by Aubrey Irons
“That was never the plan,” I growl, my voice tight. “That shit was never supposed to happen. We knew the route, we knew the driver - fuck, Ivy, I played football with Jimmy. But Declan brought on one of his Southie Boston goons at the last minute. Nobody actually brought loaded guns, except that piece of shit.”
She looks at me sharply. “Guns?”
I quickly shake my head. “I was just driving.”
She nods again, chewing her lip, her chest rising and falling softly as she sucks in breaths. “Rowan?”
“He showed up, Ivy,” I hiss air through my teeth, looking away. “Your damn brother showed up anyways, right after the hit, right at the scene since he knew the route. One of Declan’s guys took over as driver and I dragged Rowan’s ass back to his own car, tossed him in the passenger seat, and got us the fuck out of there before he got implicated in the worst mistake of his life.”
Her eyes drag back to mine. “And then you crashed.”
I don’t look away this time. “Yeah. And then I crashed.”
She shakes her head, her hand reaching out to my arm. “It was dark, and raining, Silas. You had a ton of stuff going on in your head.”
I bark out a harsh laugh. “My fault, Ivy. No excuses. I almost killed your brother and my best friend.”
“But you saved him.” Her hand tightens around my wrist, pulling at me as her eyes plead.
“Why did you leave?”
“Besides your dad telling me to? Besides watching your heart break right in front of me?”
She blinks and nods.
“The hit was all over the police scanners, and Declan was sure they had a mark on the car and anyone involved. I was scared, and young, and stupid enough to trust his judgment, so I left.”
“You didn’t call,” Ivy’s voice breaks then, and I can feel my heart crack. “You didn’t even write?”
I clench my jaw. “I did write. Once. You not responding was the last confirmation I needed.”
“Liar.” She blinks back tears, turning away. “You did not write me. Believe me, I’d know.”
My frown deepens. “No, I wrote you. I wrote you everything that had happened and everything I was fucking feeling, and I gave it to one of Declan’s guys to give to-”
I whirl away, the rage of the sudden realization sliding into place like a knife’s blade.
“You did write?”
I turn back to her, nodding somberly. “I think I’m putting it together now that you never got it.”
She shakes her head and I close my eyes before opening them and looking right at her. “Would it have changed anything? Even if you had gotten it?”
Her face crumples. “Would it have told me why you left?”
“Ivy, I left because what happened that night was the beginning of the end,” I say softly, reaching out and cupping her face again. “It was the beginning of me only causing you pain, and only hurting you and your family.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispers.
“I do know that,” I growl. And suddenly, I’m right in front of her, my hand right back to that soft line of her jaw again, my eyes blazing right into hers.
“I was always going to be trouble, and you knew that.”
I move right against her, so close that I can hear the catch of her breath and see the beat of her pulse in the shadow of her neck. I’m so close to her that I’m losing myself right there, drowning in the familiarity of her scent and her presence.
“You knew I was trouble, Ivy,” I whisper across her upturned lips. “And I think that’s why you ever loved me in the first place.”
I don’t think, I just do.
I kiss her.
I kiss her with eight fucking years of wanting to feel those lips again. I slide my hand into the back of her hair and kiss her with every single ounce of feeling I’ve had locked up inside on the other side of the damn ocean all these years.
I half expect her to slap me, or scream, or shove me over the side of the fucking boat.
But damn if she isn’t kissing me right back.
She wraps her arms around me, pulling me tight as she presses her soft pillow lips to mine. And after that, I’m undone.
It’s deep, and it’s burning - a Hollywood, soul-rendering kiss. And for one second, the whole rest of the fucking world and all of it’s history and hurt and pain just vanishes.
And then it’s over.
She pulls away with a gasp, her hand flying to her lips as if just realizing what she’s been doing. She brushes those lips for a second with her fingers, blinking quickly before her eyes flick to mine.
She scowls.
“You can’t kiss me like that,” she says breathlessly, her face bright red and her eyes burning like little fires.
I grin, immediately thinking about the time we were kids when I did this the first time.
“Sure I can.”
But this time she’s not looking at me like she was back then, all full of wonder behind the garage while everyone else played flashlight tag.
This time she means it.
“No, Silas.” She shakes her head, still glaring at me. “No, you can’t.”
She turns and half jumps down the ladder to the floor of the boat, grabbing her heels before she steps onto the pier and runs off barefoot into the night.
I watch until she’s out of sight, before I rake my fingers through my hair and turn to look back out at the breakers.
Chapter Sixteen
Silas
I’m up early, just before the sun crests over the breakers.
I’m always up early, at least since the crash. At first it was the nightmares - tires squealing, glass shattering, the weightless feeling as up becomes down, the sound of metal against the road. The sound of my friend’s scream going suddenly silent.
Yeah, I had those for a while.
But after that, being up early just became routine; something I did. Get up, get the strongest fucking coffee possible into my body, and then get the blood pumping. I stare into the mirror in the tiny bathroom of the houseboat while the drip machine works its magic, inhaling dark roast and the smell of low tide as I rub a splash of water across my face, my fingers raking across the stubble on my cheeks.
