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SHE HAS HIM, BUT YOU HAVE ME

Hugh

JANUARY 1, 2000

T HE FIRST THING I NOTED WHEN WE PULLED UP AT O LD H ALL H OUSE WAS A FAMILIAR car that shouldn’t have been there.

The way Lizzie squeezed my hand when she noticed the car assured me that we were thinking the same thing.

What the fuck is he doing here?

Mark Allen had been prohibited from stepping foot on this property since last summer. Ever since Mike realized that Mark had impregnated his teenage daughter and then taken her to England to get an abortion—but Mike also considered Mark to be the driving force behind Caoimhe’s failed Leaving Cert to boot.

I knew for a fact the cretin knocked up Lizzie’s sister, because I had heard it from the horse’s mouth. I hadn’t been intentionally eavesdropping, but when I slipped downstairs to grab a drink during a sleepover, I’d heard Catherine and Mike talking about it. In graphic detail . Returning to my makeshift bed on Lizzie’s bedroom floor, I’d laid back down in bed and never once breathed a word about what I heard that night.

Not even to Liz.

So why now, after half a year of giving Mark the cold shoulder, was Mike standing on his front porch hugging him ?

“He’s back,” Lizzie whispered, tightening her hold on my hand. Sniffling, she turned to look at me with wide, glassy eyes. “Why is he back, Hugh?”

“I don’t know, Liz,” I admitted, pulling her hand onto my lap. While I fully accepted that grief evoked strange reactions from people, this took the biscuit.

“Best behavior, Hugh,” Mam instructed from the driver’s seat. Unfastening her seat belt, she turned back to give me a warning look. “I mean it.”

Jaw ticking, I swallowed my frustration and watched as Mam climbed out and walked up to the house to join Caoimhe, Mike, and the cretin.

“Look at me,” I instructed, turning my attention to my girlfriend. “Liz, look at me.”

Reluctantly, she did.

“Tell them I’m staying with you,” I instructed, squeezing her hand. “When we go over there, tell them you want me to stay.”

“I do want you to stay,” she strangled out, unfastening her seat belt to crawl onto my lap. “I don’t want to be here without you.”

“I know you do,” I coaxed, wrapping my arms around her. “I just need my mam to hear you say it because otherwise she’ll think I’m overstepping.”

“I want you to overstep,” she pleaded, wrapping her arms around my neck so tightly, I felt slightly dizzy. “Whenever Mam gets sick, Caoimhe always gets to have him over.” She choked out a pained sob. “It’ll happen again this time. Dad will leave and I’ll be left alone.”

“No, it won’t because I won’t let that happen,” I promised, holding her close. “She has him, but you have me.”

According to Mike, things weren’t great at the hospital, and one of the nurses had suggested letting the girls visit their mother—just in case.

Mam had dropped all three of them back to the hospital and had agreed with Mike that I could stay the night, to be there for Lizzie when she got home.

This was how I found myself in my current position, sitting opposite Mark Allen in the front room of Old Hall House, waiting for the sisters to get home.

He sat in the armchair on the left side of the open fire, while I sat in the one opposite him on the righthand side.

Drumming my fingers on the armrests, I continued to stare at the asshole across from me, silently daring him to say something. I’d never thought much about eye color before tonight, but after staring at his soulless eyes for over an hour, I was glad my eyes were brown and Lizzie’s were blue because this prick had ruined green eyes for me.

There was a fire poker within reaching distance of my right hand, and I wouldn’t think twice about shoving it up his hole if he started his shit.

Just one word.

That’s all I needed.

Like usual, he wasn’t nearly as brave in my presence as he was around Gibs. It was like I’d told our parents a thousand times: Mark was a fucking bully, and bullies were nothing if not cowards.

He knew I had taken his measure. I could see it in the nervous way he turned away whenever he dared to look in my direction and found me staring right back at him. I could smell the uncertainty rolling off him in waves.

It also didn’t hurt that I was closing in on him in the height department. He was eighteen, while I wasn’t even thirteen yet, and he barely had an inch on me.

“Do you mind?” he finally broke the strained silence we’d been stewing in. “Can you stop fucking staring at me like that?”

“If you don’t like it, you could always leave,” I deadpanned, purposefully keeping my eyes trained on his. “You know where the door is.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t ya?” he sneered. “You and your sister can’t wait to see the back of me.”

“Because we have good judgment,” I shot back dryly. “Unlike others.”

“Meaning?”

“Do you need me to spell it out for you?”

“What the fuck is your problem with me, Biggs?” he demanded then, losing his cool. “I’ve never bothered ya, but you’re hell-bent on making trouble for me every chance you get.”

“I don’t like you,” I replied simply. “I can’t stand you, truth be told. The way you look, the way you speak, the way you think, the way you drive, the way you conduct yourself. Everything about you disgusts me.” Leaning back in my chair, I gave him a harsh appraisal. “And that’s not taking into account that you’re a sadistic, not to mention pathetic, bully who gets off on tormenting a child who had to watch his father and sister drown in front of him.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I was there that day on the boat, asshole, and I was at the funeral, too. I remember everything . I especially remember the smirk you had on your face when my friend was saying goodbye to his father, who, just so happens to be my godfather.”

“ Was your godfather,” Mark shot back with a cruel smirk. “Joe Gibson is past tense.”

Instead of losing the head, I smiled in response, and it seemed to throw him off-kilter.

“Is that how you do it?” I asked with a low chuckle. “How you get under people’s skin? You target their deceased loved ones?” I laughed again, thoroughly enjoying how his face reddened. “Jesus, you’re even more pathetic than I realized.”

“Oh yeah?” Sitting forward, he rested his elbows on his thighs and narrowed his green eyes in challenge. “Well, I could tell you a thing or two that would wipe that smug look off your face.”

Grinning, I mirrored his actions by sitting forward and resting my arms on my thighs. “Go for it.”

Mark opened his mouth to respond, only to think better of it at the final second and shake his head instead. “Nah. You’re not worth the effort.”

I laughed harder. “You are such a coward.”

“You do realize I’m in sixth year, and you’re in sixth class, don’t ya?” he growled, glowering at me. “I could snap you in half if I wanted to.”

“Don’t worry about what class I’m in,” I mused, still chuckling. “I’m sure by the time I reach sixth year, you’ll be ready to graduate.”

“You think you’re so fucking smart.” He seethed, balling his hands into fists. “You mark my words, Biggs, one day in the future, when you’re all grown-up, I’m going to hunt you down, and I’m going to put a bullet in your head.”

“Oh yeah?” Still smiling, I locked eyes on him and warned, “Or maybe, one day in the future, when I’m all grown-up, I’ll hunt you down and put a bullet in yours.”