AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, what?”
“Do you miss Da?”
Brennan’s nostrils flared but he bowed his head. “What’s to miss?”
“Fair point,” Declan chimed in. “I don’t miss getting my ass kicked or being accused of trying to make my son gay because I took him to the ballet.”
Finn’s brows lifted. “He gave you shit for that?”
Aidan snorted. “Of course he did. It’s Da. You know, it’s a wonder we’re not all homophobic asswipes.”
“More like a miracle,” Brennan mumbled, but he hitched a shoulder. “It’s weird to miss someone you hated more than you liked.”
“Emotions are weird,” I said carefully, knowing that ‘feelings’ and Brennan weren’t a comfortable combination. Seeing as he was the bruiser of the family, it was only fitting that he’d find it hard to deal with losing Da. “We’re coming out of a toxic relationship where the only escape was death. How was that not supposed to fuck us up?”
Brennan grunted. “Ma’s finding it easy enough.”
“Are you mad at her for finding some peace with Paddy?” I questioned.
“It’s early days, wouldn’t you say?”
“How early is too early? They ain’t getting any younger, Bren,” Declan stated.
“He has a point,” Eoghan drawled.
Brennan scrubbed a hand over his face. “Do you guys miss him?”
A silence settled over the dinner table. Because Aoife’s kitchen was constantly packed with experimental versions of her recipes, we’d taken to meeting in Finn’s house—whether he approved or not.
“You know when you pull a hamstring?” Finn asked as he doodled. “And the pain is there for goddamn ages and you want the ache to go away but it won’t and you know it’ll take however long it takes to heal?”
“And then, one day, it’s not there, and you forget about the ache until you remember it’s not there anymore?” I added, nodding.
“Yeah, it’s like that,” was Finn’s gruff retort.
“Like a toothache that’s gone after years of misery, but you still miss the tooth because hell, those fuckers don’t grow back,” Aidan rumbled.
Declan scratched his chin. “I don’t miss toothaches or hamstring aches.”
“That’s because he treated you like shit,” I murmured. “He never had a kind word for you, never gave you any approval. You can’t kick a dog and expect it, at some point, to like you.”
Declan reached for the creamer as he dosed his coffee. “I guess.”
“I don’t miss being fined.”
Aidan chuckled. “I can keep that arrangement going if you want?”
My lips twisted. “Nah. I’m good.”
“Thought you might be.”
Brennan cleared his throat. “Da blamed me for what happened to Ma for so long that every time he looked at me, I knew he was thinking about that. About my fuckup. It’s strange not having to deal with that residual guilt.”
Because that was about as open as Brennan got, the five of us stayed quiet. I figured we were waiting to see if he had more to say. Then, when the silence grew weird, I broke it because Brennan and Aidan had been around Da’s toxic bullshit longer than any of us and getting them to talk about this stuff was next to impossible.
“You know you had no reason to feel guilty, don’t you?”
“I let Ma down.”