The coffee scalds on the first sip, but I drink it anyways; getting at least a few more in before I drop to the floor. I count pumping breaths as I do my pushups, In. Out. Up. Down. I go until my arms burn, and then I do two more before I flip onto my back for crunches. For those, I count by twos for some weird reason, clenching my core again and again until I can barely breathe. After that, it’s right back to the pushups, and the cycle continues ten more times.
When I’m done, my whole body is on fire, but every cell in my brain is firing on full cylinders. I refill the mug from the machine and take it out onto the deck, staring out at the mouth of the harbor as I take a fresh scalding sip.
“Well shit, kid.”
I whirl at the sound of the voice from my past - the voice of the man who sent everything shattering out of control.
Declan.
The world’s all-time shittiest uncle and legal guardian. I can’t really imagine a world where my parents’ legal will named a man like Declan as my next of kin, except in a world where I have no other family. A world where Declan McCreedy is literally the only option.
That I basically grew up in the Hammond house makes a whole lot of sense once you know Declan.
His hair is grayer now than it was then, slicked back to the point of pulling at the sallow skin of his forehead. He’s still got the same out-of-date mustache, grayer now, still tobacco streaked with yellow. I can remember him stroking it, like a nervous tick or a poker tell, that night in the car.
The night I watched her heart breaking from the hospital parking lot through the rain-streaked windshield.
The night he put a passport in my hand.
And now he’s standing right in fucking front of me, on the docks of Shelter Harbor.
He’s flanked by
two bruiser-looking motherfuckers in black jackets and berets - the exact type of wannabe Irish-mob tools Declan’s always surrounded himself by. He’s got connections, sure, but he’s the big fish in a small fucking pond out here away from the city. He’s got his little criminal fiefdom here in Shelter Harbor, but he’d get eaten fucking alive in Southie or Charlestown, and he fucking knows it.
He’s wearing fucking sunglasses - big, gaudy grandmother-style ones. But I can see the lines around his eyes crinkle as the corners of his lips pull back in a grin.
“You look good, kid,” he growls out in that Boston-tinged townie accent.
“Catch a lot of rays over there in sunny fucking Dublin?”
The two goons snicker on cue. I just tighten my jaw.
Part of me wants to destroy this man for fucking up my life. Except eight years later, I know that’s only partly the blame. Deep down, I know it was me that did the destroying. Declan may have helped, but I’m man enough these years later to know that I’m to blame for my own shit.
As easy at it would be to kill this man with my bare fucking hands right here and now, even if it’d be my last move.
His goons are still chuckling when I interrupt them all.
“What do you want, Declan.”
He chuckles as he reaches up to pull the shades from his face. His grey-green eyes narrow at me, his tobacco-stained smile still leering at me.
“Just wanted to check in on my favorite nephew is all. Hey, if you don’t got family what do you have, huh?”
“You’re a pillar of the modern family, Declan.”
He grins, spreading his arms. “So, home sweet home, huh?”
“Yep.”
He shakes his head, his hand slipping into the breast pocket of his shirt for a pack of Lucky Strikes.
“I mean, shit, kid. You got me all choked up over here.”
I frown, my mouth tightening. “What.”
“What?” He laughs with the cigarette in his lips as he brings the lighter up to the end of it. Smoke billows out as he chuckles through the lighting of it.
“I mean, you don’t call, you don’t fucking write.”
I level my eyes at him. “You get that I was in fucking hiding, right?” That I was in another country without a real fucking passport? Remember that part?”
Declan pulls on his cigarette, his cheeks hollowing and his eyes never leaving mine. “Not talking about fucking Ireland, boy-o.”
I say nothing, but he raises a brow at me. “Don’t bullshit me, kid. I knew when you came back.”
I force myself not to react - not to show a single flinch or sign that I give a shit that he knows.
He grins. “It’s not that big of town, Boston,” he says with a wink. “And boy, that Valerie sure is a piece, huh?”
I can feel a horrible chill run down my spine.
“Yeah, it’s not a big town and I know people, pal.”
“Been spying on me, Dec?”
He pulls the smoke from his lips and grins again as he hold his fingers up. “Teeny bit. What can I say? I missed you, kid.”
“You didn’t.”
He shrugs. “Well, not your driving skills.”
I can feel my blood boil as he grins and as the two black-coated goons chuckle. I know he wants me to react, so he can. It’s how Declan works. Always the viper, always the provocateur, so he has a reason to strike.
Don’t let him get to you.
I’m past this.
I’m better than this.
“Whatever you say, Declan.” I purposely turn my back to him, taking a sip of my coffee as I look out at the waves beyond the mouth of the harbor.
“But hell, I guess it’s not Valerie I should be watching these days, now is it?”
I freeze, the mug halfway to my mouth, before I slowly lower it and turn back to him. He’s leering at me, a wicked grin on his face as he stands with one foot up on the side of my boot. And that look say’s he’s daring me to make a move.
I don’t.
“Oh yeah, kid, I see it all.” He taps the side of his face as he grins at me. “Like a hawk.”
