Page 115 of After Indigo Irish Nights
The kitchen door whacked against the wall. She ground her teeth. Fantabulous. Something whispered across from her. She looked over and gave a cry of surprise. “Declan!”
He sat across from her, wearing a rumpled black shirt. “I have something I want to share with you.”
“What—” She blinked and shook her head. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He pointed over her shoulder. “Please keep in mind that I had to convince your oldest brother to let me talk to you. I tracked him down to the police station. Not an easy task in Boston. Do you know how many police stations there are?”
Her head was spinning. “You talked to Robbie? Wait. You just hopped on a plane—”
“I couldn’t lose you.” He gripped the edge of the table between them. “Please. I want to show you— Hell, let me get it.”
She shook herself as he took out ajournalfrom a carry-on in the corner. He’d just crossed an ocean to see her. Her chest swelled with hurt. And hope. “Declan, I—”
“Secret number one,” he said, opening the book as he walked back to the booth. “I was three years old.” He sat. “I knocked over my mother’s milk pitcher in the refrigerator when I was going for a snack. I buried the shards in the garden.”
She shook her head, confused. “Declan, what is this?”
“I want you to trust me again.” He held up the journal. “You told me you wanted me to share things with you. That love wasn’t enough and you wanted that kind of a relationship. So I’m trusting you with every secret I have. I wrote them down on the plane ride here.”
Love squeezed her rapidly beating heart. “Every secret? How many are there?”
His mouth was a flat line. “I stopped at one hundred. I might have forgotten a few. Secret number two: I took Brady’s new football to the sea and lost it in the waves.”
She started to slowly melt, all the hurt in her muscles melting like wax. “How old were you?”
“Four.” He took a breath and gave a brief smile, obviously still filled with tension. Perhaps that was because she could feel her brothers looming behind them.
When she looked over her shoulder again, all seven of them were standing there, arms crossed, looking as tough as ever. Ellie stood in the middle of them, tears shining in her eyes. They shared a look, and Kathleen nodded. Her best friend wiped her tears and then mumbled something to Danny, who nodded as well.
She watched her brother slip behind the bar again and pull down their favorite whiskey, the kind for special family occasions. Lagavulin 16 Years. She wouldn’t tell Declan it wasn’t Irish.
Turning back to him, she saw he was waiting for her. Their eyes met. He smiled at last. “Ready for the next one?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, her throat thick with emotion. He went through the next twenty secrets without interruption, mostly the kid variety. Where he’d hidden his favorite toy or car magazine. The first and second times he’d kissed a girl. Morag had been the first and second, which she hadn’t known.
Danny came and set down two whiskeys in front of them and ruffled her hair as he left. God, she loved those idiots. They were still watching from the bar, but they’d lost the air of menace.
“Just out of curiosity,” she asked when he reached the fortieth secret and his twelfth year. “Which number is the one about Jimmy and Morag?”
He ruffled through his remaining pages. “Ninety-two. I don’t have many secrets as an adult, Kathleen.”
She extended her hand to him. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want to be with anyone who had a ton of secrets. Tell me a recent one. Like number ninety-seven.”
He lowered his head and read, “A dog that came in with one of the old ladies in town got behind the butcher counter and jumped up. He devoured two steaks before I could pull him down. The older woman was mortified. She asked me to swear not to tell anyone. I think she was scared her family might say her dog was getting out of hand and she was frail. I let her pay for the steaks, but I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Seamus.”
“That was rather nice of you.” She felt her eyes burn. This was the man she’d fallen in love with.
“She’s passed on now, so I didn’t think she’d mind me telling you.” His eyes gleamed with emotion. “But I don’t let her niece bring the dog into the shop. I learned my lesson there.”
They were both learning their lessons, it seemed. “I like you sharing your secrets with me.”
“I’ve never told them to anyone else.” He handed the journal over to her. “I love you. I want you to trust me, and I want you to know I do trust you. With everything. I’m used to keeping things to myself, but I understand you wanting to know things. I want to know things about you too. If you call it sharing, I’ll do it. I can’t promise it’ll always be easy for me. It wasn’t easy to write these pages.”
She could see him huddled over them, scrawling out his secrets next to a stranger on the plane. “No, I imagine it wasn’t.”
“But there was also a sense of relief.” He exhaled with a wry smile. “Some of them seem downright silly now. But it felt important to keep quiet about them at the time. A man has to honor that. I promise you right now, though, that’s over. You want to know everything, I’ll tell you. If you’ll forgive me for hurting you and making you lose faith in me. Kathleen, I’m sorry. More than I could ever say.”
The hurt welled like a lanced wound and poured out. She let it rain down her face. He reached over and brushed aside her tears with his thumb, his blue eyes narrowed with their own pain. “You’re forgiven. Let’s start again, shall we? I’m Kathleen O’Connor, and this is my family’s bar.”
