Page 62 of Between Here and the Horizon
“You sneaking off in the early hours of the morning, fully intending not to come back.Right?”
I looked down at my feet.
“Lang?” He sighed heavily, rubbing his face in his hands. When he looked up at me, I could see the hard set in his eyes. “I want to meet them,” he said.I jerked, not sure I’d heard properly. Did he mean Connor and Amie? He couldn’t, surely. Not after being so violently apposed to the idea in the first place. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You don’t want to get too involved with me because of the children?” he continued.
“I don’t want to get too involved with you because I have to go soon, and I don’t want to be a shell of a person when I get back to L.A., Sully. I thought you wanted to keep this simple, too.”
He blew out a frustrated breath, bowing his head. “Maybe that’s what I wanted. At first. But now... I don’t know. Would it be the worst thing in the world if I wanted more?”
“I didn’t think you were capable. That’s what you said.”
“I don’t even know if I am. But I want to find out.”
I shook my head slowly. “Sully, I can’t risk hurting the children, confusing them, purely so we can figure out if we’re meant to be together or not. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I don’t just want to meet them because of us,” he said quickly. “When I saw Connor up on that stage the other night…” He sighed, glancing down at his interlinked hands.“I wanted to come and find you when it was all over then. It was like looking back in time, back to when Ronan and I were little. I couldn’t believe it. And Amie. She’s so small. So perfect. Seeingheractually terrified me. Neither Ronan nor I ever did anything to deserve such a perfect little girl. I felt so protective over both of them that it felt like I’d run head first into a brick wall. I couldn’t fucking handle it. But then over the days that followed…I don’t know. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. So I made them the presents. I saw you guys all playing in the snow yesterday morning, and…” He shook his head, refusing to look at me. “I thought,I’m meant to be a part of that. I don’t know how I fit into it, but I know that I do somehow.” Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, he looked like he was fighting for the right thing to say and coming up short. “So, it’s not just about you, Lang. It’s them, too. Do you understand? I’m not promising anything. I’m not saying I’m gonna take them or anything. I just…want to meet them.”
I was a lot of things all at once: Excited. Overjoyed. Anxious.Protective. Could the children take meeting Sully without being completely overwhelmed? It was a lot to take in. Ronan and Magda had never mentioned Sully to either of the children. They had no idea their father had a twin brother. The resemblance was going to freak them out, especially Connor.
But still. This was what Ronan had wanted. He had wanted Sully to be the children’s legal guardian eventually. He certainly would have wanted Connor and Amie tomeetSully in any case, despite the fact thathenever got around to introducing them when he was alive. I squeezed my car keys in my pocket, making up my mind.
“Okay then.”
Sully looked up quickly. “Okay?”
“Yes. But they’re so young, Sully, and they’ve been through a lot. Don’t fuck them over. I swear to god, if you do, I’ll castrate you and hang your balls out to dry. Do you copy?”
He flashed his teeth, probably smirking at my use of one of his favorite phrases. “Copy. I promise I won’t fuck them over. And Lang? Just so you know, I don’t plan on fucking you over, either. I promise that, too.”
******
“So, he looks just like him then? He’s exactly the same?” Connor hadn’t glanced up from his book since I sat him and his sister down to talk about Sully, but he was clearly paying attention because he was asking a lot of questions. “How come we didn’t know about him?”
“Your dad and Sully had a really bad argument, and they weren’t friends for a very long time. Your dad came here to make friends with him again, though, and he really wanted you to get to meet Sully.”
“I heard Mommy say Sully in her sleep,” Amie announced. “She was sad. She was crying in her dreams.”
“No, she didn’t,” Connor snapped. “That never happened.”
“That’s okay.” I put a hand on Connor’s shoulder, trying to cut that line of conversation off before he could grow agitated. “All I want to know right now is if you would like to have Sully over to the house?”
Connor closed his book and put it down on the arm of the chair. “What if we don’t want him to?” he asked.
“Then that’s okay. He doesn’t have to come here at all. I think you would like him, though.”
“I want him to come,” Amie sang. “I want to say thank you for my dinosaur.” I’d confessed that Sully was the one who’d sent them the gifts at the beginning of the conversation, and Amie’s eyes had lit up. Likely she was planning how to obtain even more dinosaur skeletons from this stranger so she could start up a proper collection.
“What about you, Connor?” He was silent. “Connor?” I went and sat down next to him. “I mean it, you know. It really is okay if you don’t want to meet him. I get it.”
“Why hasn’t he come and seen us before now?” he asked.
“Well.” God, this was going to be difficult. “You remember how you felt when your dad died, don’t you? Sully felt the same way. He’s been very sad. It’s taken him a long time to feel better, but now that he does he would really like to see you.” It would have been far too complicated to explain it any other way. Connor nodded a little and sniffed.
“Okay. He can come over. But if I don’t like him, I’m not going to talk to him.”
“That’s all right, buddy. It’s totally okay if you change your mind.”
I could imagine it all too well: Sully showing up and not knowing what to say or how to act. Connor feeling uncomfortable and running for his bedroom. Odds were that was exactly what was going to happen, but it was better than the alternative. It was better than Connor never meeting Sully, and it was better than Sully always wondering.
