Finn
Irish guilt is worse than the flu. It clings to yer soul, suffocating and painful. It lingers until you can’t breathe, can’t think straight, can’t get out of the funk of it. I hate myself for what I’ve done, for what needs to be done.
Clarissa’s suspicious, and rightly so. But trusting. Too feckin’ trusting. And she’s giving me space, room to wallow in my remorse.
I’ve wracked my wee brain all the way across Ireland for a different ending. Only to realize that thisisthe happier alternative. She’s in the way. She’s collateral damage. I’d be a bleeding eegit to think Hayden’s sudden epiphany about love will soften his concerns about her involvement. No, there’s only one option, and death isn’t it.
Follow orders and keep her safe.
She won’t see it that way once she checks her files and fully realizes the extent of my deception. She’s going to hate me and believe everything between us was a lie.
I curse beneath my breath.
“Want to tell me what’s bothering you?” she’s quick to seize on the break in silence.
“Nostalgia.” Because the time spent with you were the best weeks of me life.
“You miss Ireland?”
“What I miss is being up inside you.”
“Pull over.” She raises an eyebrow, challengingly. “But you should consider turning the car off this time.”
With her smiling at me like that, I’m tempted to haul her sweet arse up the knoll flanking the roadway. I resist, instead giving into a different sort of mind feckery. “We’re almost there.”
“Derry?”
“Someplace I want to visit first.” It’s bollocks, what I’m doing. If da were alive, he’d slap me on the noggin for bringing her here days before we part ways.
Why torture myself? Why pretend, one last time, that I could be a different man?
A wrought-iron fence appears up ahead, and I slow the car.
“A graveyard?”
I nod.
Her pretty lips part in surprise. “You want to have sex in a graveyard?”
“That’s not why I brought you here.” I feel me lips twitch. “However ...”
Her laughter fills the car.
I soak the sound up like a sunny day.
It’s a small burial site, and it warms me heart to see the trimmed hedges and mowed grass. Love and care go into the upkeep. I find peace of mind in that. I drive to the fork in the lane then bear left and follow the one that leads to their graves.
Parking, I hurry around the car to open her door. Hand in hand, I tug her along until we’re standing over them.
“Your parents?” she breathes.
“Yes.” I take a few seconds to brush the leaves off their graves. “Ma and Da, meet Clarissa,” I mumble. There’s no rhyme or reason to bringing her here to meet them. I can almost hear me da saying, “Look at the state o’ you.”
But this is as real as it gets. I’m sharing a part of me. Why? I dunno. I wonder if she’ll think this was a lie. Will her hatred overshadow the truth—that this thing between us is real.
Besides me, she begins to read.
Here lies Donegal McDuff.
