“So?”

I look up, biting my lip. “I want to go back home for a visit. I miss my mom and dad a lot.”

He nods his head. “Before or after the wedding?”

“Before.”

He looks down, swinging the bottle at his side. “When?”

“This weekend.”

Looking up at me, he holds my gaze. “I’ll make it happen.”

“Oh, you don’t have to. I just wanted to let you know where I was going.”

“I want too. I’ll have our jet take ya.”

Surprised, I ask, “You have a jet?”

“Yeah,” he says with a nod.

“That’s cool, I guess.”

“Eh, being O’Callaghan has its perks. Today though, no perks. Just a shitestorm.”

I smile as I look back down, wringing my hands together. He then asks, “Are ya coming home?”

I meet his gaze and shrug. “If you want me to.”

“Of course I do,” he says, reaching for me and wrapping his arms tightly around me. Nuzzling my neck, he kisses it as his fingers dance along my ribs. I can smell the beer on his breath and it reminds me of the pub. Of the first few days here when I was a crying heap of sadness. He helped me out of that, but yet, I’m trying to push him away.

Why? What is wrong with me?

“I want to go with ya and meet yer parents, Amberlyn.”

Cuddling my nose in the crook of his neck, I feel how hot his skin is underneath my lips as my tears splash against his face. I want that more than anything, I do, but I really don’t understand how he still wants to be around me after all the hell I’ve caused. Whispering still, he says, “I also don’t want to be away from ya a second longer.”

Kissing his neck, I nod my head. “I don’t want that either.”

“So we’ll go together?”

Pulling back, I met his gaze as my eyes drip with tears. “I would like that.”

I can barely see the two tombstones that sit before me.

My eyes are full of tears and my lip starts to wobble as my heart pounds in my chest. There are flowers all over both their graves, and I wonder if my uncle had something to do with this. I spent most of the morning at my old family home, packing and going through my parents’ things and also the things I left behind. It was hard, but I was happy with what I kept.

Which was almost everything.

Declan has been very sweet, saying that we’d “find a place for it” whenever I asked if I could have it shipped back home. He has been a saint since we left Fiona’s. I assumed we would leave that Friday, but he had us on the jet this morning with arrangements for us at a hotel with the promise that we could stay as long as I wanted. When I told him that I wanted to have stuff shipped, he had a moving company at the house within an hour. I’m not sure how my uncle feels about it all, but then, he is getting my house at a steal of a price, so he will be okay.

My only complaint so far is that we haven’t talked much. It’s been very simple yes-and-no questions. It’s weird and I don’t like it, but then I think that maybe he is giving me space to think. I never did tell him that we were good, but then he never asked. All he’s really been doing is talking on his phone or checking emails. Even when I was going through everything, he was on his phone. I don’t know if it’s his way of letting me be or what. I know he still cares and loves me—he’s done nothing but show that since we left—I just wish he’d get off his phone. But then I feel like an asshole because he’s missing work to be here with me. We are not there to do last-minute planning for the wedding because I wanted to come home. He won’t even answer his mom’s calls. He’s shutting down on me, on everyone, and it’s all my fault.

He brought me here to see my mom and dad. Here I am, and I have no clue what to do or even how to move.

Seeing their names on the tombstones is so very real. I am used to seeing my dad’s name. There wasn’t one Wednesday or Sunday a month that we didn’t come to clean off his grave and set new flowers out. The flowers that lie on their graves now are gorgeous, and I’m surprised that someone took the time to put them there. Especially if it was my uncle since he hated my dad. My mom always said that he thought my dad was bad news, but he was completely wrong.

My dad was a great man.

Looking at his grave, I swallow my sob as I read the words that will be etched in my brain for the rest of my existence.

Tomas Albert Reilly

7-2-1970 to 9-23-2007

His soul to Amberlyn.

His heart to Ciara.

“Wow, that is beautiful,” Declan says from beside me, and I look back at him, wiping away my tears with the back of my hand.

Glancing back at the stone, I close my eyes, wanting to hear him say it to me. But I don’t hear anything. Nothing, except my sobs. Whispering, I say, “He always said that to us. That my mom had his heart and I had his soul. I was the one who told her to put it on his tombstone.”

Lacing his fingers with mine, he brings my hand up to his lips, kissing it softly as he cocks his head to my mom’s. “I think that’s my favorite though.”

Glancing at my mom’s stone, I fully expect to lose my mind crying, but I don’t.

I smile.

Ciara Lynn Reilly

5-16-1970 to 5-25-2014

The heart of Tomas.

The best mom in the whole entire world to Amberlyn.

Reading the words on the tombstone, my tears start to fall faster, but my grin remains. I’m drawing strength from Declan as he moves my hand into his other, while his hand moves up and down my back. Kissing my temple, he whispers, “That is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. When I die, do something like that for me, yes?”

I shake my head, closing my eyes as I lean into him. “Please don’t leave me first. I couldn’t do it.”

“Neither could I,” he says. “So let’s wait till we’re old and gray, yeah, and die together.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I say, even though I know that is the silliest thing we could ever plan for. Life is the most uncertain thing in the world. One day things are great, next day they aren’t. One day you’re alive, the next you’re dead. There is no promise for the next breath. It can be taken from you in a blink of an eye. There is no guarantee.

But in this moment, maybe I can hope that Declan and I will go together.