Page 58 of Irish Daddies
“You alright?” he asks, voice low.
I shake my head. “I can’t…I can’t just load them onto a plane like cargo. I thought I could. I thought I was doing the right thing. But I’m still their mother. I’m still selfish about them. They’re mine, you know? I can’t let anything happen to them because of me.”
He nods, patient. Not arguing. Just waiting.
“I need to go with them,” I say. “Just to settle them in. Just to make sure—God, I don’t even know.”
Declan tilts his head, regarding me carefully. “Do you want me to come with you?”
The question catches me off guard. “What?”
“If you’re not ready to do it alone, I’ll go. But if you’d rather just be with them…” He pauses. “It’s your call.”
I stare at him, stunned. “I can just go? You’d let me?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “We said you weren’t a captive anymore. We meant it. This isn’t a trick, Caroline. If you want to go with them, you go. If you don’t come back…” He trails off, then looks at me dead-on. “We’ll handle it. We’ll protect them. We’ll clean up what needs cleaning up.”
The wind rustles his hair. There’s a tightness in his jaw, but his voice stays steady. “If you want to run,” he says, “we’ll help you.”
Tears sting my eyes before I can stop them. “And you’d just…let me disappear?”
He exhales through his nose, gaze drifting out over the tarmac. “It would kill us,” he says simply. “I mean, it would kill me. But if it meant you and the boys were safe…yeah. We’d let you go.”
I look down at the little dinosaur suitcase in my hand, then back at the jet, gleaming in the sun.
“But you’d let me go,” I say quietly, like I’m tasting the words, moving them around on my tongue and between my teeth.
“You may not be able to see us again,” he says, trying not to imbue too much emotion into the sentiment. “If you ran. You’d have to disappear completely, at least for a while. But yes, I’d let you go. And you’d be alive. They’d be alive. And maybe, when it’s all over, when the dust settles…you could find your way back.”
My chest aches. It’s the kind of pain that feels like growing.
I glance at him. “You’d wait for me?”
“I already am,” he says simply, looking behind him as though gesturing to the emptiness, like he’s saying,Is there anyone else here?
I nod, throat too tight for words. Then I turn and open the back door, reaching for my boys.
Joshua blinks sleepily as I lift him out. “Are we here?”
“Yeah, baby. Time to go.”
Isaac hops out on his own, grabbing the handle of his suitcase and looking around like he’s half expecting a dragon to pop out of the hangar. To him, it’s an adventure. He has no idea about the dragons we’ll be slaying in his absence.
I guide them to the stairs, Declan standing by the bottom. He waves at us before the door closes, calling out, “Slán! Slán, a bhuachaillí!”
“Bye, Declan!” Joshua calls out, waving.
Every part of me is buzzing, unsure, terrified, but I climb with them. I follow them into the belly of the plane, into the clean leather seats and humming quiet and climate-controlled calm.
I settle Joshua in and ask him, “How did you know what that meant? What Declan said?”
He shrugs and chirps, “I just knew, I guess, I don’t know. It felt like goodbye.”
I buckle Isaac’s belt, a lump in my throat. I run my hand through the hair on each of their tiny heads, smiling through tears at the copper strands they get from their Irish ancestry.
I press my forehead to Joshua’s and then to Isaac’s. I sit between them, cradling their hands in mine as the engines begin to hum and the jet prepares for takeoff. Their giggles go dead in the loud screaming of the engine rumbling.
And then I realize that no one is stopping me. No one is watching the door. No one is waiting to drag me back. The Crowley brothers trust me. They wouldreallylet me go. For the first time, I consider believing that they love me, not just possessively or obsessively. But real, true love, with trust and choice. Declan would grieve me, but he would let me go. He wouldn’t chase me.This is the proof I’ve been looking for. What we have isreal, even if it’s messy.
