Wild Irish Envy (Copperline #2) (32 page)

My mind reeled. His last thoughts had been about me – his friend – and his girlfriend.
He knew.
He knew how she felt about me.

And he had known how I felt about her. I was sure of it as the last thing he said to me echoed around in my brain. His dejected anger.

I suddenly couldn’t breathe.

“It’s like I can still hear him screaming at me, yelling that the only reason I was with him was to be close to you,” she whispered.

“Was it?”

The words left my mouth before I could catch them. Bitter and icy. The same way my chest felt knowing that, not only had I left my friend alone when he needed me most, but he’d known the whole time how I coveted his girl. How I’d wanted her to be mine.

And he knew that she had wanted me, too.

Fliss’ eyes went wide. “You really think I’d do that? You think I’d date someone for months, that I’d sleep with him, because I wanted to be near you?”

“You pretty much did that in Dublin,” I said coldly. The final nail in the coffin.

She sat up and pulled away, shock and betrayal darkening her eyes. “That was different.”

“Yeah, how?”

“I cared about Trent,” she said, staring at me in appalled awe before digging through the clothes to find one of my shirts. She pulled it on over her head, and it fell to almost reach her knees.

“Right, you cared about him so much that you came onto me at his bleedin’ funeral.”

Fliss froze in shock, shock I felt, too, at my words. Words I didn’t mean, not towards her, anyway. Towards myself.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” she whispered at first, and her voice grew louder and stronger as her anger took hold. As she fired up gloriously. “You left him. Over and over again. I stayed with him through a lot of really tough shit, and that’s a fuck of a lot more than you ever did.”

Her accusation stung, it cut deep because it was true, and my reply narrowed, aiming to strike her where it hurt. “I couldn’t be around him because it always meant being around you.”

“You’re blaming me? You’re blaming me for you bailing on him? You fucking asshole,” she spat, shaking as she stormed to the bedroom door. The reverberations of it slamming behind her shook the windows and then faded into the sound of her running down the stairs.

Running away.

It wasn’t fair. None of it. Not the way I’d treated her all these years, pushing her away. Not the way I kept reeling her back towards me.

I knew I had fucked up. I had no doubt in my mind. All the shite that had happened between us would have never come to pass if I’d only made my move that very first day.

I kept hurting her. I kept hurting myself.

At some point, I had to stop it, but I didn’t really know any good way to do it.

Fliss didn’t come home that night. Drew told me she had pulled some clothes from the dryer and said she was going to spend the night at Lily’s.

She said she needed to be away from me for a little while.

What she really needed was to be away from me for good. She needed to be able to move on, and I wasn’t sure she ever would as long as I was here. This community was too small. Even taking Butte into account, we knew so many of the same people. Our lives were tangled together in a way that just wouldn’t release either one of us.

Unless I left. Unless I went home to Ireland.

I didn’t want to. I loved Montana. I loved my life in Ophir.

But I loved Fliss more.

I heard her come into the house the following evening. I listened to her footsteps slowly climb the stairs and turned to look at her as she opened the door to come into our room. She’d been to work, as evidenced by the clothes she wore. As I stood, I noted her eyes looked tired and red. Her cheeks were slightly ruddy, as though she’d only just managed to quell the tears.

All of which told me I was about to do the right thing.

“This isn’t going to work, Fliss, and it’s not fair to either of us. It might have, once, but I can’t… not anymore. Not with everything that has happened, everything I know now.” I shifted my feet and released a heavy sigh. “He’ll always be a ghost between us.”

Her voice caught and she bit down on her trembling lip, but she didn’t speak.

So I did.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?” she whispered with a wry twist in her tone. It was hard to tell if it was a question or a statement.

“It was all a mistake,” I said, trying to ignore the agonizing flinch she gave at my words. “I should have never gone through with this. I should have known it wouldn’t work.”

She stepped around me, hanging her jacket over the chair, standing with her back to me.

“I’m going back to Dublin.”

Fliss turned to look at me. “So you would rather go back, possibly get me thrown in jail, than stay married to me to get your green card.”

“If I go talk to Frank,” I said, shaking my head, “tell him it’s just not working out between us and I’m going back to Ireland, they won’t do anything to ya. I’ll make sure of it.”

“You sound like you’ve thought a lot about this.”

I nodded. “All night. All day. It’s really the best thing to do.”

She looked down and exhaled sadly. “Then I guess there is no reason to pretend anymore.”

