www.siobhandavis.com
A Glossary of Irish words, phrases, and meanings can be found at the back of this book.
Table of Contents
Kennedy Boys Family Tree
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
About The Author
Acknowledgments
Glossary Of Irish Words And Phrases
Books By Siobhan Davis
Copyright
Chapter One
The room spins. Everything fades into the background as his words rebound in my mind. I sway on my feet, stumbling as I lose my balance. Ky steadies me, holding me around the waist, even though he’s struggling to stay upright too. My lungs constrict, flattening like pancakes, and I can’t breathe properly. My breath snakes in and out in panicked spurts as my lungs desperately suck in air.
This cannot be happening.
I pinch my arm hard, praying I’m dreaming. That I’m going to wake up in a world where James’s words and an awful new reality don’t exist. Where the last five minutes is just a figment of my sick, overactive imagination.
My traumatized gaze bounces from Kyler to James and back again. Ky looks as shell-shocked as I am. His arm is still wrapped around my waist, and I want to reach out to him, to cling onto him, to show him he’s not alone in his horror and grief, but I appear to have lost control of my body. My arms hang loosely at my sides, and I’m numb all over.
James’s confession reverberates in my mind like the lyrics of a catchy song that refuse to go away. You know, the type of cheesy, corny song you wouldn’t dream of ever singing in public—not if you wanted to hold onto any shred of dignity—but it latches onto your mind, replaying on a continual loop in your head until you feel you’re going insane?
I’m stuck in that place.
“You’re my daughter. I’m your father.”
The words repeat over and over, taunting me cruelly.
“What?” Kyler’s cracked voice is barely a whisper, as he finally breaks the strained silence. Hearing his gravelly tone snaps me out of my trance. “What kind of sick joke is this?” he demands.
James folds his arms across his torso. “I wouldn’t joke about something like this.”
“I can’t be your daughter,” I choke out. “Then that would mean you and my mum …” I trail off as the many implications of his admission ricochet through my brain.
“We were like you two,” he admits quietly. He, at least, has the decency to look ashamed.
Kyler releases his hold on me, and I’m instantly bereaved. Peering up at him, I spot the conflicting emotions tearing across his face, mirroring how I feel on the inside.
“No!” I shriek, staggering back, getting all tangled up in the sheet. I drop to the ground with a thud.
Is this why Mum kept James’s identity a secret from me?
Because she had an incestuous relationship with her brother and then got pregnant with me?
I can’t even … I can’t process. Emotions clutter my head, and I can’t make sense of anything. Nausea builds quickly at the back of my throat, and my stomach lurches violently. I fight with the sheet, kicking out, my arms thrashing about. Sobs start in earnest as I try to yank it off me. Ky and James stare at me as if in a daze. Finally extracting myself from the tangled linen, I start crawling toward the bathroom. “I’m going to be sick.”
The nauseated feeling surges forward, and vomit swims up my throat. Climbing awkwardly to my feet, uncaring that I’m in my underwear, I dart to the en suite bathroom, arriving just in the nick of time. I crouch over the toilet bowl, heaving up the contents of my stomach until I have nothing left to expel. Silent tears pour down my cheeks as I try to grasp the magnitude of what’s been revealed.
My initial instincts were right. I should’ve stayed as far away from this house, and this dysfunctional family, as possible. Should have run away the first chance I got. I sink to my knees, cradling my head in my hands as tears continue to pump out of my eyes.
This can’t be happening.
It’s as if I’ve stumbled into my own version of soap opera hell.
After a few minutes, I stand up, flush the toilet, and wash my mouth out with water in zombie mode. Snatching my robe from the back of the door, I wrap it firmly around me, although it does nothing to quell the violent tremors rocking my entire body.
Raised voices coming from the bedroom barely register. I can scarcely hear over the thrumming of blood in my ears and the frantic pounding of my heart. Resting my hands on the counter, I stare at my ashen reflection in the mirror. I look like I’ve seen a ghost. My startled eyes are glossy and red-rimmed from crying, and my skin has a grayish quality to it, as if someone has drained all the blood from my veins. As if all the color has been sucked out of my life.
The arguing accelerates outside, and I force myself to get a grip. Taking deep breaths, I walk on shaky limbs back into my bedroom. All conversation ceases mid-flow. James hovers uncertainly in the center of the room. Ky is on the floor, leaning against the wall, with his knees pulled in tight to his chest. He has put his jeans on, but his upper body is naked, and my eyes feast on him with familiarity.
