Page 90 of Beautiful Lies
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to punch him or kiss it better. “How did you know where to find her?”
“Seamus told me. I went to see him after I got out of rehab. I wanted to confront him. I was tired of pretending none of that had ever happened,” he said, sounding like he was almost talking to himself. “When I got there, he was drinking. But he didn’t get nasty or violent. It was like he was lonely or something. I saw another side of him. I didn’t hate him any less, but it made him seem more human. He told me he loved her and when she left, it had destroyed him.”
Seamus Vincent had loved a woman. To the point where her leaving him had destroyed him. It was hard to reconcile the man I’d known with the one who could love a woman like that.
“He told me she’d been having an affair,” Connor said. “Gave me the man’s name and said they live in Miami. I don’t know why he told me, after all those years of keeping it to himself. He didn’t even remember having told me.”
Maybe Seamus hadn’t remembered a lot of what he’d done when he was drunk. The same way Connor hadn’t remembered things he’d done when he was high. But Connor had never gotten violent or abusive. I’d never been scared of him, only scaredforhim.
“What’s your mom like?” I asked as we stopped at the corner and waited for a car to pass before we crossed over.
“Beautiful. Cold. Distant. At least, that’s the impression I got. I only had five minutes alone with her.” He shrugged like it was no big deal, but I knew better. “I always thought she’d stayed away because of Seamus. And I couldn’t blame her for that. But now … yeah, she made it clear that she’s not interested in being part of our lives.”
Connor had never blamed his mother for leaving them. He had a greater capacity for forgiveness than Killian did. Than I did, if I had to be completely honest. Sometimes I thought I was more like my mother than I’d care to admit. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Connor.”
“I should have known better.”
“So you weren’t running away. You were trying to find something.” Somehow that made everything better, knowing that he had a reason for leaving, although I still didn’t understand the need for secrecy. “But why… I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me,” I said, unable to hide the hurt in my voice.
“I was going to tell you. So many times, I wanted to. It’s just a lot of heavy to lay on someone.”
“I’m not just someone.”
“I know. And I would have told you eventually. But we were trying to find our way back to something better. I didn’t want to saddle you with more of the past.”
I wasn’t sure what that said about our relationship. Was it so fragile we couldn’t trust each other with the truth? “So, when you were in Miami, you were upset… and you went out and bought drugs?” I asked, trying to make sense of this and fill in the gaps.
“I didn’t buy those drugs. Keira’s father told me to stay out of his business and stay away from my mother and Keira, but I didn’t listen. He set me up. Two undercover cops busted me for drugs I never bought and forced me to play the role of informant, so I spent a few months getting cozy with a drug dealer.” He let out a breath. “He just thought I was a tattoo artist, looking for a fresh start in Miami. I had a fake ID. My name was Dylan and I grew up in Vegas.”
“Dylan from Vegas. You were someone else.”
“Still me, unfortunately. Only my name and hometown were different.”
“What happened to the drug dealer?”
“He’s dead,” he said, his voice flat. He rubbed his chest with his right hand. He’d always done that, like it would somehow ease the pain in his heart.
“How did he die?”
Connor shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead.”
It probably mattered a lot and most likely Connor had been in danger, but I let it go. Once again, I was grateful he’d come out of that alive. Although I was still trying to make sense of this story. “Why would Keira’s dad do that to you? None of this makes sense.”
He studied my face, noting the skepticism and narrowed his eyes. “What I just told you is the God’s honest truth.”
“Yeah, well, excuse me for having a hard time wrapping my head around this story. Your sister… Keira… is running around town with a fake ID. Selling jewelry at a pawn shop because cash is king and doesn’t leave a trail. Not to mention that she needed to unload the Porsche with license plates she got from God knows where.” I threw my hands up in the air. “Explain this to me.”
“If I could, I would. Some things in life are just fucked up… I have no explanation. All I know is that it fucking happened,” he said, his voice hard.
“Why didn’t you tell Killian?”
“Our mother wants no part in our lives. And when I got back from Miami, he was with Eden. He was finally happy, and I didn’t want to mess that up for him. If I’d told him the truth about what happened, he would have gone down there and tried to fix it. But he would have set himself up for a shitload of trouble.”
Connor was right. Killian wouldn’t have let it go. “You were trying to protect Killian.”
“I thought it would make a nice change.”
Connor had gone down to Miami because he’d wanted to play the hero, but he’d failed. I thought about a conversation we’d had when we were sixteen, a few weeks after the night Seamus had punched Connor.
