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Conor glanced up and shrugged.
“Don’t do that,” Harper said. “If you’re going to open up to us, then do it. All the way. Please.”
“Show us all of it, Conor, because I can promise I’m not holding back. The two of you are going to get it all, the good, the bad, the ugly. There’s nothing I don’t want to share with you, even the bad stuff,” Luca confessed.
Conor wondered what Luca considered the bad and ugly parts of himself because Conor sure as shit didn’t see anything bad in the man. Or in Harper.
Rather than ask, Conor knew it was time to answer the question. “I was awake Saturday night at the cabin. I heard the two of you talking about having kids, and I… It freaked me out.”
“Why?” Harper asked before lifting her hand and beckoning him. “Please slide closer. I hate that you’re so far away from us.”
He wanted to point out that there wasn’t more than four feet between them, but he knew what she meant because he hated the distance between them as well.
Conor did as she asked, shifting until the three of them could touch each other easily.
“Why does the idea of having kids freak you out, Conor?” Harper repeated.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to say the words he couldn’t remember ever speaking aloud, even though he’d said them over and over in his head a million times. At first, he’d repeated them as a way of making that truth soak in. After a little while though, it was more to remind him to be careful. The words, his own personal cautionary tale.
“My mother committed suicide.”
Neither Harper nor Luca replied, and Conor sighed. “From your lack of surprise, I assume you already knew that.”
Luca grimaced. “Gage and I talked about our moms one night over a couple beers at the bar. This was last fall, before you and I?—”
“It’s not a secret,” Conor interjected, sorry his comment had come across as an accusation. That hadn’t been his intent. “It’s just a hard thing for me to talk about.”
“I’m sure it is,” Harper said. “But what does that have to do with you not wanting kids?”
“Mom suffered from depression. Whenever she went to that dark place, she shut herself up in her room, pulled the curtains, and slept for days.”
Harper linked their hands, then lifted them, kissing Conor’s knuckles. “That must have been scary for you.”
Conor nodded. “It was. I was around nine the first time she did it, and my brothers and I didn’t understand what was going on. Dad said she was sick, that she was contagious and we had to stay away, but I didn’t listen. Mom and I had a nighttime ritual, so I snuck into her room, armed with the chapter book we’d been reading together.”
“What happened?” Harper whispered.
Conor let himself drift back there, let himself get lost in a memory he’d locked away, in hopes of protecting his sanity. “She wasn’t asleep. She was just lying there, in the dark. I talked to her, but it felt as if she couldn’t hear me. I put my hand on her forehead, like she always did for me whenever I had a fever, but she wasn’t hot. Instead, she was cold. I shook her shoulder, and when she finally looked at me…it was like she wasn’t there. It scared me so much I ran back to my room.”
“I’m sorry, Conor.” Luca’s tone was full of compassion, and he saw understanding in the man’s gaze. They’d both lost their mothers, and while the diseases were very different, he couldn’t imagine it had been easy for Luca to see his mom slowly eaten away by cancer. Both deaths were brutal…and slow.
“I had my first panic attack when I was twelve. It was painful and terrifying, and I thought I was dying,” Conor continued.
“What did your parents say?” Harper leaned toward Conor.
Conor looked at his and Harper’s clasped hands. “They didn’t know. Mom was shut up in her room at the time, and my dad…well, he wasn’t known for his bedside manner. Truth is, he was the one who provoked it. I rode it out, then checked out a book on mental illness from the library.”
“You were twelve years old, and you had to find out your own answers?” Luca was aghast. “Jesus, man. If I had a problem at that age, it wasn’t a question of handling it on my own. It was a question of who do I ask for help. Where the hell were your brothers?”
Conor grimaced. “You’re still looking at things through the Moretti lens, Luca. Dad had his claws in Matt, creating his own personal mini-me, and Gage was utterly devoted to Mom. He never left her alone during the dark days, always trying to cajole her out of it and bring her back to us.”
“And that meant you were alone.” Harper tried to covertly wipe away a tear, but Conor saw it, hated that he was making her cry, as much as he was moved by her tears on his behalf.
“That was by design. My design,” Conor admitted. “When I was a kid, still living at home, I kept my attacks a secret because that was the Russo way. Don’t ever admit weakness.”
Luca scowled. “Panic attacks don’t mean you’re weak.”
Conor shook his head. “My dad would have disagreed with you.”
