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He pouted at me. “Are you saying I’m not special?”
“I’m sure you’re many things, but special isn’t one of them,” I told him with a grin.
Finn’s hand came to rest on my thigh as he began to eat with just his fork, and as he did, I felt something settle inside me at the connection.
I loved when he did this. When he joined us with a simple touch, and it seemed all the more poignant now since he’d told me he loved me.
I smiled at him, knowing my heart was in my eyes as we stared at one another. The table could have disappeared, the bickering people around it too. For a moment, it was just him and me, and that was how I wanted it to be forever.
Finn and I against the world.
“You’ll never guess who I saw last week, Dec.”
Declan was the quietest of them all, and he rarely spoke to me. Not because he was rude, I thought, but because he didn’t say much to anyone.
“Who?”
“Guess,” Brennan joked.
He grunted. “Not interested enough to guess.”
That had Brennan rolling his eyes. “Aela O’Neill.”
For the first time, I saw Declan react tosomething. His fork clattered as he dropped it on his plate.
“Aela O’Neill? I thought she fucked off to Ireland?”
Lena tutted. “Language, Declan.”
He cut his mother a look. “Sorry.” Like a laser, he pinpointed his brother with his stare. “Conor?”
“She did, but she’s back. She’s an artist now. Glass, I think.”
“How do you know?” The intent in his voice had everyone around the table looking at him, but he didn’t seem to notice, his focus utterly zoomed in on Conor.
“I saw her getting coffee and walking into a gallery. On the side, there was her name. Splashed all over it with these weird statues.” He jiggled his shoulders. “She hasn’t changed all that much. Still like a pixie.”
A grunt escaped Declan. “Which gallery?”
Conor frowned at him. “I don’t know. I didn’t write it down.”
“Where was the coffee shop then, idiot?” Declan snapped.
“Calm down, Declan,” Lena murmured, her brows high as she took in her son’s reaction. “Conor, where was the coffee shop?”
“It’s just by Eighth Avenue.”
The minute he’d finished speaking, the sound of his chair scraping against the tiles shrieked throughout the room.
Aidan scowled at him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I—” For a second, he was wordless. Then he shook his head, cut his mother a glance and said, “I have to go. Sorry, Ma.”
Because Lena was as bewildered as the rest of us, she tilted her head to the side as a prompt. He leaned over to kiss her cheek.
“Thanks, Ma. Great meal as usual.”
And like that, he was gone. No longer than two minutes later, his engine boomed in the yard and with a screech, he took off.