Until I remember.
I can’t look at him like that anymore.
I clamp a hand over my mouth as the repercussions of the situation sink in. Averting my eyes, I look away from him, pain slicing a line straight through my heart.
The gravity of the situation hits me like a bolt of lightning.
I’ve been conducting an illicit, incestuous affair this whole time, and I never knew it.
I nearly had sex with my half-brother.
And that’s not actually the worst of it.
I love him.
God, I do. I love Kyler.
I’m in love with my brother.
I don’t know how long the three of us stay there, mute and frozen in the same position. All locked in our torturous thoughts. Gradually, the mist is clearing, and my shock is giving away to anger and frustration.
I need answers, and I need them now.
I walk over to the bed and perch on the corner. “When did you find out about me?” I gulp. “That I was your … daughter, and why didn’t you tell me?” My voice is low and shaky.
James walks tentatively toward me, resting on the other side of the bed. He wets his lips. “When our attorney, Dan, gave me your papers and I spotted your date of birth, I suspected I might be your father. I’ve always wondered why your mother chose that particular moment in time to run away.” H
e looks at me sheepishly. “We had only started our … romantic relationship four months previously.”
A strangled sound emits from Ky’s mouth. “I can’t listen to this.” He buries his face in his hands.
No matter how repulsed I am—and believe me, I am grossed out to the max—I need to hear the truth. “I need to hear this. Go on,” I encourage James.
“I knew it was wrong,” he whispers. “But we’d been growing closer and closer since our parent’s death, and I didn’t have many friends, so my whole world revolved around Saoirse. I’d given up school to get a job so that I could support her, and she became the singular most important thing in my life.”
He pauses, looking down at his hands. “I don’t know exactly when my feelings changed, but suddenly I was looking at her, thinking about her, in ways I shouldn’t. I tried to fight it. Genuinely, I did.” He drills me with an earnest expression. “I didn’t want to have those feelings for my sister, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her like that. She was so beautiful, and she had this light inside her, like a glow that emanated from her very soul, so warm and pure and good. I couldn’t help being drawn to her.” Out of the corner of my eye, I spy Kyler shaking his head in incredulous disgust.
James draws an exaggerated breath. “Keeping my hands off her became a daily battle, but I didn’t touch her. I learned to tolerate the agony, accepted the pain as my punishment, and I hoped that my feelings would go away in time.” He rubs the back of his neck as air whooshes out of his lungs. “I didn’t make the first move. She did. She kissed me, and every shred of self-control I had evaporated.”
Ky jumps to his feet. “I can’t hear any more.”
“Don’t go!” My frantic eyes meet his, tears welling up again as I plead with him. “I can’t do this on my own. Please, Ky. Don’t leave.”
His anguished gaze locks on mine, and I know he yearns to comfort me in the same way I long to comfort him.
But we can’t.
Having him here in the room is as much as I can ask of him. He nods slowly, returning to his spot on the floor.
I refocus on James. “I don’t want to know the specifics—I can’t deal with that now. What I want to know is when you discovered I was your daughter and why you didn’t tell me.”
He presses his knuckles to his forehead and sighs. “I had my suspicions, but I needed more than that, so I hired a private investigator to check into your father’s background, and when he reported his findings, I knew.” He knots his hands anxiously in his lap. “Your father can’t be your biological father, Faye.” He pauses, grappling for the right words, and the look on his face sends shivers through me. “Were you aware he had Kartagener’s syndrome?”
“You mean the genetic respiratory condition he had?” I whisper. Panic and fear almost choke me.
“Yeah. But it’s a little more complex than that.” He scratches the line of stubble on his chin, and my stomach does a funny twist. “Your dad was infertile, Faye. He couldn’t father children.” His words linger in the air as I wrap my arms around my waist, desperately trying to maintain a semblance of composure.
“Mum always said it was her,” I mumble as my brain starts shutting down. “That the reason I had no siblings was because she couldn’t carry any more children, but that was obviously another lie.”
In this moment, I hate my mother, and I’m mad as all hell that she isn’t here for me to yell at. To demand she tell me the Goddamned truth and explain why she thought it was such a good idea to lie about virtually every facet of my life. My hands ball into fists at my sides, and I’m barely holding it together.
“I also discovered that he was working for a firm in Belfast at the time your mother told you she met him. He wasn’t working locally, Faye. There’s no way Saoirse could’ve met him in the way she described to you.”
Liar! How could she do this to me!
