Page 55 of Promise Me This

“No, you weren’t!” the boy retorts.

“Say thank you for playing.”

She does as I instructed, and the boy stalks off to find his parents. I settle her onto her own two feet, and she crosses her arms over her chest with a pout. “I was winning.”

“And I believe you,” I say, smoothing a hand over her hair. “But I’ve got a surprise that I thought you’d like more than kicking some poor lad’s arse.”

“Callum,” Mam scolds.

“Bum,” I correct.

Mam shakes her head while Niamh and Leo giggle. Leo’s wiping off the whiskey bottle and recapping it but smiling at my daughter all the while. It does worse things to me than watching her bend over to make a bed.

Niamh practically dances from foot to foot. “What’s the surprise?”

“Wouldn’t be much of a surprise if I told you, would it now?”

“Would too!”

“Would not!” I counter. She relents with a heavy sigh more worthy of a teenager than a small child. Man, I’ll be in for it when those years come. I offer her my hand and she takes it, and then I steel myself for part two of my plan.

When I glance up at Leo, she’s watching Niamh with a gaze that’s unreadable. Maybe in another life, where we spent the last twelve years together, I’d be able to read it as easily as plain English. But in this one, I’m at a severe disadvantage. One only time will make up for, I’m realizing. And time is what I intend to get.

“Would you want to join us, then, Leo?” I ask like the thought has just occurred to me.

Mam smirks, but she tears off a piece of soda bread and shoves it into her mouth to hide it.

Leo returns from wherever her mind had drifted off to, glancing again between Mam and me. “Oh, I couldn’t. I’ve got to help Siobhan.”

“Nonsense, go on,” Mam says, waving a hand. “Everyone’ll be going off to dinner soon anyway. You can help me clean up tonight.” She looks pointedly at me but continues directing her voice to Leo. “If you come home, that is.”

“I will.”

“She will,” I say, speaking over Leo.

We glance at each other, laughing nervously. Niamh calls jinx.

“Then it’s settled.” Mam wipes her hands off on her pants, smiling at both of us and then gesturing toward the door when no one moves. “Go on, then.”

We all jolt forward at once, heading for the exit. Niamh chatters excitedly about what the surprise could be, and Leo listens politely. When we make it to the car, I load Niamh into the back seat and then hold the passenger door open for Leo. She stops between me and the car, her body so close I can see her chest rise and fall with her breathing. The pendant she always wears dips under her neckline, and when my gaze traces its journey, I see the lace of her white bra strap peeking through the wide knit of her coffee-colored sweater, and all the blood drains from my head.

“Where are we going?” she breathes, training her gaze on my throat rather than my face.

“You’ll see,” I say, and then I allow myself one spectacular mercy. I rest my hand against the base of her spine and guide her forward.

“We’re skipping rocks!” Niamh squeals, bolting from the car the moment it slides into park.

She bounds across the dirt lot in no time, coming to a stop where it turns to pebbled shoreline. I glance at Leo, and she’s smiling. It’s slight, but it’s there, and it splinters my heart into fractions.

“Ready?”

She nods excitedly, and we exit the vehicle together.

As we make our way over to where Niamh is already tossing rocks across the surface like a seasoned pro, I can’t stop myself from stealing glances of Leo out of the corner of my eye. I’m waiting for some flicker of recognition, a widening of the eyes or for her mouth to pop open with a soft, Oh.

It looks the same, this place, as it did all those years ago when I brought her here to teach her how to drive a manual transmission. The lot is large and mostly empty, save for the occasional fisherman that posts up by the lake. It seemed the perfect place to teach her without witnesses, as was her request.

I never considered how at risk it put my car of being sunk in the lake until afterward, when we were breathless from laughing so hard and my transmission was halfway to being shot. Even after an hour of guiding her through the motions, she could barely get the car going without stalling. A passenger princess she was destined to be.

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