Someone on my side regardless of whether I was right or wrong.
And my father took that away from me.
He took her away from me.
I could still smell her on my hoodie, in the car, all around me, and the scent was too fucking much for me to take in this moment.
The fuck was I doing thinking that I could have a normal, healthy relationship when my life was the polar opposite?
Feeling utterly dead inside, I phoned up Kavanagh, much to his disgust, and told him that I was on the way to collect my sister.
When he threw open the front door a few minutes later, he looked like he was ready to throw slaps. Shannon appearing in the doorway quickly put to rest any notions of that.
“Joe?”
“It’s time to go, Shan.”
“It is?”
“Yeah. Mam needs a hand with the kids.”
I watched as resigned sadness settled in her eyes. “Okay.”
“She can stay,” Kavanagh argued and then turned to my sister. “You can stay.”
“No, we need to go,” I bit out, too fucking worn out to handle another argument, as I led my sister to the car. “Thanks for your help, Kavanagh.”
“Thanks, Johnny,” Shannon croaked out, looking over her shoulder as we walked away. “For everything.”
“Shannon, you don’t have to —”
“Come on, Shan,” I cut him off and snapped. “We need to get home.”
I didn’t want to do this.
I didn’t want to bring her back to hell with me, but I didn’t exactly have a choice, and, whether he realized it or not, I was doing him a huge fucking favor by taking my sister away.
I was protecting them both.
Because if our parents got wind of her being here, it would bring the world of trouble to his door.
Leaving her here would open a can of worms that I didn’t plan on sticking around to clean up.
I couldn’t do it.
Not tonight.
Not anymore.
My entire fucking world was caving in around me, and fighting another person’s battles was something I was incapable of doing in my current frame of mind.
Too much had gone down in the past forty-eight hours for me to comprehend or even think rationally.
My mother had given birth prematurely and the baby was dead.
My father had tried to rape my girlfriend.
And now, my girlfriend couldn’t stand the sight of me.
She wanted space, and I couldn’t blame her for it.
It was understandable; it fucking hurt like hell, but I got it.
I was the direct source to her pain, the link that had put her in danger to begin with.
It was entirely on me.
Uneasy and reckless, with notions whizzing around in my mind, I could feel the shift, the slip happening before it had, and I hated myself for it.
Still, I knew exactly where I was going the second that I had dropped my sister home.
Even though I accepted it, made peace with it, I still found myself despising myself for it.
“Is that what happened?” Shannon asked, dragging me from my thoughts, as I tried to keep my eyes on the road and focus on the conversation I was attempting to hold with my sister. “Was she in the hospital all weekend and we didn’t know?”
I nodded.
“Oh, Joey.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “She was all alone.”
“She had him,” I bit out, hands tightening on the wheel. “He was with her, and he’s home now.”
“What are we going to do, Joe?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Shannon.”
“It’s okay,” she was quick to soothe, reaching across to rub my shoulder. “You don’t have to know. You’re only eighteen.”
Yeah, I was eighteen, but that was all my sister was right about.
Because none of this was okay.
It had never been okay, and it never would be.
Of course I needed to know what to do.
Deep down inside, I’d always known what to do.
It was a matter of overcoming the brainwashing fear that had paralyzed me into silence.
And seeing what he did to Molloy tonight?
Yeah, that was my breaking pointing.
Never again would I cover for them.
Fucking never.
“I can’t be there, Shan,” I admitted, unwilling to go into the details of tonight’s events, thinking of Molloy’s wishes. “I can’t live like this anymore.”
“I know,” she replied, but it was a generic response that didn’t mean shit.
Stiffening with tension, I opened my mouth and uttered the words that I knew would cause a shitstorm, but needing to say it regardless. “I think we should consider what Aoife said.”
“What about what Aoife said?” she was quick to ask, turning to watch me.
She knew exactly what I meant.
“Calling this in,” I admitted anyway and then braced myself for the bomb I was sure would erupt.
“You must be joking.”
I couldn’t answer her.
I could hardly look her in the eye.
The betrayal blazing from her blue eyes, directed at me, was too fucking much.
“I am not going into care,” Shannon screamed. “You’re fine. You’re over eighteen. You’ll get to live your own life and walk away. I will be put in a home!”
“Shannon,” I tried to placate, needing her to hear me out on this.
I knew she was scared, so was I, but this had to stop.
We couldn’t live like this anymore.
If something didn’t give, someone was going to die in that house.
It would either be him or me.
“Aoife was talking to me last night about my future, and it made a lot of sense—”
“Your future,” she spat, like it was the most disgusting thing I could possibly say to her.
“No, not just my future – that didn’t come out right.“ My shoulders slumped in shame. “Not just me, Shannon. All of us.”
“I can’t believe you would even think about doing this to us after what happened to Darren,” she cried, shaking her head. “How could you think about doing that to us, Joey?”
Tears stung my eyes and I had never felt so fucking lost and hopeless.
Mam feared me.
Shannon felt betrayed by me.
Molloy couldn’t stand the sight of me.
The only three women I had ever loved in my whole life, and I was letting them down left, right, and center.
I couldn’t seem to do the right thing by anyone.
You are such a fuck up, lad.
“If you want to go then go!” Shannon screamed accusingly. “Go off and leave us! Go be with Aoife and have a wonderful life together! I’ll protect the boys—”
“You can’t even protect yourself!” I roared, losing my cool, as my pain hemorrhaged out of my body in words. “I’m doing that, Shannon. Me! I’m the one trying to soften the blows and they just keep coming!”
“Then maybe you and Dad will both get lucky and he’ll finish me off the next time,” she sobbed, dropping her head in her hands. “It’ll save you the worry, and him the energy.”
“Don’t fucking say that, Shannon,” I strangled out, flinching from both the impact of her words and the thought of it happening.
She couldn’t have hurt me more if she stabbed me through the heart.