Page 66 of Promise Me This

Because here Leo is, stripped bare beneath me, with all the evidence of the one thing I can never forgive sitting like a brick wall between us.

“How could you leave your child?” I choke. I wish I sounded stronger, but my voice sounds like it’s passed through a cheese grater. Her mouth opens to speak, the defenses flashing in her eyes, and I cut her off. “Don’t deny it, Leona. Please don’t lie to me. Not again.”

My words strike a chord. Good.

Suddenly she’s scrambling to get out from under me. I don’t fight her. I don’t have it in me. She leaps from the bed and gathers her discarded clothes, forcing herself into them with her back to me. Like I can ever forget what I’ve seen on the other side of her body.

My hands burn where they’ve touched her. My throat is scalding. Rage boils in my veins, and it takes everything I have to contain it. To even come close to resembling the man Granda thought I could be.

She abandoned her child. The most horrific, narcissistic, selfish act…

The word is a fist constricting around my heart. Selfish. That’s exactly who she told me she was, and I couldn’t believe her. Didn’t want to believe her. I’m crushed beneath the weight of the revelation, so quickly drowning in my spiraling thoughts that I might’ve missed her leaving the room had she not slammed the door in her wake.

It jolts me out of the trance I’ve fallen into. I chase after her, not even bothering to find my shirt and replace it. She’s halfway down the hall when I grab her bicep, whirling her to face me. Her expression is gaunt, the exact opposite of how she looked mere moments ago, spread out before me and drenched in pleasure.

I’m going to be sick. I’m nearly sure of it.

Her chin juts out in defiance even as it trembles. “Take me home, Callum.”

“Leo, why? Why would you do this?” My knees buckle, threatening to bring me down, but I catch myself with an outstretched hand slapping against the wall. The framed photos of my daughter shake. Leo winces. I step away, letting her go, checking myself even as I feel like the world has fallen out from beneath me. “You knew. I told you what Catherine did to Niamh and me. You’ve seen the hurt she caused. How could you sit with us day in and day out, knowing you had a child at home who suffered the same?”

The image of my mother asking her to hold Niamh the night of the storm flashes in my mind. The way she recoiled, just like she is now. There was guilt, even then, and I silently curse myself for refusing to see it.

“I didn’t leave my child,” she bites out, crossing her arms over her chest. Her amulet dangles between her collarbones, glinting in the dim light of the hall. “Don’t yell at me over things you know nothing about.”

“I’m not yelling!” Even as I say the words, their volume reverberates back to me. I draw in a deep breath, trying desperately to get ahold of myself. I don’t know what to say to make her understand, so I settle for the bare and honest truth. “Right now my head is in the worst possible place, Leo, and I don’t know how to breathe. I’ve just barely let my walls down, and it feels like everything is caving in again.”

She sucks in a shaky breath, and I can see the tears blanketing her cheeks. With two small steps backward, she places space between us that feels suffocating. Every part of me is confused. In the same heartbeat I simultaneously long to hold her and haul her ass back to Dublin and put her on a plane. I want to be wrong. I’m terrified that I’m right.

“Speak to me, damn it,” I groan, nearly dropping to my knees to beg.

Fire sparks in the depths of her gaze, and it’s almost a relief compared to the stillness that predated it. Her shoulders square as her arms drop to her sides. She stalks forward until she jabs a finger into the center of my chest, and I can see how badly she wishes it could pierce me.

“She died, Callum. I had a child, and she died.” Her voice is granite, impenetrable and mighty. “Now take. Me. Home.”

With that, she pivots on her heel and marches down the hallway. My front door opens and then slams shut, and in the distance I hear my car door do the same. The walls in this cottage are so thin I swear her grief and anger are lashing out at me even from outside.

Good. I deserve it. I deserve to be lashed with something far worse than her anger. I should personally deliver her a whip and kneel before her to take my punishment.

Dead. She had a child, and that child, a daughter, died.

With shame weighing heavy on my shoulders, I dare lift my gaze to one of the photos of Niamh hung along the wall. She’s sitting in a high chair, celebrating her first birthday, impossibly small and fragile. I remember the fear that gripped my heart each night back then as she slept, worrying she’d never draw her next breath. I’d lie awake next to her crib and watch her sleep to allay my darkest fears.

Leo lived through those fears, every parent’s worst nightmare, and I just threw that back in her face.

I’ve never experienced a feeling quite like this one. Like I want to rip my skin from my bones and muscle and sinew. I’m strangling on my own remorse. The earth could yawn open beneath me and swallow me whole, and still it would not be a punishment suitable for what I’ve done.

I stumble down the hall, take the turn toward the front of the house, and grab a jacket from the coatrack in the foyer. Once I’ve zipped it over my exposed chest, the cottage spits me out into the night, and I’m nearly gutted all over again when I see Leo’s silhouette in the car.

How can I ever repair what I’ve just broken?

The answer is, I don’t deserve to.

When I open the driver’s side door to climb in, she leans away from me, and it lumps a fresh scoop of hot coals onto my head.

“Leo, I—”

“Home.”

---