick’s work sched­ule was bru­tal and we stopped con­nect­ing ex­cept in the bed­room.

Again.

I ac­cepted that be­ing his pulse wasn’t the same as be­ing his love and did my best to lock my own feel­ings deep in­side me.

Moma told me later that Mick found me on the floor of our bath­room. She’d re­it­er­ated her will­ing­ness to pro­tect me from him if I needed it. Some­thing about him scared her then.

Now I re­al­ize he let his façade slip.