I don’t even know who I am anymore, and every memory I have of my parents is tarnished by the knowledge that it was a fabrication. That I was being lied to every single day of my life.
Why? Were they ever planning on telling me the truth?
Hopping up, enraged and upset, and struggling with a million other emotions, I sweep the contents of my dresser clear across the floor. Picking up the stool, I fling it across the room, watching as it smashes against the wall, the sounds of splintering wood adding to James’s shocked gasps. Tears erupt from my eyes, and my cries fill the room as I slump to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably into my hands.
Ky kneels down, gently enclosing me in his arms from behind. His limbs are tense, his arms a little stiff, and I feel it too—the lure of his warmth and the call of his body battling against what we’ve been told, forcing us to maintain a certain distance.
“Kyler.” James’s voice contains clear warning.
“Shut up, Dad. She needs me, and I’m only consoling her. You’re the one who fucked up here, not us. And you’re a damn hypocrite to criticize us after all you’ve done.”
Ky’s statement is paradoxical in part, because the truth is more complex than that. Is James the hypocrite or are we? I don’t know what to think anymore. I massage my temples, digging my fingers into my skin with brutal intensity, welcoming the pressure. What is right and what is wrong? I’m not sure I know anymore, and my jumbled brain is incapable of constructing logical thought patterns.
“At least put a shirt on.” James tosses Ky’s shirt across the room, and I attempt to refocus my mind.
I wipe my sleeve across my moist cheeks, twisting around to face James. Ky puts his shirt on, and then his arms encircle me again. I lean back against his chest, siphoning slivers of his strength. “When did you get proof and how?” I sniffle. “Don’t you need my permission to test my DNA?”
James looks down at his feet, and crunching pain rattles through my skull. Ky curses under his breath. “You have proof she’s your daughter, right? Because you wouldn’t have dropped that bomb without being one hundred percent certain. Even you wouldn’t be that stupid.”
I idly tuck my hair behind my ears, staring wide-eyed at James as I wait for his reply.
“I don’t have proof, yet,” he finally admits, lifting his chin and staring at me. A sudden darkness rushes me, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“What!” Ky explodes, getting to his feet and stalking toward his father. He yanks him up by the shirt. “You could’ve caused all this heartache for nothing! She might not be my sister!” He shoves him, and I scramble to my feet. “I hate you! You destroy everything good!”
I loop my arm through Ky’s, dragging him back from James before he does something he’ll regret.
“I don’t need proof to know she’s mine. It’s only a formality, one I will attend to immediately.” James’s pained eyes meet mine. “Don’t you agree? It all makes complete sense. That’s why Saoirse ran away. Why she never wanted to see me again. That one time I spoke to her, she told me she was ashamed of what we did. That it was wrong and she went to mass daily to beg for forgiveness, to try and atone for her sins.”
My face crumples as his words floor me. She deplored what she’d done, and I was a constant reminder of her guilty sin.
She was ashamed of me.
I look up at Ky, feeling more lost and alone than I’ve ever felt before. If it were possible, I’d swear my heart is ripping apart in my chest, and the most unimaginable pain is twisting my insides into knots.
The person I thought of as my mother was a fraud. A stranger. Someone who doesn’t deserve to hold that title because no mother should treat her daughter like this. I thought I knew her, but now I know better. And my dad isn’t even my dad. My entire life has been one big, fat whopper of a lie, and my parents betrayed me in the worst possible way.
I don’t care if they believed they were protecting me.
You don’t lie to the people you profess to love, no matter
how painful the truth is.
This whole time, I’m staring at Ky—the one person I thought I had by my side. The one person who truly understands me, who has the power to make everything okay just by his mere presence.
But I’ve lost him too.
He’s been cruelly taken from me just as I felt he was finally mine.
I have no one.
And I’ve never felt more alone or more jaded with this life.
Cold and numb, inside and out, I stare blankly ahead as stress overtakes my body. Lying down on my side, I curl into a fetal position in a feeble attempt to ward off the intense trembling racking my body.
James drags his hands through his hair. “Faye, I’m s—”
“Shut the fuck up, Dad!” Kyler yells, dropping to the floor. Carefully, he pulls me to him, cradling me in his arms. “You cannot make statements like that unless you know the truth. And you don’t know, categorically, that you are Faye’s father!”
“I fucking know, Kyler! I was the only one having sex with Saoirse during that time. There’s no one else it could be.”
Losing Kyler (The Kennedy Boys Book 2) Page 1
