I just snorted.
Her grin slowly faded as she peered directly into my eyes this time, no height difference making it awkward. “I mean it, Eoghan.”
“Sometimes, I’m scared for you.”
The admission was torn from me.
Ripped from my soul.
“Why?” she asked quietly, her gaze judgment-free and gentle as she studied me. “Your mission is to keep me safe, not to hurt me, love. I don’t see why you’d ever think you were a danger to me.”
“I think it’s just the PTSD.” I rocked my head. “I’d die before I let anything happen to you, but sometimes, my mind just wanders.”
“To where?”
“Dark and miserable places that I never want you to know about.”
Places whereshesuffered formydeeds.
She reached up and threaded her fingers through my hair. “Maybe it’s time you went back to church, Eoghan.”
I blew out a breath because that had all stopped when Da died.
The O’Donnellys and the Catholic Church had broken ties, and while I knew confession was good for me, I’d never tried to go back to the old ways because my faith had long since died a death.
You couldn’t kill as often as I did and not have a fractured soul.
Faith wasn’t glue.
It couldn’t put those pieces back together again.
I didn’t particularly want it to, but I knew where she was coming from.
“Hear me out,” she told me, “you can’t go see a therapist, but youcango to confession.
“All the priests need is a good donation to the roof fund and that’s it, you can get things off your chest without fear of incriminating yourself.”
Then, she threw down the big guns.
“If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for Bump and me. We need you, baby. We need you.”
Those words slipped under my reserves and tore into me.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll go this week.”
“You won’t have to see Father Doyle,” she teased gently.
“There is a God,” I mumbled.
Doyle had died a year after his beloved St. Patrick’s church had been destroyed.
Rather than talk about that old bastard, or about confession and the various sins that’d probably take me six months to atone for once I finally spilled all my secrets to a priest, I asked, “Do you like this house?”
“It’s big, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “O’Donnellys only do big.”
A cackle escaped her. “Don’t I know it.”