Caitlin’s red-rimmed eyes widened. “Fecking hell. I think you’re right.”
And then her eyes narrowed. Forget Liam or Johnny being overprotective. I sensed I was about to taste the wrath of the besotted baby sister who’d just got her big brother back.
“What are you going to do about it?”
My heart lurched. I was torn between the dizzying knowledge that Johnny quite possibly felt something very serious for me and total abject terror of exposing my own heart and being hurt.
I sho
ok my head. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
I seized on anything to try to make her see. “He left you and Mary. He told me.” It was suddenly crystal clear to me that at the root of my fear was that anyone I fell for would have the power to control me and tear my world to pieces, just as my mother had done when she made me leave Liam and my father and New York.
Caitlin stepped out of Liam’s protective embrace and came close. She was fierce. “He left because Mary was pushing him too hard. Forcing him to become something he wasn’t because she was worried for his future and felt responsible. But he didn’t abandon us at all, not really.”
“I know,” I said miserably.
Caitlin’s eyes widened. “He told you about that? And about our parents?”
I nodded.
An obdurate expression came over Caitlin’s pretty face as she obviously took in the significance of the intimacies we’d shared. She folded her arms and arched a brow. “Well?”
I saw how Liam hovered behind Caitlin, oozing protectiveness and love. Something crumbled apart inside me, some defense I’d been clinging on to. A question rose up inside me: Which pain was greater? Trying to self-protect, or just risking everything?
And then, as if my subconscious made the decision for me, a sense of urgency gripped me. And a dawning realization of my own strength. No one could really annihilate me. I could get hurt, sure, but who had any guarantee of not getting hurt? And I controlled my destiny. No one else.
The thought of my new life in New York without Johnny stretched ahead like a barren, lusterless wasteland.
I looked at Caitlin. “I’m going to go after him.”
The fierceness left her expression. “Good, but you’d better hurry because a hurt Irishman isn’t a pretty sight. He might already be halfway down a bottle of whiskey and standing on a bridge singing maudlin ten-verse Irish songs about the girl who done him wrong.”
I looked at Liam. “I’m borrowing your bike.”
He exploded again. “You’re what?”
But Caitlin just looked at him expressively and he ran a hand through his hair. “Aw, crap. Fine. The keys are—”
I smiled cheekily, feeling lighter already. I took them out of my pocket. “It’s cool. I’ve had them for the past week.”
I had the sense to leave before Liam absorbed that nugget of information. It was only when I was going over the Williamsburg Bridge negotiating traffic that I started to feel clammy and nervous.
Johnny had to just be in the throes of lust. And here was I, about to go to him and declare...what? That I loved him? I almost swerved on the bike, earning the blare of a horn and an expletive out of a window.
Somehow I made it over to Williamsburg without causing a pileup. By the time I pulled up outside Johnny’s apartment block I was feeling a kind of fatalistic determination. I’d never expected to fall for someone like Johnny, and I now knew that I’d never really fallen for anyone else. Steve hadn’t really been a risk because deep down I’d known that I wasn’t really in love with him. I had wanted connection, but had been too afraid to risk it properly. Till now.
Just then someone came out the main apartment door, and I rushed forward to grab it before it closed, smiling distractedly.
I took a deep breath and went in. I was about to climb the stairs to Johnny’s apartment when I heard a crash coming from the workroom. My heart lurched. I went back to that door and it was ajar.
I walked in and my heart stopped. I could feel my blood drain south. Johnny was standing in the middle of chaos. Broken wood and huge splinters everywhere, a mallet in his hand. I recalled what Caitlin had said about a hurt Irishman not being a pretty sight.
“Johnny, what are you doing?”
I instinctively looked for the beautiful walnut cabinet and breathed a sigh of relief to see it intact.
His voice dripped with disdain. “Relax, Ashling, this isn’t for your benefit. Although I’ll admit that it’s serving a purpose right now. I’m getting rid of some leftover offcuts—they’re going to be given to a charity to distribute over the winter, for firewood.”