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Saoirse

 

 

 

Diarmuid fucking Brennan.

I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hurt him. To slam my hand into his chest and smash his heart like he was doing mine.

Instead I pounded the bag, pretending it was his face, as he watched.

“Come on, selkie. You can hit harder than that.”

Damn him.

“Don’t call me that.”

Slam.

Slam.

Diarmuid moved around me, disappearing from my line of vision. I could feel his eyes on me. They dragged across me, burning me, marking me.

“Maintain your guard, selkie.” His voice came from behind me.

God, I wanted to kill him.

I hit the bag again. I felt a slap on my left elbow, lifting my arm up.

“Guard up.”

Infuriated, I grabbed the bag and flung it at him. He sidestepped without any effort.

I slammed my fists onto my hips and sucked in a breath. “What are we doing this for?”

Diarmuid stood, stoic, like an unmovable mountain. “Martial arts will teach you discipline, persistence, grit.”

I gritted my teeth. “Are you saying I have none of those things?”

He studied me for a pause. “I’m saying that martial arts will teach you these things.”

“Because I have none.”

He blinked, his eyes going hard. “You tell me.”

Fuck him.

“You’re punishing me.”

He let out a snort. “What for?”

“‘Discipline, persistence, grit,’” I quoted him. “You think I made a mistake not applying for college.”

His face grew hard, like it had been chiseled out of marble. “You have a gift, Saoirse. You’re wasting it if you don’t do something with it.”

“Fuck you,” I yelled. “You have no right to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.”

“You—”

“You left me, Diarmuid. You left me alone with no one.”

His face broke into a mask of pain. “You had your ma…” he trailed off.

“My drug-addicted, incompetent, uncaring mother,” I scoffed. “Really?”

“I had no choice, Saoirse.”

“You had a choice. You had a fucking choice and you chose her over me.”

“She was pregnant…”

“So you give up your soul family for a real one? I hope they were worth it.”

His mask cracked open. I saw it; the deep well of pain underneath, of guilt, of regret. I realised it hurt him to leave just as much as it hurt me. I always thought that his decision to go had been easy for him. I didn’t think that leaving might have torn strips off him, too.

Diarmuid tore his eyes away from mine, as if he couldn’t take letting me see him anymore.

I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to understand him. If he left once, he’ll leave again.

He let out a sigh. “Maybe that’s enough for one day.”

“Fine,” I let out.

My head was spinning. I had to get out of here. I turned and strode to the bench against the wall to grab my things.

He followed me. “I am not letting that boy take you home.”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s twenty-one.”

“Because twenty-one is so mature.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “So much more mature than twenty-eight, apparently.”

I zipped up my hoodie and slung my bag over my shoulder.

He stepped in my way, his wide chest and rounded shoulders taking up my vision.

“You are not leaving with him.”

“Try and stop me.”

He took a step closer so we were toe to toe. He crowded me. His presence. His heat. His smell. All around me like chains.

I couldn’t stand to meet his gaze, so I followed a drop of sweat that ran from his hairline, over his sharp cheekbone, down to his granite jaw. What would he do if I leaned up and licked it off him? I almost shivered at the thought.

“Saoirse Quinn,” his voice snapped me out of my reverie. “Here, now…I am responsible for you. I can’t do anything about the rest of the week, but for this hour. You. Are. Mine.”

You are mine.

His words lodged into my chest. If only that were true. I swallowed down a whimper.

Diarmuid straightened, clearing his throat.

“Truck. Now,” he mumbled.

 

 

 

Diarmuid switched off the music—The Dubliners again—as soon as he turned on the engine of his truck. It seemed even that was too painful a reminder of who we used to be and where we were now.

We rode in his truck again, the silence swelling like a painful abscess, filled with heartache, regrets and everything unsaid.

“So…” I blurted out when the silence got too much. “You never did answer…did you have a girl or a boy?”

His jaw flinched, his eyebrows coming down over his eyes, staring firmly on the road. “I, er… She lost the baby. Not long after we moved.”

Oh. Shit.

Guilt flooded the back of my throat. I’d been such a bitch to him about it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

He shrugged. But his lips paled as he pressed them together. It was his tell back then when he was feeling too much. Some things never changed.

“These things happen,” he said.

We stopped at a set of red lights, the tension in the truck like hot pressurised air.

“I’m still sorry. I…” I played with my bottom lip with my teeth. “Even if I didn’t want you to have a family without me, I never would have wished that on you.”

“I know, Saoirse. But thanks for saying so.”

He glanced over to me, our eyes locked. I felt like I was thirteen again. And he was my world.

I looked away first.

“The light’s green,” I said quietly. I could still feel his eyes on me.

He drove on, entering the area where I lived. In less than five minutes, we’d be at my house. This moment would be gone. The quiet connection of a shared past and an unwanted grief, broken. I had to say something.

I just wasn’t sure what.

When he pulled up in front of my house, the lights were all off, meaning my father wasn’t home yet. I guess it was another dinner where I’d be eating at the table in the cold kitchen. Alone.

“We’re here,” Diarmuid said, indicating that it was time for me to get out.

I didn’t want to get out of his warm truck.

I didn’t want to go into my house.

I didn’t want to be alone.

“Can we…can we go for a drive?” I asked, my voice small. I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t stand to see his face if he said no.

In the silence, I felt his surprise.

He didn’t say anything. He reached for the indicator and pulled us back onto the road. I sagged into the seat, a sigh loosening from my too-tight chest.

