AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When she accidentally turned the shower on and got a face full of cold water, I had to suppress a laugh. Watching her desperately trying to figure out the menus on the touch screen pad out of the corner of my eye was a joy. Hearing her squeal as it cycled from hot to cold, to top-down rain spray, to direct body spray made it almost worthwhile.
‘Stop ignoring me! Let me out.’ She was becoming less frantic and sounded far less angry. The room was almost back to the way it was, and I only hoped she’d be reasonable when I let her out.
I was making the bed, ensuring the sheets were back to their crisp places, when I noticed she’d slumped into a corner and curled up into a ball. She was sobbing and muttering under her breath. Was it a ploy to get me to open the shower door?
I stopped and watched her for a minute, and soon realised she had descended entirely into herself in a way that I knew had gone beyond her rage.
I’d been there plenty of times in my youth.
Fuck, I hadn’t thought she’d crumble. I thought she’d just rage a bit, then cool down enough to stop throwing my stuff around.
She didn’t move when I removed the belt, nor when I opened the doors. She didn’t move when I turned off the water and scooped her into my arms. She didn’t protest or react, and it sent a shiver through me.
Shit.
‘I’m not invisible,’ she muttered as I sat on the edge of the bed and held her to my chest. Her clothing was soaked through and drenched both me and the bed while she took sharp sobs as breath. ‘I matter. I’m not invisible.’
‘Maeve.’ I pulled her wet hair from her face and looked down at her. ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted you to cool off a bit.’
‘I’m not insignificant.’ Her voice was worrying small against my chest. ‘You were just like him.’
It was like I’d short circuited something inside her. She shivered against me.
I didn’t want to be her husband, but neither did I want to break her. She’d been feisty and daring and unafraid, and I didn’t want to be the man in her life who ruined her like my father had ruined my mother.
‘I was like who?’
She blinked up at me through wet eyelashes, though from the shower or tears I couldn’t be sure. ‘Like my dad.’
As far as I had known, Maeve’s family had always been pretty happy. I’d seen her and her brothers running around at parties, pinching food and laughing together as children while Katie and I had to sit beside my father, straight-backed and tight-lipped. Jealousy had always nipped at me when we’d been forced to share a space with the McGowan’s, because they were our enemies, but they looked so damn happy.
‘Your dad hurt you?’ I asked, still smoothing a hand across her back as I held her.
‘No. He ignored me. He acted like being a girl made me invisible. Like a second-class citizen. He wasn’t mean exactly, he just always made me so inferior. He made me hate being female. He made my sister leave after promising her to your father. He’d never have done that to my brothers. They mattered.’
Realisation settled over me as solidly as the wet woman currently residing in my lap. She may not have been physically hurt, but she’d been neglected.
‘It wasn’t so bad when Mum was around, as she included Esther and I as much as the boys. But after...’ she trailed off with a hard swallow, her eyes flicking up to me.
‘You were young when she died. It must have been hard.’ Tension thrummed between us. The fact my father had had her killed didn’t escape either of us.
‘It was. It still is.’
The occasional shudder still quaked her shoulders, but her breathing had calmed to a more even rhythm, leading me to believe it was more likely to be the cold, wet clothes than the panic affecting her.
I slid Maeve off my lap and set her back on her feet. ‘Go get into something dry while I change these sheets, and then I’ll bring us both a hot cup of coffee and something to eat.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
MAEVE
I was still a little shaky as I climbed into the bed, tucking the blanket around me. Once the panic had worn off the embarrassment had set in, lighting my cheeks aflame.
I wanted to hide.
But he’d gone past his hatred of me to scoop me up in his arms and held me until I felt better, and that confused me more than anything. I’d flipped out and trashed his room when his ignoring me had driven me past the end of my tether and rather than reacting with anger, he’d just acted like it wasn’t even strange. Like it was something he was used to.
‘Here,’ he said, coming into the room with a mug of coffee and a plate piled high with cheese, crackers, cold meats and fruit. He passed the hot cup into my hands, where the familiar wave of comfort slipped through my fingers and up into the rest of me.
