Page 26 of This Is On You

I don’tfidget.

“Do you have a coffee machine in that fancy-ass living room?” He tilts his head toward the double doors.

“I do,” I answer confused as hell.

“Let’s go out then. I don’t want to have this conversation here.”

“Why the hell not?” I ask, and don’t bother to hide the irritation.

“Because you’re being very fucking annoying, and in this room, I don’t ever want to have the power to put you in your place.” The fact that he speaks as casually as I did only infuriates me, but he’s right.

We make a pit stop in the bathroom, and I get fucking chills at how normal it feels to brush my teeth next to him, then I lend him some sweatpants and a t-shirt, get my own, and follow him out to the living room to make him a cup of coffee. Once we both have full mugs and are sitting on the soft white couch, he turns to me.

“Did you really just ask me out like that?” he asks, and I see the insult and anger in his eyes now, before I can answer though, he goes on. “Like any real relationship between us would be as much of a contract as the fake one we already have? Is that normal to you?”

“Uhm,” I stall. I don’t want to tell him I’ve never actually had a normal relationship. I don’t know normal. “Well?” he insists, and I hate myself for loving seeing him like this. Full of attitude and righteousness.

“I’ve never had a ‘normal’ relationship,” I answer in defense.

“You were married for more than a decade to your college sweetheart, Harrison. Why are you lying to me?”

“Right, well actually that was how we sold it to the media, but Mary was only ever a one-night stand to me, then when Theo was born, she was also the mother of my son, so I… appreciated her for that, but I never loved her, I never asked her to date me.”

I feel some semblance of balance return to me when his mouth drops open and he only stares at me. He recovers quickly though.

“Well, what about Iris’ mother?”

“Oh, that was also just a one-night thing. Neither one of us wanted more of each other.”

“So you’ve never been in an actual loving relationship?”

“No.”

“Well that explains some of it, but Harrison, are you sure you’re not only asking me to date you because I know about Eian?”

That’s a good point, and I avert my gaze to the wide windows that lead to my terrace as I think about it. “It could be,” I say out loud though I’m working it out in my head as I do. “I mean, no one’s ever known. No one I’ve slept with, at least. Even my children don’t know, Tristan.” I look back at him. “So, yeah, maybe I do feel closer to you because you know, but I was already thinking about being with you… more, being moretoyou before Eian got here, before you knew about him.”

“Okay,” he says simply but with a huge smile that leaves me breathless. Then he scoots over to my side, lifts my arm and snuggles under it. “Then we can date, though since you’re a newbie, I guess I’ll have to use some of my patience when you make rookie mistakes, huh?”

I kiss his head and pull him even closer. “Probably.” That was easier than I thought it’d be. “That’s my new favorite smile on you, by the way.”

He chuckles as he gets comfortable. “Now, tell me all about your biggest secret.”

I sigh, as if bothered, but I was already planning on telling him everything, so here it goes. “Well this is about to be some monologue,” I mutter and take a long sip of my coffee to prepare. “So, my ma is Irish, she came to New York to look for her brother. Ronan had been kicked out of the house because he’d gotten into a fight and killed the other man. The other man tried to rape my mother, but that didn’t matter to their parents. Or to the town. Everyone accused him of beating an innocent man to death, and so, instead of staying in the town where he was a pest, waiting to be sent to prison, he somehow escaped and came here.

“Uncle Ronan never told any of us how, and it’s still one of those New York mysteries, but he somehow got to the top of the chain of the Irish mob in a matter of years, so, when Ma came here to look for him, she found him easily enough. She moved here officially, not really missing the family who saw her as tainted since that night. She lived with Uncle Ronan for a couple of months but wasn’t part of the mob, she wanted to explore the city, find out what she wanted to do, to be.

“The way she tells it, my dad fell to his knees in front of her as soon as he saw her.” I chuckle at the memory of Dad’s eye roll whenever Ma would tell the story to me and Eian. “They met, they fell in love, they got married.” I take a deep breath because this is where it gets tricky.

“My dad and uncle managed to erase her maiden name from everywhere—it was the seventies, so it didn’t take much work—and they decided the world would never know. I came along, and four years later, Eian did. Dad and Uncle Ronan became friends, and so did Eian and I. They raised us together, they’d come have family dinner every Monday and even took us on a couple of vacations together. There was less danger back then, of people snapping pictures of us together. The older we got, the more things changed.” I let out a big sigh.

“They changeda lotover the years, for both of us, my dad died, then Uncle Ronan did, so then it was up to us to keep the secret. We were used to it, and honestly not worried about anyone finding out. And then, three years ago, some lackeys of the Venuti family kidnapped Iris.” I take a deep breath, then blurt out the rest because I fucking hate even thinking—let alone talking—about it. “Zeke got her back in less than ten minutes, he crashed into the van they’d shoved her into, but they’d already knocked her unconscious.

“So, we started worrying about the possibility that the Italians knew about our connection. Now, thanks to Eian, we finally know they didn’t. That’s what he came to tell me last night. They only wanted to force me to sell them a building.”

I think that’s it. Thank God, I’m so done with talking and talking.

“But how the hell don’t Theo and Iris know if he comes here whenever he wants?” Tris dashes my hope of staying silent.

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