Page 353 of Redeeming 6

It broke my heart because I knew she had put more holes in Joey than his bastard of a father ever had. There was a Marie-Lynch-sized hole in my boyfriend’s heart that no amount of loving could heal.

God knows I’d tried.

She didn’t deserve Joey’s unconditional love, not when she had never loved him the way he deserved. Yet she had always received it anyway. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones elevating my frazzled emotions and causing me to think more irrationally than usual, but I was so fucking angry with her. Her death, as horrible and unspeakable as it had been, didn’t absolve her of the sins she had committed against her children when she was alive.

Those sins which had left her second-born son’s heart almost unsalvageable.

All he’d ever wanted was her love.

And she never gave that to him.

Bitterly sad for all they had lost, I looked around, knowing that the other Lynch children would be okay in the long term. Darren would return to the life he had built for himself in Belfast, while Shannon and the three younger boys had the Kavanaghs to care for them. It wouldn’t be easy, with plenty of teething pains along the way, but they would adapt.

They sure as hell had a better chance now.

That left my Joe.

The one shipping himself out of his family.

Shipping himself out of Ballylaggin.

Out of my life.

He had checked himself into a rehabilitation center up the country. Once realizing how severe his addiction was, the Kavanaghs had offered to finance it, and in a rare moment of clarity, Joey had signed the papers.

When his mother’s funeral service ended, he was leaving.

For the whole summer.

Maybe forever.

Fuck.

Don’t think like that, Aoife.

Last night, when he questioned whether he was doing the right thing by going, I had fiercely supported and encouraged his decision, even though it broke my heart to do it.

He needed to go.

And I needed to let him.

Exhaling a pained breath, I tightened my hold on the red rose I was fisting and closed the space between us, ignoring all the curious stares and gawks I received in the process.

Some people knew.

More people didn’t.

Truth be told, I didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought. They could speculate all they wanted about the drastic weight gain I was attempting to conceal behind my black dress.

Fuck them all.

Not stopping until I was shoulder to shoulder with the only boy I had ever loved, I kept my eyes trained on his mother’s freshly dug grave and tossed the single rose inside before finally finding the courage to face him.

Keep it together, Aoife.

Don’t scare him off.

Don’t try anything stupid.

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