Page 99 of Dirty Padraig: Dirty Dusters

I nod my head slowly. “I did.” I wipe the tears from my eyes as I try to find the right words. “I’m sorry that I made you feel so unwanted. When I told you about Ace, I never realized that my constant rejection would then make you feel I loved you less than him because I never ever loved you any fucking less, Irish.” My voice fades, drowned by tears, as I cling to the front of his shirt.

‘He’d just managed to convince himself that you didn’t love him back.’

Guilt. That I took a confident person and turned him into such a doubting Thomas. To be loved is strength, and to love is weakness. I made him weak because he loved me so much, and I offered him no strength because, in return, he doubted my own love for him.

“I thought I wasn’t enough,” he whispers.

“You were always enough.”

He pulls me tighter against him.

“You didn’t cheat on me,” I utter the five life-changing words.

He immediately tenses beneath me, the words remaining suspended in the air.

“What do you mean?”

“Brittany admitted it at the reunion. Nothing happened between you and her.”

“But she said…”

“She lied, Irish. She said you were drunk and upset because you thought I didn’t love you. She took you upstairs to put you to bed and let you sleep it off, but then she saw an opportunity and took it. She staged everything because she wanted you for herself. She held on to the lie for twelve years. They all did. Fletch, Brittany, Skylar. All this time, they knew, and they never said a word.”

Silence. I’m not sure how long it stretches as we both think back to an event that changed the course of both our lives. An event that never even took place.

“Jaine…. fuck… I…”

I know what it’s like when you can’t find the words. After Ace died, I struggled to find my voice as every word seemed inadequate compared to how tortured I felt inside.

How can a single word measure emptiness? How can a single word quantify loss? Because that’s exactly what this is.

Loss.

What Brittany didn’t realize is that she destroyed part of him that day, and she destroyed part of me too. For twelve years, I thought the worst of him, and he’s thought the worst of himself. He’s had to live with guilt as his bed partner all this time.

An outcome he didn’t deserve because he didn’t do anything fucking wrong.

Our future could have been so different.Wouldhave been so different. What we had. What we shared. It was beyond anything.

We were timeless. We were ageless. We were a tale as old as fucking time, and they took that from us.

My arms tighten around him as the emotions hit hard, and I absorb every sob as his tears mingle with my own. We lie there, wrapped around each other like we always did as we let our tears run dry. No words are spoken. We’re each lost in our own thoughts.

“Truth,” he says eventually.

“Go on?” I sniff.

“Why did you tell me you didn’t love me three years ago?”

How best to answer? Given the name of the game, I guess truthfully is best, or at least as far as I can.

“Your family entered you into an arranged marriage with Sophia. A contract there was no getting out of. I thought it best I didn’t confuse things between us or become a distraction, so I removed myself from your life. It was the only way to stop you from reaching out.”

I can feel his tension. He’s not happy with that response, but it’s not for me to tell him what his family did. That they pretty much ran me out of town. It’s for them to explain their reasonings.

It’s for Eoin to explain.

“I may be an emotional kind of fella, darlin’, but I’m no fool. I would never have antagonized the Sicilians. While I may have vented my frustrations in front of you and my family because I trusted you both with them, I would never have done anything that would have put you in danger. My trying to remove myself from that contract would have done just that.”

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