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I swear to fuck. My eyes prickled with goddamn tears at not only the first time he ever called me Dad—and I was no fool, I knew the second we were outside he’d go back to calling me Declan or not calling me anything at all—but that he chose to do so now? While he was defending me? Just… fuck.
Conor cleared his throat. “How messed up is it that the only person who’s ever defended Declan at this fucking table is his fourteen-year-old kid?” He dipped his chin. “Kudos to you, Shay.”
Unease drifted over the diners. I felt it gathering like storm clouds over us, shadows forging and dispersing as people’s attention drifted toward me. I kept my head down, like I usually did while I was under this roof, and carried on scraping up my food.
The second I could get out of here wasn’t a second too soon.
“A man shouldn’t be prancing around in tights,” Da ground out, and I knew he wasn’t happy about Seamus giving him lip. “And a man sure as fuck shouldn’t be wanting to watch anancy boyprancing around like a fucking fairy.”
I could feel Seamus bristling from two seats down, but Ma sniped, “Aidan, shut your fool mouth.”
“No, if you don’t address issues then they’re impossible to resolve, Lena,” Seamus interjected, his tone calmer than his expression belied, like he was fourteen going on forty. “It’s a very antiquated way of thinking, Aidan. I’m sure you know that, and clinging onto your old-fashioned thought processes might seem more comfortable to you, but all you’re doing is being prejudiced against a lot of innocent people who only want the right to live their lives as they want, with who they want. They’re not hurting you, so why should it bother you who they’re with?”
“Because it’s not right. It’s Adam and Eve, kid. Not Adam and Steve,” Da remarked, but something had shifted.
He’d gone from being pissed to being amused.
Though I’d heard his bullshit more times than I could count, it didn’t stop me from gritting my teeth over the conversation.
For a helluva long time, he’d thoughtIwas gay, so I’d heard it all as he attempted to scare me straight. Which wasn’t easy when I was already straight to begin with.
“That makes no sense. A lot of animals engage in homosexual activity. It’s perfectly natural. Anyway, you’re talking about ballet. Most ballets are about tragic romances, aren’t they, Mom? Remember that one we went to see in Paris? It was about that girl who fell in love with a guy—”
“You’ve been to Paris?” Aoife asked, her eyes lighting up. The abrupt question, however, told me she was trying to change the subject.
“Yeah. We lived there for a year,” Seamus confirmed. “It was brilliant. Lots of museums and lots of cultural things. Just because I enjoyed going to the opera and the ballet doesn’t mean I’m gay,” he pointed out, but his voice broke, and I didn’t have to look at him to know he was doing his level best to avoid drooling over Inessa. “And anyway, going there is a great way to socialize with the right people. It’s like golf. Does anyone even like it? But most businessmen play because you can talk business on the green.”
“Is this kid for real?” I heard Aidan Jr. mutter.
For the first time, my gaze snapped off my meal and onto him. “Yeah, he’s for real, and I think he’s fucking brilliant. Hasn’t Aela done a great job raising him?”
“Yeah, I agree,” Conor added, backing me up, and I’d give him a steak later on in the week as a thank you. “She has. He’s got world domination on his list of things to do. You only aimed for the city, Da, Seamus wants the country, at least.”
Da, being the nutcase he was, found that hilarious, and as he chuckled like a loon, slapping his leg like he hadn’t heard anything so funny in all his life, somehow, it shifted the conversation onto Seamus. He talked about his new school, about his classmates and how many bodyguards they had for some reason, and he talked about the places he’d been and had seen.
By the end of it, if his staunch defense of me hadn’t cleared it up, I knew my family was impressed.
Not only was Seamus mature, independent, and kind, he had brass balls.
And with the O’Donnellys? That was exactly what you needed to survive.