“None,” I agreed with a quiet conviction. “None at all.”

For a second, just the briefest moment of time, she glanced back up at me with a sharp jagged pain reflecting in her eyes. A fraction of a second, faster than the eye could flick.

And then it was gone. She turned towards the door, quietly murmuring almost to herself.

“Right… I’ll, um… I guess I’ll go see if I could stay with Lily again tonight.”

“Wait,” I said, and she stopped but didn’t turn around. “You can stay here, Fliss.”

She slowly turned and lifted her confused gaze to look at me.

“But you…” Shaking her head, her voice trailed off.

“Your stuff is all here. I’ll go crash on Brannon’s couch.” I shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant, trying to lighten the situation. No hard feelings and all. “He kinda owes me.”

Her lips lifted in a pained but polite half-smile, her eyes lowered as she gave a hint of a nod.

“Okay. I’ll take tomorrow morning off to pack up my things.”

“It’s not a huge rush. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stay after… after I’ve talked to immigration. They might just haul me off straightaway.” I twisted my lips wryly, and motioned towards the door leading from the bedroom. “The fellas… they’re a rough bunch sometimes, but they’ve gotten pretty fond of you. I’d be willing to bet they’d let you stay as long as you need.”

“You and your bets,” she murmured sadly. She didn’t look up, but swallowed hard. “You should be able to see them, to spend time with them… before you go, though.” Her voice had dropped low, and she turned away from me to walk over to the bed where she sat with her back to me. “I’ll figure something out.”

My heart actually ached with a severity I’d never known. I’d always heard of it. Feckin’ hell, I’d written songs about it, those physical pangs of heartbreak. Suddenly, I had to leave. The air seemed so thick it choked me.

“Be seein’ ya, Fliss,” I said.

I turned and opened the bedroom door, stepping through as though the devil was on my heels, and began to pull it closed. And just before it shut behind me, I heard a soft, somber whisper.

“But you won’t…”

Brannon took one look at my face and reached in the cupboard for a bottle of Jameson. He grabbed two glasses and we sat on the couch. We didn’t talk about anything meaningful. We sure as hell didn’t talk about Fliss and why I was there instead of home getting into bed with my wife. We were fellas, so that wasn’t really what we did.

We just drank until the earliest light of dawn started to border the horizon. I started feeling a little sappy. I didn’t want to talk about her, but, feckin’ hell, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I couldn’t stop missing her. The pain became visceral and suffocating.

“What are you doing here, Denny?” Brannon finally asked.

Sober, I knew it was over. I knew it was never going to work. But I was shlossed off my arse and, as drunk Denny, that didn’t seem to matter. Drunk Denny was a right bastard who didn’t care what it would do to Fliss if he had Brannon take him home to her. If he climbed into bed with her while she slept and held her in his arms, close to his heart to ease that horrible loneliness he felt.

But regret came swiftly when I woke up as sober Denny again, because I had fucked with her head and pushed her away one last time. When I awoke, alone in the bed I had shared for the past few months with my wife, she was gone. The closet doors were open and there was a gaping emptiness where her clothes used to be.

And she had left her silver wedding ring on the table by the bed.

I got a call from Frank at the immigration office a few days later, reminding me of our marriage fraud interview appointment. This had been a concern of mine since Larry had chosen
not
to stamp my passport after that initial interview. That wasn’t really a very good sign, but a marriage fraud interview wasn’t unheard of. That’s what Frank had said, anyway. It was all pretty standard.

I didn’t call or message Fliss, thinking I’d try to smooth things over with them myself first. So I drove to Butte and sat in the office waiting for my turn.

The door to the interview room was closed, and I could hear muffled voices, both male and female, from the sound of it. The mumbles continued for about ten minutes or so until they suddenly began to get louder. More frantic.

Suddenly the door flew open, and Fliss stormed out with Larry the fuckhead hot on her heels, followed up by Frank. Sitting along the far wall where I was, none of them saw me at first.

“Why don’t you just tell us the truth,
Mrs. Byrne
,” Larry scathingly suggested. “You’re liable to end up in prison if you don’t. This is a felony, and not even daddy the sheriff will be able to help you. So, just tell us the truth, and we might be able to work something out.”

“I am telling you the truth,” she cried, whirling around. “All of it. Right from the start. I don’t care what you do to me, but you have to realize that
I love him!
”