Page 8 of Stronger Than Love

“Yeah?” The first genuine smile crossed her lips and I knew she was visualising the small boy from so long ago. My heart ached for that smile to be for me.

“I finally got the last of them up and away.” I tipped the bottle of beer to my lips.

“I never imagined him grown up, he was always so little in my memory.”

“We’ve all grown up,” I replied, and fuck me, she’d filled out in all the right places as well. Oonagh had alwaysbeen my ideal woman; no other had ever come close to claiming that title.

“Maybe.”

I hadn’t seen Oonagh since that summer we’d finally managed to admit our feelings for each other. It was also the summer that my life fell apart. She never knew why I left, but when I came back, she’d gone and never returned.

“Niall’s kept me up-to-date on your travels around the world.” It was a lame attempt at conversation, powered with the need to be close to her. For the first time in ten years, I could breathe properly again because we were both back here where we belonged.

“He always sent me chocolate packages everywhere I went.” A ghost of a smile crossed her lips. “Every birthday, without fail, he always remembered my favourites.”

She’d walked away and refused to answer my letters or phone calls. I never sent a card with the packages, just a parcel filled with everything she loved from home. It never occurred to me that she’d think they were from Niall.

“Yeah? At least he knew when your birthday was!” I joked to cover the despair that settled in my chest.

Her teeth bit into her bottom lip. “Some days those packages were the only thing that kept me going. Every one of them was special to me.”

I sipped my beer and stared off into the party. Every year, I’d selected all her childhood favourites from the chocolate and sweets we’d shared on our picnics in the fields. Finding out that she never knew they were from me was like a kick to my solar plexus.

Oonagh wandered off after a few minutes to pretend to interact. She looked the same, but something had fundamentally changed inside her, the light in her eyes dulled. Every time someone touched her when they talked, she tensed for a split second before relaxing again.

Niall appeared beside me. “I was down at Mr. Wilson’s shop earlier. He filled me in on all the recent gossip of the redevelopment of the village. Some hotshot artist has bought the old lighthouse and boathouse. He said Callum’s construction company won the bid to carry out the work.”

“Yeah, he seems to have big ideas about what he’s going to do to it. They have planning permission to make it into a massive dwelling or an exclusive resort.” I changed the conversation to Niall’s favourite topic of conversation—himself. “So, is this one a keeper?” I nodded toward his date of the moment.

He screwed up his face, wrinkling his nose. “No idea. I had too much to drink at an office function, and one thing led to another. It’s complicated since we work together, and both our fathers are partners.”

I whistled lowly. “You’re brave.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “What about you? No lucky ladies on the horizon?”

Over the years, Niall had met up with me for drinks in the city. I wasn’t a celibate monk, but neither was I emotionally attached to any of the women he saw in my life. My focus had always been to get my brothers out of the shit we grew up in and find a way to claim Oonagh one day. My last brother was in university and now the final piece of my puzzle had arrived back in my life.

“Nah.” I raised a cocky eyebrow and grinned. “There’s no taming this alley cat.”

He slapped my back, chuckling. “I hear you, man, I fucking hear you. What is it about women wanting to settle down and have babies? They need to take a leaf out of Oonagh’s book. She told me years ago that all she needed was her career because she refused to let any man break her again after that bastard at uni when she was twenty. We need more strong, independent women like my sister.”

Niall never noticed that I was a sponge for information about Oonagh when he talked about her. Someone broke her when she was twenty? We were twenty when we both lost our virginity to each other. He was away in Australia that summer ‘finding himself’. There was no way Oonagh was the type of woman to throw herself into a relationship after what we’d shared.

The table was filled with snacks and nibbles that I pretended to eat while discreetly observing Oonagh. Had I hurt her when I left? I’d had no choice when the police turned up at my door so long ago.

When I got back, Oonagh was gone and my youngest brothers were in care. All of Callum’s responsibilities shifted onto my shoulders overnight while he was incapacitated.

I’d been so focused on me, I never thought of what Oonagh had been going through.

She disappeared into the house and I left it a few minutes before I followed her. She tended to hide from the world in her window seat filled with books.

“Hey,” I interrupted her silent time, my hip braced against the counter as I stared at her.

A flush crept up her neck into her cheeks, and the side of her mouth puckered in as she chewed it distractedly. Finally, she met my eyes. “What do you want, Liam?”

That was a loaded question filled with endless possibilities. “Just checking you’re okay since you seem distracted.”

Her jaw tensed and a steely determination entered into her pale blue eyes. “That role belongs to my family and friends. We haven’t seen each other in ten years, so you no longer fit into either category, Liam.”

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