“I mean I’m staying here with Mam.She needs me.”
Nodding, I say, “I know. That’s why we’re here.”
“I don’t mean a short stay. I’m going to stay indefinitely,” he mutters, looking down at our hands.
I open my mouth to object, but I can’t form words. What is he saying? My eyes well with tears, and I begin nodding my head. “Okay, so I’ll stay too.”
He shakes his head, then whispers, “No, Acushla. You need to go home. You have too much there to give up. And I won’t be—”
“Stop!” I cry out. “Don’t you dare do what I think you’re trying to do, Eamon Kennedy. You have a life there too.Wehave a life there.”
“Norah, please,” he pleads, “don’t make this any harder than it already is. My family is here.”
“Butyouare my family,” I choke out. “How can you just tell me to go back? Do these last months mean nothing to you?”
Eamon raises his head, eyes wide as he grips my fingers tighter and says, “‘Course they mean something to me. They meaneverythingto me, but I can’t just abandon my family in their time of need for a lass.”
I recoil as if he’d physically slapped me.
“For alass,” I hiss through my teeth. “Is that all I am to you? Obviously what we’ve had doesn’t meaneverythingto you if you can refer to me asjust a lass.I gave you everything, Eamon. Every part of me. My heart, my body, everything. And you can just dismiss it so easily?”
“Norah, that’s not what I meant,” he growls in frustration, jabbing his fingers into his hair. “Did you not drop everything for your Mam when she was sick?”
“That’s different. And you know it,” I seethe. “We had no one! Not one single family member or friend could come and help. All we had was each other. I can’t believe you can sit there and compare them.”
I rise from my chair to stalk back towards the house. I can’t sit here and listen to this anymore. I can’t believe that he’s honestly trying to end us when we’ve only just begun.
“Norah, wait!” Eamon follows after me and grabs my arm, turning me towards him.
I gasp at the contact, then glare at him. “Let go of me, Eamon. Right now.”
“No, we need to talk about this,” his grip tightens and I flinch, the contact triggering my fight-or-flight instinct. He releases my arm immediately, shock shuddering over his face, then quickly turning to regret.
“Norah, I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Tears stream down my face as I wrap my arms around my torso. I know he didn’t mean to hurt me, but the aggressiveness of his actions brought all of the fears I thought I’d banished rushing back.
“Why are you doing this, Eamon? Why are you pushing me away? You said you love me.”
He slowly reaches towards my face to brush a loose strand of my auburn hair behind my ear. “Aye, I do. Which is why I can’t ask you to give up your life in the States. I don’t plan on going back. Even if Caity comes out of this, she’ll most likely need extra care. I can’t leave Mam to do that on her own. I just can’t.”
“Let me help you,” I beg. “Please. I want to be here with you,for you.I love you,” I choke out between sobs.
He pulls me into his chest, wrapping me in a firm embrace, then kisses the top of my head. The gesture is so gentle that it breaks me further.
“I don’t want you here to help. That’s not fair to you. You’re almost done with school. I won’t let you throw that away,” he mutters into my hair.
“So, then I’ll go back when the semester starts, and come back here after graduation. I can take my degree and skills anywhere. You know this.”
Eamon puts me at arm’s length, his face set into hard lines, and says callously, “No, Norah. I don’t want you to come back here.”
I jerk my head back, stunned. None of this makes sense. Not his words, not his actions, and especially not the tone in which he just spoke to me.
“Why?” I whisper through trembling lips. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Please explain it to me, Eamon. How can you go from telling me how much you love me one day, to telling me you don’t want me the next?”
“I do love you,” he says, red-rimmed eyes refusing to meet mine. “But I can’t love you the way you’d wanthere. In Ireland. You’ll just be a distraction I can’t afford right now and I don’t want that.”
A distraction?Pain and anger flood my veins so hard, that my knees start to buckle.
