Page 37 of Iron Blade

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?”

“My father is mad.” He looked at me then, his black eyes shooting a heat inside me that took me by surprise.

“What’s he angry about?”

“No, sweetheart,” he gave a small snort of laughter. “I mean he’s losing his mind. He’s lost it for a while, honestly. I just never faced it.”

I scooted towards him. “Do you mean… dementia? Or something else? You’re not giving me a lot to go off of, here.”

He let out a long sigh, before he took another drink of Absinthe.

He offered me the bottle, and… hell, you only live once, right? I took it and took a sip.

It was sweet, and a bit like licorice. I only took a small drink, since I still wasn’t sure about the hallucinogens and whatnot.

“My mother died,” he said, his low rumbling voice doing things to me that it shouldn’t, considering the context of his words.

“I’m so sorry.”

I had never considered that Eoghan had parents. In my head, he emerged fully formed, in a posh suit with a paintbrush in his hand.

“Thank you,” he said, with a slight chuckle. “But that’s not… that doesn’t upset me anymore.”

There was a twitch under his eye. It was small, and almost imperceptible. Holy shit, he was lying. I don’t think he’s ever lied to me before.

“ My father just… he never got over it.” That must make two of them. “It eats at his brain like a worm. And I don’t know how to stop it.”

“Why don’t you get him help? Get him some outpatient, or even inpatient, treatment?”

“Oh, Alastair Green would never allow himself to be diagnosed. There’s no treating Alastair Green for anything.” His chuckle was sad. Heartbreaking, really. “Definitely not for something as insignificant as mental health.”

My heart sank for him. Whatever relationship he had with his father was surely complicated. It pained him.

“He’ll ruin the company if I don’t watch him,” he said, staring into the distance. “Some days, I wish he had died with my mother.”

Those words speared right through me. Mental health. Even before the feelings could be felt, the tears were welling in my eyes.

He hadn’t turned to me. He hadn’t looked at me. But it was as if he could feel me.

His brows came together, and his hand reached out to take mine. He placed them on his lap, palm up, and he intertwined our fingers.

I averted my eyes down to the green bottle of Absinthe, then caught the sight of red droplets on the outside. It was exactly where his palm had been. What the fuck?

“What’s upset you, love?” He stared forward, not even glancing at me. “Talk to me.”

“I… I don’t know. Is your hand bleeding?” I reached over him, my breasts lightly grazing his chest.

He took in a sharp breath through his teeth, as I reached for the hand with the bottle. I plucked it from his hand, and opened his palm. Sure enough, there was a red gash there. An open fucking wound. It looked deep!

“What the hell happened?” I asked, looking into his black, expressionless eyes. “You should get this looked at! You might need stitches!”

He didn’t pull his hand away. Instead, he just grazed the back of his fingers along my palm, as if seeing if I had a similar wound there too. I didn’t.

“It won’t need stitches,” he said, flatly. He took the broken hand out of mine, and brought his fingers to my loose hair. “You had a look in your eye, as if you remembered something sad. Tell me what it was.”

His fingers curled around a wavy lock, and he stared at it with fascination - as if he had never seen hair before in his life.

“Why?” I asked, defensively. “You like hearing about other people’s misery?”

---