“Just… remembering,” I answer evasively.
Her eyes turn hard. “We were stupid, naïve kids,” she replies. “We had no business being together.”
I don’t betray my emotions. I just regard her calmly, trying to find the chink in her armor.
She’s built up more walls since we last saw each other. There’s an edge to her tone, a sad tilt to her eyes. She’s been through shit.
She’s had a hard life.
She’s having a hard life.
I try and swallow back the deep-rooted need to protect her.
She said it herself: she hasn’t asked for my help.
Though I have a feeling that, when it comes to Saoirse, that’s the only way I can get away with helping her at all.
She’s too proud for anything else.
Except my eyes drop to her arms again, and I notice strange scars snaking up and down her left arm. They form a scissor pattern and encroach right up to her wrist.
I grab her without thinking and twist her hand around so I can see the scars clearly.
“What the fuck is this?”
She rips her hand away from me. “Nothing,” she mumbles.
“Are you fucking serious?” I growl. “That’s not nothing. That’s… ”
I trail off when I catch her expression. She’s fighting back tears, her jaw crunched down hard in an internal struggle to keep her walls from crumbling.
What an endless effort that must take.
To constantly hide your pain.
To constantly have to pretend like everything’s alright even when just waking up each morning is unholy fucking torture.
“You tried to kill yourself?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Saoirse.”
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?” I ask.
“Stop saying my name like you know me,” she says as she gets up off the ground.
I have no choice but to get up, too.
“And while we’re at it, stop pretending like we know each other!” she continues. “We haven’t seen or heard from each other for thirteen years, Cillian. And let’s face it—even before then, we didn’t really know each other.”
“I know how you feel about that,” I reply coolly. “You already told me exactly how you felt when I showed up at your door that day.”
She shakes her head, trembling too hard to answer, and looks down at the grass beneath our feet.
“I need to go.”