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“It’s not your job to keep everyone safe, Shane,” she whispers as she takes my hand in hers. “You are not responsible for your father or your uncle.”
“I should have saved her, Jessie. My mother. I tried to…” I shake my head and stare out into the night as I recall the night my father murdered our mother. I heard him beating her. I heard her crying for help. Liam and Mikey were only one year old when he came home drunker than usual and spoiling to cause some real pain. I’d protected them first, taking them and Conor to a neighbor’s house before going back to our own. My mom could usually talk him round after a while, once he had beaten her black and blue first, but this night he just kept on going. I banged on that door so hard my knuckles were bleeding as I listened to her begging for mercy. Now I know why he never stopped that night, although it’s a secret I wish I’d never learned. When she finally fell silent, my heart broke into a million pieces and it never truly healed, although it had started to with Jessie’s help. And now I have let her down too.
“You did everything you could, Shane. I know what it’s like to watch the people you love in pain and not be able to do anything about it,” she sniffs as a tear rolls down her cheek.
I brush it away with the pad of my thumb. I forget sometimes how much she has endured. She watched her entire family slaughtered in front of her eyes by my evil cunt of an uncle, but she is still so full of compassion and kindness. She is damaged just like my brothers and me, but she’s still the best person I have ever met. Perhaps my mother was right. Some stories are truly written in the stars.
“I’m sorry for everything he did to you,” I say.
“I know, but it is not your apology to make. If you let anything your father or your uncle did close you off from happiness and love, then they have won. You’re capable of such incredible things, Shane. Your love is an amazing gift. Please don’t let them take it from you, or me.”
“You think I could ever stop loving you, Jessie Ryan?” I frown at her as I cup her cheek in my hand.
“I hope not,” she smiles at me. “Because I am completely head over heels for you.”
“Head over heels?” I arch an eyebrow at her.
“Yes. I told you, I love you more than candy.”
“Yes you did,” I smile as I lie back, pulling her with me so that she is lying on top of me now and I have my arms wrapped tightly around her.
We lie in silence for a while and I listen to the sound of her soft breathing. “How are you really holding up, sweetheart?”
“I’m okay,” she whispers.
“Okay isn’t really an answer,” I frown.
“Isn’t it?”
“Well it’s neither a feeling or a state of being, so it tells me nothing really, does it?”
She sighs softly and presses her cheek against my chest. “Isn’t ‘okay’ a catchall for when you don’t really know the answer? I feel so many things, Shane.”
“So break it down for me.”
She is quiet for a few seconds before she responds. “Right here, I feel happy and safe. Protected,” she whispers.
“Right here in the house?”
“Right here in your arms,” she breathes.
I have to close my eyes and take a deep breath because this girl just straight up put her hand inside my chest and punched me in the fucking heart. If I had any last line of defense against her then she just tore right through it. She has defeated me. Right here in the grounds of this beautiful house in Carrickfergus, I gave her the very last sliver of my soul.
I kiss her head and breathe in the scent of her hair. If I speak right now, if I try to tell her how much I love her, then she’ll know that she has completely fucking broken me.
“But I also feel scared, Shane. Terrified in fact. Not that he will come for me now, but that he’ll do it in two, four or even twelve years’ time, when I let myself feel happy or relaxed. When I’ve stopped thinking about him every minute of every day. I might be walking to the grocery store to pick up something for dinner, or be in a restaurant with you and your brothers and go to the restroom alone, or I might just be walking down the street, and he’ll take me. And then I’ll be gone,” she whispers and her entire body shudders.
I want to tell her that I will never let that happen, but we just spoke about making promises we can’t deliver on.
“I would tear the world apart to find you, sweetheart,” I tell her instead because that is a promise I can keep.
“I know,” she whispers. “Now, are we sleeping out here under the stars tonight then, or are you going to take me to bed?”
My cock twitches at the way she says that and I’m grateful for the distraction. But she yawns as she nestles her head against my chest and I remember it’s the middle of the night and she has been through so much in the past thirty-six hours.
“We’ll stay here a little longer.” I dust my lips over her hair and she sighs contentedly.
“Okay, but I might fall asleep right here.”
