CONNOR’D SPENT his entire life carving himself into a man his da would be proud of. As life went on, it seemed Connor dogged Donal’s every step, matching the Irish-born cop stride for stride. They shared a love for the job—even as a kid, wearing the blue and a badge was all Connor had ever wanted. He’d stayed up late at night to watch his father come in after a long shift, peering through the window, then sneaking downstairs to watch him take off his gun belt and lock up his weapon for the night. He’d seen his parents dance in the kitchen and laugh over a shared midnight meal, catching up on their day and basking in each other’s humor.
He’d grown up wanting that… thinking one day he’d come home to a little boy and a woman who’d kiss him on the mouth while teasing him about his big feet. There’d not been a moment he’d doubted his future. Not the uniform. Not the badge. Not the woman. Then suddenly, his future tilted, and Connor couldn’t find his feet underneath him.
So he did the only thing he knew to do during one of those times: reach for his da.
He just didn’t know if his da would reach back.
If Connor had to be honest—so fucking brutally honest—he’d have said the biggest fear he had in his life wasn’t death. Death just meant leaving things unfinished. What frightened him the most was the look on his father’s face when Donal suddenly realized the son he’d raised wasn’t the man he’d wanted him to be.
When he was young, hearing his father say “I’d have thought better of ye, Connor boy” killed him. There were blackened nuggets in his soul, dusty, foul stones of disappointment and regret Connor couldn’t step around without feeling dirty. Each of those moments burned to ash inside of him had come from a certain look on his da’s face, and the shame of those nuggets weighed heavily with every breath he took. Especially since he wasn’t going to be the son Donal Morgan expected, not the first born who’d one day step into his father’s shoes, and Con knew it would kill him even if life went on around him. He would die from the depth of his failure.
“I’ve fallen, Da.” Connor snagged a bottle of Irish whiskey from the study’s shelves and joined his father on one of the room’s couches. He’d asked his father for some time during a Sunday family gathering. They’d finally gotten rid of the threat of a cold-blooded killer hunting Sionn’s lover, Damien, and the Morgans were doing what they did best—eat, argue, and drink. “Fallen in love, I mean.”
“And that’s got you worried?” God, his father looked so happy. Donal’s face lit up when he smiled, and to Connor, it always felt like his father’s happiness warmed the family, broad sweeps of sunshine pouring over cold mountains. He would be dimming that light, and his gut grumbled from the sour pouring into it. Donal must have seen something on his face, because his da frowned slightly as he poked at Connor’s arm. “What’s wrong? Is she married? What’s her name?”
Connor wondered how Quinn and Kane made speaking the truth look so easy. They’d both done it together, sitting at a Sunday dinner table and casually dropping a gay bomb all over the roast chickens their mother’d made that afternoon. From what Connor remembered, he thought nothing of Quinn’s postscript mention of his homosexuality. Kane’s had come as a surprise because he’d never imagined having two gay—or in Kane’s case, bisexual—brothers. Now he was sitting on the other side of that line, and saying those words—such oddly damning words—aloud made him appreciate how strong his younger brothers had been.
Because he was scared shitless to speak the truth he’d been avoiding the fuck out of for the past couple of weeks as a madman stalked his family, and he tried to be as nonchalant about checking up on Forest as he could. If saying out loud what he thought made his heart clench, he couldn’t even imagine what he could say to the drummer about why he’d been avoiding him.
If confronted, Connor would have made up some bullshit story about a man named Parker targeting his family’s loved ones, but that would leave so much of Con open to be picked at, and he couldn’t risk those wounds being opened at a time he needed to focus.
It would have also meant he would have had to acknowledge what he was about to share with his father—Parker had been going after anyone connected to Damien. His assault on Miki proved that, and attacking Sionn’s pub manager proved it didn’t matter how nebulous a connection was, Parker would exploit it, and Connor couldn’t risk putting Forest in that sick bastard’s line of sight.