I’m turning, readying myself to ignore any more of his bullshit, when that voice of his cuts deep.
“That Ivy Hammond sure has grown up.”
I turn back, my face tight. “Watch it.”
Declan chuckles. “That Instagram account of hers?” He whistles. “Shit, kid, I’ve fired off a few by myself to some of those yoga-pant and bikinis, if you know what I mean.”
I’m on him in a second, hands grabbing him by the collar and my eyes burning like hot coals into his. “You watch your fucking mouth!”
The two goons lunge forward, but my uncle waves them off with a hand. The corners of his mouth curl.
“Now, what it is you said to me all those years ago when I helped you out? When I helped you get away?” He raises a brow. “‘She means nothing,’ I think it was? That she was ‘just some girl’?”
I know what I said. I said exactly what I had to, to keep her distant from me; to make sure Declan didn’t think she was any sort of leverage on me. It’s also why I’ve got no intention of tearing a hole in him right now about the one letter she never got.
My hands loosen on his shirt.
“Just some girl, huh?” He shakes his head. “Eight years later and look at you - all piss and vinegar over it.” He snorts. “Must by some kind of cunt she’s got between her-”
I roar as I drag him around and slam him into the side of the boat. I’m seeing fucking red as I raise my fist with every intention of slamming it through his teeth, but I’m suddenly stopped and pulled away from him by the two goons.
“Whoa! Whoa!”
He’s chuckling again - fucking laughing as he stabs a finger at me.
“Mind your fucking manners, you little prick. Jesus fucking Christ, we’re family.”
I snarl as I shake loose of the two thugs holding me back. “I try and forget that detail.”
His eyes narrow as he jabs a finger at me again. “You got soft over there, kid.”
I bark out a harsh laugh.
It was the literal opposite. I grew hard over there. I grew rough, and unkind, and uncaring, doing jobs for Declan’s Irish connections that I wish I could take back.
He clears his throat as he straightens his shirt collar, frowning at me. “Jesus, I just wanted to come by and say hello and welcome back to town. Jesus fucking Christ, throw a damn tantrum about it.”
He shakes his head as he pushes past me. “Shit, guess we shoulda brought a fuckin casserole, huh boys?”
The two goons smirk at me.
“That’s all, Silas,” he says dramatically. “Just welcome home.”
My mouth stays shut this time, and Declan just gives me a final shake of his head before the three of them turn and start to go.
“Oh, Silas,” he turns. “Things haven’t changed, while you were gone.” His eyes narrow at me. “I still run this town, and kid?” He grins. “I still own you.”
“The fuck you do.”
Try me.
“I did what you asked, Declan. I worked for your fucking people over there for five damn years.”
“Beats jail, wouldn’t you say?” He pulls another cigarette out of his pack and jams it in his mouth.
He’s the only person in the world I’d actively wish cancer on.
“The statute of limitations is up,” I growl. “I did my time for you, but I’m done now.”
Five years. After five years, they can’t prosecute. That was the whole arrangement. Dodge the heat, and do jobs for the Irish Kings instead of Bubba or Curly in Walpole prison.
Declan puffs smoke through his nose as his eyes drag back to mine.
“Federal,” he says with a small little grin. “Federal is five years for grand theft.”
He flashes his teeth, his whole damn face smiling like he can’t wait to drop the other shoe on me.
“But Massachusetts state limitations is ten.”
I
can feel my teeth grinding as he ashes his cigarette onto the floor of my boat.
“Walpole, now that s fun little place, I hear.”
He winks before he sticks the cigarette in his mouth and turns on his heel.
“Welcome home, nephew,” he calls over his shoulder as the three of them march back down the docks.
Chapter Seventeen
Ivy
I can’t believe I kissed him.
And I did. I kissed him.
That was no stolen kiss - nothing hidden in the shadows behind Ms. Hempstead’s garage. That was two people coming together for what they needed - magnetic attraction, like it always was with the two of us.
That was stupid.
It was stupid for me to be alone with him, to go there at all, really. So why did I? What, because I was sad about Blaine doing what I’m fairly certain deep down I always knew he’d do? What he’d probably done before he finally admitted it? I mean, I was sad, but I wasn’t heartbroken.
I can’t be heartbroken.
There’ve been three real relationships now, since Silas. Three that fell apart, because there was never anything of substance there, nothing that shook me to my core. Nothing that gripped me, or scared me.
And I hate that that’s his legacy on me, all these years later.
Every breakup hurts of course, but none of them ever really hurt - not in that way where you don’t know if you’ll live. Not in the way that brings you to your knees and crushes you under the weight of it.
And how could they?
Because it’s not just that Silas went away and left me with a broken shattered heart, it’s that he left and stole it with him. You can’t get heartbroken after that, with no heart left to break.
I’m mulling it over on the bench in my parent’s backyard, under the red leaves of the Japanese maple tree. It occurs to me that I used to press my lips to Silas’s on this very bench late at night after sneaking out the backdoor. But then, there’s not a lot of places in this stupid town where I didn’t do that.
Stupid, dumb, young love.
“How’re you doing?”
