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“Lena’s a funny woman all round.”
I had to snicker at that. Then I pinched his side. “Don’t be mean.”
“Hell, I’m not. She’s the first to admit it.”
Because I knew he was right, I laughed. “You think she would?”
“I know it. And you don’t have to worry about me. I don’t work out on the streets. Not like Aidan Sr., Jr., and Eoghan.”
That had me gnawing on my bottom lip. “We could still be hurt, though.”
“Yeah, we could, but your mom wasn’t involved in Five Points’ business, Aoife, and she got hurt. That’s life, baby. Sometimes, we get dealt a shit hand.”
I knew he was right. Knew I was being irrational, but I also knew I was beingrational. All of this was so fast, and throwing a baby into the mix was just nuts. But I knew it meant a lot to him, could see it in his soulful blue eyes.
It was then I realized how they’d changed.
I’d always thought of them as ice cold, so starkly blue that they were frigid. But now? As he looked at me, I saw the difference.
There was a light to them. A warmth that curled around my heart like an embrace.
“Okay,” I breathed, overwhelmed by the difference in the way he looked at me.
Those beautiful baby blues flared in surprise at my words. He frowned. “Huh?”
“I won’t take the pill today.” It was madness, but hell, he was right. It could take years for my cycle to regulate—I hoped.
“You promise?”
I promised him. And three hours later, I promised him more things.
To love him in sickness and in health.
To be true to him through the good times and the bad.
And to hold him for richer or for poorer.
As I made those vows, and as he made them to me, something settled inside me.
I was in St. Patrick’s; the huge church was frigid even though it was temperate outside, and there were only a handful of people standing in the pews.
I had no family here, no one except for Jenny and the other waitresses from the tea room, and yet, with each vow I spoke, I was enveloped into a new line.
I became a part of the O’Gradys and the O'Donnellys, and it filled me with a warmth I hadn’t realized I’d been missing since my mom’s death.
I missed her. Terribly. I wished she were here, even if she’d have bitched at me about marrying Finn. I’d have given my left tit for her to have walked me down the aisle instead of Aidan Sr. To have had her with me as I went out and bought a simple white suit, not a dress, for the ceremony.
Lena had tried for us, though.
I hadn’t thought about flowers. Hadn’t thought about little bags of birdseed. But she had.
As I’d walked with Aidan toward Finn, Lena had given him a bouquet for me to hold. And on the way out, with Finn at my side, a newly inked marriage certificate back in the chapel, I saw the floral touches that Lena had arranged.
When we made it outside, the O'Donnellys swarmed us from the back, and they pelted us with a shower of birdseed. Finn and I laughed, ducking our heads as the grains collected in our hair, and I knew that smile of his would forever be imprinted on my memory banks. His sheer, unadulterated joy at that moment made him look ten years younger and a hundred times more handsome in his navy-blue suit.
As he turned around to chide Conor for tipping his bag of seeds down the back of Finn’s collar, I saw it.
The truck was big.
