I blew out a breath, feeling generally fucked.
I worked to avoid him, I sought him out because I missed him, I did coke to stay alert, being awake gave me more time to feel pathetic…
I was tired. Sick and fucking tired.
“Can I ask something, Shan?”
When I was tired, I gave fewer fucks. When I was tired, it was easier to put a dent in my carefully constructed armor.
“Of course.”
I swallowed.
Screw it, I was dying to know. “The guy I set you up with—what went wrong?”
I was met by silence first, and I didn’t need to see him to know he was uncomfortable with the question. He could stitch people up in his sleep too, so I knew it wasn’t a matter of concentrating first and talking later either.
“What makes you think something went wrong?” Yeah, he was definitely guarded.
“He got in touch with me a while back,” I lied. “Asked if it was just gonna be a one-time thing—’cause you hadn’t contacted him.”
Shan cleared his throat. “Did he say anything else?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
He sighed, and I spotted him in the corner of my eye reaching for something on the table. “I shouldn’t discuss this with you.”
“Oh, fuck a nun, am I sick of hearing that,” I muttered, scrubbing my hands over my face. “You grew up during the sexual revolution. Someone should remove the giant stick up your ass—or set it to vibrate.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked defensively. “I’m not uptight just because I have no desire to discuss sex with a young man I helped raise—”
“Oh.” That got me heated in a second, and I pushed myself up on my elbows again to give the motherfucker a piece of my mind. “Let’s get one thing straight, Shan. You didn’t fucking raise me—nor did Grace. I owe you everything—you were there for me, you welcomed me into your family—but don’t tell me I’m basically your son. Don’t say you think of me like that. For chrissakes, I declined going on a family vacation with ya’s because I wanted to move in to my own apartment by the time you got back.”
I’d been fourteen. Thomas and Jim had helped me. And I’d raised myself since then. Not even my grandmother had been able to steer me in any direction.
The concept of family lost its shine to me the day my folks rejected me. I loved the O’Sheas with everything that I was—I’d kill and die for them—but I wasn’t one of them. Never would be. Didn’t want to. I had my own last name.
Shan watched me with an unreadable expression, his forehead creased with worry, but his eyes held pensiveness, and it felt as if he was trying to listen at least. Listen, reevaluate. Maybe for the first time in his life where I was concerned. Whatever box he’d stuffed me into in his mind was wrong. Wrong category.
And it hit me. That was why I was constantly on edge in my own house. I was trying to be the guy he viewed me as—the honorary O’Shea, the bonus kid. Well, fuck that!
From now on, I was going back to being me. Not a toned-down version of me, nothing censored.
My head hit the cushion again as Shan returned to his task, and I kept reflecting on the changes I’d gone through lately. Plenty of contradictions that didn’t make a lick of sense either. Like how liberated I’d always felt to pretend to be someone else in the past, someone with a brighter future. Or how freeing it had been to be a stranger in the dark with Shan.
Although, that one was easy enough. It’d been my only shot at expressing what I really felt about him. Because as soon as the light came on again, I was once more the son.
Something had to give now. I couldn’t make any more compromises on my own identity, and I was done trying to fit myself into the O’Shea line of men. I loved them; they were family—extended family.
An urge to see my sister grew rapidly within me, and it couldn’t wait. As soon as Shan told me he was finished, I sat up carefully and completely ignored his advice on going to bed and taking it easy for a week. A week. Laughable.
He was still talking, or hollering after me about removing the stitches in a few weeks, when I went into my bedroom to change clothes. While I would never be caught alive wearing sweats outside, I owned several pairs for when I was just dicking around at home, and going to see Luna in the middle of the night didn’t technically qualify as going outside.
Sweats, hoodie, sneakers. Would’ve been better with a shower before, but I was impatient.
“Wait—are you going somewhere?” Shan asked incredulously as I reemerged.
“Just downstairs to see if Luna’s up.”