“You can’t promise that,” she replied.
Ronan pursed his lips for a moment, then turned to her, looking her in the eyes as he spoke.
“Yes, I can. I killed him.”
“You what?” she said incredulously.
“When we were apart. My brothers went there, found him, and I killed him.”
She stared at him in disbelief. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking or feeling beyond what just seemed like a bit of shock to him.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve had this weighing on me all this time, worrying about what if he finds me. What if he comes for me? And all this time, you’ve known he was dead. You went and sought him out and killed him?”
“He attacked me. I had no choice. He would have killed me.”
“Because you went looking, knowing that is what would happen.”
Ronan didn’t reply. She was right, and there was no use denying it. She got out of the car and stormed off toward her room above the garage. He sat there for a moment, debating whether to go after her or let her have some space. He didn’t have to debate long as she appeared at the top of the stairs to her room and began throwing his things over the rail.
He sighed and got out of the car, picking them up and tossing them in the trunk before getting in and pointing the car toward Boston. He’d give her a few days to cool down and just crash at his old apartment there. He was due to be there for a few days for family work anyway.
The few days turned into a few weeks. She wouldn’t take his calls, and he was involved in other things, including the trip back to Ireland. All his thoughts were filled with her, and he knew that they just needed to talk, but she wasn’t ready. He’d respect that.
He sat on the plane to Dublin, wondering why he couldn’t stop fucking things up with the only woman he had ever genuinely loved. Once he was back on the ground, he picked up the phone for like the hundredth time since he’d left the farm after their fight and opened his contacts list to call her. This time, he went through with the call but only got her voicemail.
“Maeve? Please, let’s talk about this. I know you’re angry with me, but I did it because I love you and wanted you to be safe. Just call me back. Call me back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Maeve
Maeve was miserable. She missed him and the voicemail he had left tugged at her heart in a way that was almost unbearable. She wanted to call him, to talk about this, but she was too stubborn. Perhaps now he knew how she’d felt when he hadn’t given her a chance to fully explain to him about what happened when they first met.
The truth was that they had never talked about it, instead just letting it fall to the wayside as irrelevant. But this felt different. It had been vindictive. To her, his killing Martin was a choice. He didn’t have to go back there. He didn’t have to initiate that confrontation. It seemed petty, jealous, and it frightened her that he could do such a thing.
It had been almost a week since he’d left the voicemail and two before that since she’d last seen him. So, when he showed up on her doorstep out of the blue, she was caught completely off guard. A strange man stood behind him, looking at her with pleading eyes.
“I hope this is the right place. He said his wife lives here.”
“I’ll take him off your hands. Where did you find him?” she asked, noting how drunk he was as he stood wobbling back and forth precariously.
“A bar in town. He was going to drive, but I took his keys. Here you go,” he said, handing them to her. “He okay here then?”
“Yes. He’s okay here,” she said, understanding the unspoken question was really was she all right that he was here.
He was stinking drunk. He smelled like a man who’d been on a weekend binge and looked worse. His breath was enough to knock out a Brahma bull, and his clothes looked like he had slept in them. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she couldn’t leave him out on the porch in this condition. She pulled him inside and got him sat on the couch before getting him a bottle of water to hydrate himself. He looked like he was about to pass out. His speech was so incoherent that she gave up trying to get anything out of him and just got him a pillow and a blanket to sleep it off on the sofa.
When she got up in the morning, he was still there, snoring and reeking up the place. It wasn’t a pretty side of him and one she had never seen before, which was even scarier. On some level, she was concerned, but her anger at his making everything about himself and forcing her to take care of him in his current state overrode any real concern.