Page 73 of Irish Daddies
She nods like she doesn’t believe it. And fuck, I don’t know if I do either.
We sit in silence again. Not angry. Just emptied. The kind of quiet that comes after an earthquake, when everything’s technically standing but nothing feels stable.
Then she whispers, “I thought I’d be numb by now. After everything.”
I let my head fall back with a thud. “You’re not built for numb.”
“Maybe I wanted to be.”
“No,” I say, meeting her eyes. “You didn’t. That’s why you scare me.”
Her lips twitch. Not quite a smile. “I scare you?”
I laugh without humor. “Yeah. Because you taught me what it means to need something. And needing something means being able to lose it.”
She flinches, like the words struck bone. “That’s not fair,” she murmurs. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I know,” I say, dragging my hands through my hair. “But it’s the truth.”
She sits up straighter, watching me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I used to be fine just surviving,” I say. “Fine keeping my head down, doing the jobs, pretending none of it stuck. I didn’t want soft things. I didn’t want…anything real.”
“And now?”
“Now I watch you cry, and feel like my chest is going to fucking cave in.”
She goes still. The microwave hums in the background, even though neither of us touched it. Like the house is grieving too.
I keep going, not letting up with my eye contact, watching her chewing slowly stop. “I didn’t want to feel anything for you. Not like this. It was supposed to be…”
“Nothing?” she offers.
I wave my hand. “I knew it wouldn’t be nothing, not after the night we had.” I meet her eyes. “I thought the tension might begone, and if it wasn’t, I thought that’s all there would be. That’s what we all thought. But you came in and you were—” I drag my hands through my hair. “You were so fucking alive, Caroline. Even when you hated us. Even when you fought everything.”
She swallows hard.
“I didn’t know how to love anything until you slapped me completely naked. Or crashed a car not knowing how it would end. Or pulled the trigger when you didn’t have to. Held your kids while the world burned around you.”
A breath leaves her lips like a cracked balloon. “You think there’s any room for love in what we’ve done?”
I don’t know if she’s antagonizing me or genuinely asking, but I lean forward, the top half of me an angle against my knees, and I say, “I know there is because I feel it. Don’t you feel it? When you look at me?”
I scoot across the tile, closer to her, and press my hand against her heart.
“Here?” I feel her breasts under my hand, her nipple straining against the fabric of her shirt, and I feel the pounding of her heart. “Or here?” I move another hand to her stomach, where I sometimes feel a cloying emptiness. An emptiness that’s somewhere between nostalgia and nausea, the feeling of guests leaving after a wedding and the emptiness of a house before you move in.
She stares at me like she’s seeing a version of me she’s never met.
“I know I’m not gentle,” I admit. “But I would give you every quiet thing I have. If you asked. If you ever wanted it.”
She leans forward, slowly. Her eyes are glassy but clear. “It can’t just be pretty, Declan. Sometimes, it will be ugly, especially raising children.”
“Good,” I tell her, moving even closer. “I’m even better with ugly.”
Her knees bump mine. Her hands slide up my neck like she’s memorizing the shape of my pulse. She whispers, “I don’t know what it will be like…with all of you.”
“I don’t care. If I can get even a sliver of you, I’ll take it. Even if it’s the ugliest piece. Caroline, I don’t care. Please, just share some of you. Let me love that piece.” She kisses me. Not hard. Not to start something. Just to feel. And fuck, I feel it.
