Page 8 of Velvet Chains

“God, no,” I replied. “But he pretended like he did, which was nice.”

“Okay, keep that up for as long as he’ll go along with it,” Alek said. “And in the meantime, we have to get you to the ER.”

“And what about Kieran?” I asked.

Alek thought for a second. “Forget about him,” he said. “Right now, he doesn’t matter.”

He was wrong. Kieran mattered.

He had started to matter almost as much as the air I breathed. I already knew that cutting him off would be like peeling off my own skin.

But I also knew that, for Rosie, I would do anything.

Chapter Three: Kieran

Iwasn’t just going to leave her.

But I knew when I needed to give her space and this was one of those times. What I wanted to do was stay with her, hold her hand, pin her down…ask her why she hadn’t told me about my own daughter. Because I had a right to know.

Everything was spiraling.

I was spiraling.

It was easy to pretend that everything was under control when she was around because she tethered me to the spot, she made me feel like everything would be okay. I should’ve been furious—and there was a part of me that supposed that I was.

But after the fury was over, when she was sitting there with her best friend trying to make sense of what had just happened, I couldn’t help but feel something I had worked not to feel all my life.

Guilt.

I wondered if it was just the lack of sleep that was getting to me. I had slept only a fitful hour with her in my arms, her skin so warm it felt like raw sunlight in my arms.

I could’ve held her in place forever if she had let me. Then she had made me hide in the closet…and then her daughter had arrived and everything in my life had changed.

Because that little girl was mine.

I had only thought a bit about whether I wanted children, but the exercise felt removed and intellectual. It felt like a question someone might ask that didn’t make much of a difference like “do you have plans tonight?” or “what is your favorite color?”

Removed. Almost comical.

I felt the weight of all I’d missed—her first words, her first scraped knee, the way she must’ve climbed every couch like a mountain. I was furious. Hollow. Grieving a life I should’ve had and didn’t.

What was her favorite book? Her favorite animal? What did she dream of being when she was older?

These were questions I should’ve known the answer to, but I didn’t.

I didn’t even know her real name until this morning.

I thought of that as I drove home, the streets blurring as fat raindrops started to fall on my windscreen. My phone rang inmy pocket, interrupting my thoughts and the quiet music on the car’s radio. I glanced at the screen.

Tristan.

Sighing, I clicked on the accept button on the dashboard. “Go for Callahan.”

“Haha,” Tristan said. “Cute. Good morning, little brother.”

“Good morning,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Well, she won by a landslide last night,” he said. “So that isn’t great.”