I took Carrie home that night and vowed to never let her out of my arms for the rest of my life.
As I took another drink, I glanced at Shayna. She was curled up on the couch, listening to me and Cormac tell dumb, drunk stories. She laughed. She spit fire back at Cormac when he deserved it. But most of all, with each passing second, she sliced through my anger and pain like nobody had ever come close to doing before.
See, when it all went wrong, I didn’t just lose Carrie. I lost Cormac for a while too. We ended up at opposite ends of the world… him grieving the death of his sister. Me grieving the death of my girlfriend. And all we wanted was each other.
It was a bad mess. A real bad mess.
I slammed my fist down on the table. “Goddammit, Cormac. You bastard.”
“What?” he asked.
I grabbed his face with my other hand. “I love you, brother.”
“Aye, Christ, Finn. I’d rip my own arm off for ya. You know that.”
He said ‘dat’ … the more he drank, the more an Irish accent slipped out.
Get Cormac drunk enough and he’d become a blubbering fool where nobody could understand what he was saying.
Cormac and I stared each other down for a few seconds. Mentally we were tearing each other apart over Carrie. There wasn’t a thing to say or do about it. I always knew if we sat down and talked about it we’d end up drunk and fighting. The kind of fight we were supposed make millions on.
I finally broke away from Cormac and looked at Shayna. “Tell me about your sister some more.”
“Are you serious?” she asked. “You want to kill the night like that?”
“What’s wrong with her sister? Does she look like you, Shayna?”
“We’re twins,” Shayna said.
“Good Christ,” Cormac said and he stood up. He lost his balance for a second. “Good Christ in hell. Twins?”
“Stop it,” I said. “They’re not identical twins. And her sister is missing, you asshole.”
“Ah, fuck,” Cormac said. “My apologies, Shayna.”
“It’s okay,” Shayna said. “Look, I’ve made my peace with it. She’s gone. She has to be dead. Messing around with Zander’s crew… nothing good could ever come of that. She was so far away from the woman I knew. I just have to remember what she did for me growing up.”
“Aye, that’s heavy,” Cormac said.
“You have no idea where she could be?” I asked. I was dead drunk but when I focused on Shayna, everything felt sober. “You have to have something, sweetie.”
“She ran off with his crew,” Shayna said. “When I got close to Zander, he said her name a few times, but I never got any information about it. She was running for him though. I know that. She wasn’t like me.”
“Like you?” Cormac asked.
“She’s engaged to Zander,” I said. “Head of a crew.”
“Holy shit. That’s got to be a bad thing… I mean, Finn, you’re fooling around with some big guy’s fiancee.”
“Yeah, I’m a dead man walking,” I said. Then I smiled. “But it’s goddamn worth it.”
Shayna’s cheeks instantly turned red.
“Aye,” Cormac said. “You two are trouble together.”
“Finn,” Shayna said, “let it go about Sasha. I have to accept she’s gone. And if she’s not really gone, she can’t be in a good place. Right?”
I nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
“What I want is sleep,” she said.
I watched her casually get up from the couch. She lingered for a few seconds as though she wanted me to touch her, wish her goodnight, or tuck her into bed. All I did was give her a head nod. Maybe it was better if we tried to strip away anything between us. Get through tonight and start fresh tomorrow. Hopefully that meant without Fiore showing up and putting a gun to my head.
Shayna walked away and Cormac started to chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“Yer checking out her ass.”
“You weren’t?”
“Oh, I was. She’s got a nice ass, brother. A real nice ass. I’m wondering why you’re not in there… getting it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Christ, Cormac, you know why I built this place. How can I…” I gritted my teeth. “I never had a woman in here before. It wasn’t the place for that. Nothing ever had meaning. Besides her.”
Cormac put a hand to my shoulder and squeezed tight. Each one of his chubby Irish fingers felt like the tip of a hammer digging into my muscle.
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “Something about this one has gotten you twisted up. It’s a good thing to see.”
“Yeah? You really mean that?”
“I do. Nobody should live in pain forever, Finn. My sister ain’t living in pain. She’s somewhere else. Maybe up there in heaven, dancing to shitty music and tossing her hair around.”
“She really liked shitty music,” I whispered.
“Aye, she did. I still have her CD’s. I listen to them.”
I put my hand to Cormac’s. “I’m so sorry, brother.”
“I know. But we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I did, Cormac. I slipped. I lost it all. I turned my life and desires into some kind of sick game. See how far I could go down and how much pain I could find.”