“Makes sense. You know I’m here for you when that time comes though.”

“I know, and I appreciate that. It’s just gonna be a fucking shit storm when it does happen.” I nodded and threw a combination at him to stop him thinking too hard. But he wasn’t wrong. The fallout with his Irish Catholic family would be fucking huge. All I could do was stand by him.

“So you gonna tell me who they guy is?” I asked him. He grinned that same smile that had been plastered all over my face since I first kissed Em. Whoever he was, Liam had fallen hard.

“I can’t. He doesn’t want people knowing, and I respect that. He’s fucking hot though.”

“Well, that narrows it down. We’re all fucking hot.”

“I’ve been looking at your ugly mugs every day since I was about twelve so I don’t see you that way. None of you,” he said, then paused. “And even if I did, you still wouldn’t be as hot as my guy.”

I rolled my eyes. Was I really that fucking cheesy about Em?

“You realize that Tommy is gonna claim that he’s the reason you turned.”

Liam shuddered before replying “I didn’t turn. I was born this way, and if I had ‘turned,’ Tom would be a pretty good reason to turn back.”

“I hear you,” I said with a chuckle.

“Earnshaw’s gunning for Tommy since he hooked up with his sister. I’ll piss myself laughing if he ends up trying it on with your man just to prove he’s still got it.”

“Tom ain’t gay,” Liam replied with a scowl.

“I don’t think that matters…he’d flirt with your guy just to fuck with you. He does it to me all the time.” Liam didn’t like the sound of that at all. Good. Maybe he wouldn’t find it so funny anymore when Tom was pressing my buttons. Apparently I’d pressed a wrong one of Liam’s. His jabs became heavier, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was gonna give me a pounding while he worked shit out in his head.

I moved my head from side to side and bounced as I shook out the tension. Bring it on. He wasn’t the only one who needed to dump shit in the ring. If I was ever in need of any therapy, this square of canvas gave it to me.

* * *

I stood in front of my locker, searching through hundreds of cans of deodorant to find that one that wasn’t empty, when my girl’s hands wrapped themselves around my damp, overheated body.

“You’ll get yourself all wet,” I warned, pulling her hands around tighter so that her front was flush against my back.

“That’s pretty much a given whenever you’re standing in front of me wearing only a towel,” she said quietly into my ear before nibbling lightly on the lobe. Instantly I was hard and desperately fighting the urge to turn her around, slam her against the lockers, and wrap those gorgeous legs of hers around my waist. I sang quietly to myself.

“What are you doing, O’Connell?” she asked me, and I could hear the confusion in her voice.

“I’m singing the Irish National Anthem.”

“Yes, I can hear that,” she replied, and I could hear the humor in her voice. “What I meant was, why?”

“I’m trying to get rid of my hard-on because I’m a stone’s throw away from fucking you against my locker. Or on my bench. Or in the shower. Shit,” I said and stopped talking to start singing again. After a moment of standing really still against me, she said,

“Maybe you should teach me the words too.”

Half an hour later, I at least had a barrier of clothes between us as we walked, hand in hand together, back to the flat.

“How did it go with your mum today?” I asked, trying to sound more casual than I actually felt.

“My bodyguard told you about that, did he?” she asked with a smile that told me she wasn’t bothered.

“Like you keep any secrets from me anyway,” I snorted.

“It was okay,” she said with a sigh that told me it absolutely wasn’t okay.

“It’s just she’s this person I don’t really know at all. She comes by the cafe now and then, and sometimes when I’m busy she just drinks her tea and leaves without even speaking to me. Lately she’s more like the person she was before dad died, but I’m not the little girl I was back then so she doesn’t get to be the mum she was either. I worry that I’m making a horrible mistake letting her back into my life.”

I held back on saying exactly what I thought of her mother and recited the national anthem in my head for different reasons. Turns out it kind of worked as a filter between my shitty temper and my big mouth. “Did she say why she acted the way she did for all those years?” I asked. In my mind, there was no reason on earth she could have for doing what she did to Em.

“She said that when Dad died, Frank was a shoulder to cry on. When she couldn’t find a way back from the depression he gave her something to take. Instantly it made everything, all the pain and grief, go away until she felt nothing at all. I guess eventually she became dependent on whatever he was supplying to keep her like a zombie. Once she was hooked, he convinced her to give up work and live off Dad’s life insurance money, and he moved in. The rest is history.”

“So Frank’s wife thinks, by telling you this, all will be forgiven, and she gets to be a mother again. I must have missed the part of that story which didn’t make her sound like a selfish bitch.” Shit. I needed to start singing the fucking national anthem again. My brain to mouth filter was broken. She shrugged, and I knew she was fighting the urge to defend her mum. It’s what I always did whenever anyone attacked her. Even if they were right.

“I didn’t know what to say to her either. She’s told me that she’s clean of whatever Frank was giving her now.”

“Put her in a room with my ma,” I told her. “They can have a pity party together.”

“It is true that we are the awesome product of really shitty stock. Well, half shitty. My dad was pretty amazing. He’d have loved you!”

“Really?” I asked sarcastically. “I hate to break it to you, Sunshine, because I know you love your dad. But I reckon I’m pretty much the embodiment of every father’s worst nightmare.”

She stopped dead in the street, across the road from the block of flats, and turned to me. “You saw me when very few people in this world did. You took care of me, protected me, and made me happy. You waited until I was ready for you. Well sort of, and you never pushed me into being something I’m not. You love me more than anyone else in the world, and you became a better man for it. What more could any man ever want for his daughter? I love you. Dad would have loved you, and if you ever think anything else, you’re an idiot.”