That’s rare for me.
* * *
I don’t know how long I sit there. Probably a good half hour or so.
Which is why I nearly jump out of my skin when I feel a shadow just behind me.
“It’s only me.” I catch a glimpse of Cillian’s blond hair glowing in the moonlight as he lowers himself down onto the grass beside me.
“Jesus,” I breathe. “You didn’t make a sound.”
“Actually, I did,” he replies. “You were just way off somewhere else.”
The cat jumps into Cillian’s arms. I can’t help but smile.
“Old friends?” I guess.
Cillian chuckles. “I’m the one who brought him to the compound. I found him as a kitten. The night I said goodbye to Sean, actually.”
“Wow. So he’s…”
“Old,” Cillian finishes my sentence. “Very.”
“Still going strong.”
“He’s definitely been looked after well,” Cillian says, poking the cat’s fat belly teasingly. “Not everyone who has lived in this house can say that.”
I glance towards the headstones. “Is that why I’m sitting in front of your grave?”
Cillian gives me a dark smile. “It was Da’s way of coming to terms with the way we left,” he explains. “I think it was easier for him to think of us as dead.”
“That’s…”
“Insane?”
“That’s one word for it,” I concede.
“We left in disgrace,” Cillian continues. “In Da’s mind, I betrayed the family. Sean abandoned it.”
“Is that really what he thinks?” I ask.
“Da feels I should never have gone up against Brody Murtagh. That rich prick may have been a dimwit, but he was a dimwit with power. Pick your battles—it’s one of the first rules you need to master in this life.”
“If you had listened to your father,” I say, realizing what he’s telling me, “I would have been raped.”
“Yes. Which is why I didn’t listen.”
“Do you regret it?”
He fixes me with a soulful stare. “Not for a second.”
The fervency and the ferocity with which he replies takes me off guard. There’s no hesitation, not even the stammer of one.
“Why?” I ask. I’m genuinely curious.
“Why?” he repeats. “You would have been raped, Saoirse. You would have been passed around like an object.”
“Cillian,” I say softly, “you came back for me and I turned you away. No one would blame you for regretting defending me that day.”