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In the nearly six months since I’d met Enzo Santoro, I’d gotten very good at translating his blunt, sometimes thoughtless language.
I knew he meant to say that he was worried about me and he wanted me to be safe and healthy, but right now I was still angry with him.
“Why? Do you think if I stay here with the baby I’ll rub my bad luck off onto it?”
Everyone in the room winced at my harsh words.
“Ciara, listen…” Enzo began, looking miserable.
“No,” I said, stopping him before he could say anything else. “You hurt me that day. Badly. I was already feeling bad enough about fucking up our routine and letting Artie get hurt and you brought up something that I said to you—in confidence—and used it against me.”
Enzo’s expression crumpled and he stared down at his feet. I knew if I opened our bond again I would feel guilt and regret, but I didn’t want to budge. Not yet.
“I’m so sorry, Ciara, I love you. Please believe that I do,” Enzo said, his tone almost begging as he quite literally dropped to his knees next to the bed so that we were eye level.
I didn’t like seeing him so miserable. So much of Enzo reflected me that it was like seeing myself suffer.
But if we were going to get through this, and I sure as hell hoped that we did, he needed to know that he couldn’t lash out at me or any of the rest of our pack when things got hard or he was scared.
Reaching out, I cupped Enzo’s face in my hands.
“I love you, Enzo, and I love you two as well,” I said, looking at both Artie and Leith in turn. “So, so much. But if I’ve learned anything these past couple of weeks, it’s that hurt can’t just be fixed with an ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
Finneas apologized to me every day for different things and some of them were harder to hear than others. But even if he said sorry every single day, it didn’t change the fact that he had in fact been the one to hurt my mam and me.
And while he didn’t have the time to truly make things right with me, my pack did.
“I’m going to stay here until Finneas passes away. I thought I could do this with just Wiz here, but I’m having a hard time dealing with all of the shit that coming here has brought up.”
My honesty seemed to surprise them and it took another beat before Leith crouched down as well. “What do you need from us?”
My shoulders sank with relief and I tried in vain to keep from crying again but my eyes were already burning with tears. Damn pregnancy hormones making me go absolutely looney.
“Be here with me until the end? Show me that you love me even though my head’s a little fucked up and I didn’t tell you what was going on with me that day?”
Sometimes, late at night after Wiz had gone to sleep, I wondered if things would have been different if I had gone home after finding out about everything and told them what happened.
What would they have done? Would they have insisted on canceling our performance and flying out to Ireland?
We would never really know.
But they were here with me now and judging by the looks on their faces, I knew I could count on them to stay with me until Finneas took his last breath and that chapter of my life could finally be closed forever.
Chapter forty-one
“Itake it these are the rest of your men?” Finneas asked as he surveyed the four of them as they stood side-by-side in front of his hospital bed.
It had taken me an extra four days to work up the courage to bring them along to the hospice center with me and now I was wondering why I was so nervous about it because Finneas was grinning at them.
“Yes, these are mine,” I said as I organized the photos on his bedside table that had been jostled about by the morning housekeeper.
Finneas had told me that there were more photos at the house, but I hadn’t been able to make myself go there yet.
The fact that he had never moved from that place made me realize that he’d been just as stuck in the past as I was.
“Handsome lot, good job,” he gruffed to me as he leaned back in his bed.
He seemed even more tired than usual today, his pallid skin a deeper shade of yellow.
