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She nods. “This isn’t just some news, Marco. It’s not something that’s like… disappointing, but not a big deal, to learn. I built my entire life around the assumption that my mum was out there, in hiding. That my father, or Kieran, had done something awful to her to separate us. I became a police officer, I sold information to Liam, all so that I could find her,” she says.
Her voice is desperate. It cracks, like something inside of her is fracturing.
I didn’t, however, miss that she saidI sold information to Liam.
“She wasn’t forced away from me. She wasn’t hurt, or captured, or anything like that. She chose to walk away. Because she sold me. I wasn’t some kind of… product of love or anything like that. My mother made a deal with my father, and she sold me as part of it,” she spits out bitterly.
I shake my head. “It’s all fucked up.”
“That’s it?”
Looking at Roisin, I shrug. ‘What else do you want?”
Her mouth opens, then closes. “I don’t know. Maybe for you to be mad? Or just… I don’t know,” she admits.
“There are times when things happen to us and we can’t do anything about them. You were a kid. You had absolutely no influence in your mother’s decision. You didn’t choose to be conceived under a contract, you didn’t choose to be brought up the way you were. There’s nothing you can do about that. There never was,” I rumble.
Roisin rolls her eyes. “Look who’s doing therapy now.”
“All I’m saying is that life is fucking short and you only have so much time and energy. Don’t spend it looking at everything that could have happened. Don’t waste it on people who did what they did, if you don’t want to. You’re a grown-ass adult. If you want to keep talking to your mother, and feel that same shame or anger or whatever it is you’refeeling, do it. If you want to cut her out, do it. Either way, you get to choose.”
“Is that what you’d do?” she retorts. Her cheeks are flushed, and I can see her lips pressed together in anger.
Roisin narrows her eyes at me. “You’d just cut someone out?”
“Yes,” I nod.
She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I’ve seen the lengths you’ll go to for your family.”
“As would you,” I snap.
Roisin freezes, the cup halfway to her lips. “What?”
“You, apparently, would do things for family too. You just said that you sold information to Liam. What information, Roisin?” I rasp.
My own anger is building. If she sold me out, if that was the reason for that day in the cottage…
“Oh shut the fuck up,” she barks at me. “I was feeding Liam information from my job so that he would help me keep looking for my mum. God damn it Marco, not everything is about you!” she shouts.
She punctuates her shout with a champagne glass, tossed directly at my head. I duck, and it descends into the spring. Roisin makes an angry little noise, then turns on her heel, stomping up and out of the stone steps, toward the Range Rover.
I watch her go, noting how the water slides down off of her perfect ass.
Fuck, she didn’t even stop to get a towelor the sandals I’d brought to cover her feet. With the near inch of snow on the ground, she’s going to freeze.
Goddamn it.
“Don’t run away from me like that, Roisin!” I bellow. I slosh up and out of the spring, grabbing the bag of towels as I go. “You don’t get to run away from me!”
“I do whatever I want!” she tosses over her shoulder. “You’re not my keeper, Marco DeLuca!”
“Like hell I’m not!” I growl.
Roisin might be athletic, but she’s short. Without breaking into a somewhat undignified run, she’ll never escape my longer legs.
I use that to my full advantage. I grab one of the towels out of the bag, then get it in both of my hands. I come up behind her and bundle her in the towel, wrapping it around her arms and torso.
She kicks and hisses like an angry cat, but I just wrap the towel tighter. I scoop Roisin up, tossing her over my shoulder while I stalk up to the Range Rover.