happiness now.
“My parents weren’t a shining example. Dad wasn’t abusive, nothing like that. I picture him now and I can see that he was handsome, maybe charming. He was good at making people laugh. He didn’t really like working for a living, though. Mom and he fought bitterly. It got physical sometimes, which scared the crap out of all of us. They’d break stuff, put holes in the walls.” He was silent for a moment. “She ended up doing everything around the house and holding down a job, too. Sometimes we’d suddenly have money. Later I realized it was when he was dealing. Mom kept making him swear to go straight, and he’d try, but it didn’t last long. He wasn’t…reliable.”
“He must have loved her, to try.”
“Maybe.” The way his muscles twitched felt involuntary. “I didn’t see anything that looked like love.”
His voice never gave much away, but she couldn’t possibly mistake this kind of searing pain. Lia lifted her head, wishing she could see him. She would have sat up and reached for the lamp switch except that she guessed he, too, was talking more freely because the darkness hid so much. In a way, she hoped he didn’t realize how much he’d revealed.
“But you…” she whispered. “They must have loved the three of you.”
His laugh hurt to hear. “I was nine years old when I heard my parents fighting. My father called me a pathetic excuse for a boy and said I was Mom’s fault. They were screaming at each other. She said she’d never wanted me, that Dad was the one who’d insisted they have another kid.”
Lia listened in horror. She didn’t move even the tiniest bit, even though she wanted to throw herself on top of him and hold him and tell him that his parents were idiots, that he was lovable. So lovable she hadn’t had a prayer of resisting him.
But his body was utterly rigid. She could tell that he was talking to the ceiling, maybe hardly aware she was there. She doubted that he’d ever told this story to anyone.
“Dad said I didn’t have the makings of any kind of man. He asked whether I was even his.” He gave another ugly laugh. “Mom started throwing things. I shut myself into my room. It wasn’t a good day, anyway. I got in a lot of fights, and I’d just had the crap beat out of me. My eyes were swollen shut.” His voice had noticeably relaxed; he was okay with telling her about this part. But then that quiet tension reintroduced itself. “It was seeing me that set them off. I didn’t exactly make them proud.”
“Oh, Conall.” She couldn’t stand it another second. She climbed on top of him and squeezed him with both arms. She burrowed her face against his neck. “They didn’t deserve you. I want to hurt them. I swear I’ll never say anything bad about my parents again. Even Dad loves me, I know he does. How did you turn into such a good man?”
“Hey, hey!” His arms had closed tightly around her, too, but he was laughing. Only then he said, “Are you crying? Lia?”
Damn it, she was. She never cried.
“Oh, hell. For me? Lia, that was a lot of years ago. It’s water under the bridge. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No,” she cried. “I’m glad you did. And it does matter. When I think of you not having anyone—”
“Shh,” he said against her head. “Shh, Lia, you’ll wake up one of the kids.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do.” He was smiling, she could hear it. His hands moved over her, soothing, kneading, calming her. “And I did have someone. I had Duncan.” There was the smallest of pauses. “I had both my brothers.”
Lia went still. “Then why…?”
His pauses were hard to interpret but deep and dark with the things he chose not to say.
At last his shoulders jerked. “That’s the complicated part. I’ll say this much, though. That day, Duncan found me in my room. He brought me an ice pack and he talked to me. He was…there.”
“I may have to hug him the next time I see him.” She rubbed her wet cheeks on his shoulder and sniffed. Maybe she should feel foolish, but she didn’t. Mostly, she was mad.
“All I ask is that you don’t kiss him.” He was joking, she could tell. “Keep the kisses for me,” he said, and he didn’t sound humorous anymore. He sounded like he meant it, and her heart squeezed.
No