He just drove. I didn’t ask where he was going. I didn’t care. I just wanted to sit in his truck with him and feel…this for a while. Warm. Safe.

Like maybe the world was good for once.

Soon the houses of Limerick grew farther and farther apart. He kept driving until we were clear beyond the city limits, down skinny country roads, the trees lining the side creating a canopy over our heads.

He turned down a skinny one-lane dirt road, two trenches showing where tires had worn into the earth like parallel snakes. The trees turned to thick bushes lining a wooden fence.

Finally he pulled up on the side. There were no cars before or behind us. It felt like he and I were the only ones in the world.

Beyond the fence was green fields, a few cows dotting the grass, an ancient-looking wooden farmhouse on a hill.

“Haven’t been here in a while,” he said after a pause, his eyes fixed on the farmhouse. He shuffled in his seat. “I…I don’t know why I brought you here.”

I stared at the farmhouse. Now that we were nearer, I could see that part of the roof had collapsed in. Obviously no one had lived here in a while.

I knew without him having to tell me that this was the farmhouse he grew up in, where he watched his mother, then his grandmother, die. Before he was finally taken away.

My heart squeezed as I imagined a young Diarmuid standing on the aging porch.

I realised something. “What happened to your dad? You’ve never spoken about him.”

Diarmuid’s jaw tightened and his fingers flexed on the gear stick so that his knuckles turned white.

“He walked out on my mum and me when I was very little. Haven’t heard from him since. Don’t really care to.”

Oh shit.

Now I understood why he married Ava when she fell pregnant. He didn’t want to be like his father.

“Everyone I’ve ever cared about has gone away,” he said. He lifted his eyes to me. The truck filled up with the resonance of pain. It reverberated like a low solemn bass note, rumbly and aching. “Except you. You came back.”

This part of Diarmuid pushed me away all those years ago because he didn’t think he would get to keep me. If everyone you loved left, why would you love at all?

He let out a long breath, a weighted breath, sweet and bitter all at once. “I’m glad our paths crossed again, selkie.” This time I didn’t tell him not to use my nickname. This time the familiar moniker settled around me like a favourite coat. “No matter how short this time will be.”

His words pierced my lungs, making it hard to breathe. I didn’t want us to end. I just got him back.

I won’t leave, I wanted to yell, if you promise never to leave me.

“Diarmuid…” I turned towards him and found he was already looking at me. I swallowed, my pride like a too-large morsel in my throat. “Can we call a truce?”

“A truce?”

“Yeah. A do-over. Put the past in the past. Draw a line between then and now.” I didn’t want to waste any more time. I just got him back and I didn’t want to waste any more time.

Slowly a smile dawned across his mouth. I used to live for his smiles. They used to light up my whole world.

“I’d like that,” he said.

I stuck out my hand. He took it. I was enveloped in the warmth of his calloused hands. Such strong hands. Strong, honest hands. Hands that I wanted to pull onto my body. All over my body.

I tugged my hand back, my palm radiating heat all up my arm and to my cheeks. “We should go. My da might be worrying where I am.”

Diarmuid started up the truck and turned it around. This time the air was peppered with questions about the years we’d been apart.

“So, how is Ava?” I almost choked on her name.

Diarmuid shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I frowned. “She’s your wife. How do you not know?”

Diarmuid inhaled, then exhaled before he spoke. “She and I separated not long after she lost the baby.”

Oh. Shit.

“I’m…sorry.” Not that they had separated, but that she had caused him pain.

“You were right, selkie. I should have listened to you back then.”

I was?

“Right about what?”

His eyes locked onto mine. “I never loved her.”

I turned my face to the window and squeezed my eyes shut as my heart cramped in my chest. It had killed me when he chose Ava over me. It ripped pieces off me—still ripped pieces off me—to think that he might have loved her. For years I had dreamed of hearing him say those words to me. Dreamed about it. And here he was saying exactly that. I must be dreaming.

“And so…” I began, when I thought I had recovered enough to keep my voice steady, “you have a new girlfriend or something?”

“No.” He let out a bitter laugh. “Some catch I’d make. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old ex-juvi cursed with a dead family and a failed marriage already under my belt.”

God, it hurt to think he thought of himself that way. But it made sense now, why he tried so hard with Ava, why he thought marrying her when she was pregnant was the “right thing” to do. Diarmuid Brennan did not love himself.

I slid my hand over his that was sitting on the gear stick. “I think you’re a catch.”

You’re the catch.

He smiled at me and my stomach did a flip. “Thanks, selkie. That means a lot to me.”

I slid my hand off his before I said anything even more stupid.

He pulled up outside of my house again. Still no lights on inside. No da. I let out a silent sigh and hopped out of the truck.

“I’m coming to pick you up next Friday,” Diarmuid said before I could shut the door. “You don’t need to be getting on any motorbikes.”

I rolled my eyes, but there was a smile threatening to break through. “Whatever, Brennan,” I said, but my voice was soft, teasing.

He let out a snort. “Get out of here. Stay out of trouble.”

“Trouble finds me.”

He shook his head. “Don’t I know it,” he mumbled.

I shut the door between us. He pulled away from the curb. I stood there on my sidewalk, watching the truck until it disappeared, a piece of my soul feeling like it was leaving with him.

I had been so in love with Diarmuid when I was younger. I never got over him. Because he was mine.

You have my skin.

And you have mine.