Page 114 of Forever Flames: Padraig & Stevie
There’s no spark in his eyes when he looks at her. No heat. No hunger. Mainly, duty. The same quiet loyalty he gives so freely, putting everyone’s needs before his own without asking for anything in return.
Something twists deep inside me, sharp and not entirely unwelcome. For years I’ve buried the thing between us so deep it stopped breathing.
Rightfully so. I was married. I loved Cooper and my family. My loyalty was theirs and I never let myself wonder what if.
Yet, standing here after we’ve come from the gravesite and I’ve watched my kids trace their hands over Cooper’s name in stone, I look at Padraig and feel an old current crackle to life.
It’s wrong.
It’s disorienting.
But, it’s real.
I probably shouldn’t be feeling this. Not here. Not now. Not with my children still
holding the weight of their father’s death in their small, fragile hearts.
I do feel it, though. Grief and memory and whatever’s always lived between me and Padraig collide in the same breath, and I don’t know how to stop my heart from stumbling in my chest.
Everything disappears. The years. The almosts. The never-will-be’s.
Padraig catches my gaze and something flickers behind his eyes.
Recognition.
Regret.
A love so old, so embedded, it can’t help but show.
I swallow hard. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too,” he grits out.
Then Rafferty whimpers, and the spell breaks.
He rocks his son soothingly. “We should—uh—get going.”
I nod, stepping back, placing a hand on Jude’s shoulder.
“Bye, Rafferty,” Lila says.
Padraig meets my eyes one last time. “Maybe we could catch up soon?”
“I’d like to,” I whisper.
He turns toward Mara, who adjusts the bag on her shoulder and follows him out.
Jude looks up at me. “He was nice.”
“Yeah.” I hold back tears. “He’s very nice.”
Lila tugs my sleeve. “He’s your friend?”
God, he was so much more.
Some part of me will always ache for what we were and what we might have been. But not today.
Today belongs to my children and to the man who loved them.
