Page 90 of The Endless Want

My chest feels like it’s cracking. I reach for her. She steps closer. And for a brief, fleeting second, everything inside me eases. All the tight places, the guilt, the rage, the bone-deep dread—they dissolve.

Her lips part. She whispers my name. I lean in—And wake up choking on air.

The room is dark. My heart hammers against my ribs. Sweat clings to the back of my neck, damp and cold. I sit up too fast and brace my elbows on my knees, dragging my hands over my face.

The dream lingers like a bruise.

Ailish. My child. Everything I want but don’t know how to hold without crushing.

I swallow, throat tight.

And then the need hits me. Need to feel something. It’s almost embarrassing how visceral the reaction is. How immediate. Like my body has caught up to a truth my mind tried to outrun.

I exhale sharply, jaw clenched.

I wrap my hand around myself with thoughts of her swirling through my head and seeping into my veins.

I drive my fist into the mattress twice before finding a rhythm that keeps me at the edge.

I think of her tongue, coarse and warm, the lazy way she might lick the seam of my bottom lip like it owes her something. I remember the mornings before the coffee kicked in, the way she sometimes let me hear the staccato laugh she never let anyone else have in the old days.

I’d known her movements better than my own skin. I can feel her hands now, mapped into my own, fingers biting in with more intent than grace. I miss her mind, her sharp tongue, her body. And I need her like this, the one making me fall apart in this dark bedroom.

Minutes pass. My breath slows. My muscles loosen. Embarrassment fades under something deeper, heavier.

Love.

It’s an ugly word in my mouth. I’ve never liked it, never trusted it, never believed it belonged to men like me. But the realization sits on my chest now with a weight I can’t deny.

Maybe I do love her.

And now we have a child.

A child who never asked for mafia alliances or Russian bombings or the ghost of my past carved into every choice I make. A child who deserves better than what I’ve been the last few years. Better than the anger I buried myself in. Better than the fear that makes me push people away until they vanish.

When I lift my eyes to the window, dawn is breaking—soft light slipping over the horizon, staining the compound walls in a pale wash of gold.

A decision forms in me then. Quiet. Heavy. Certain.

I can’t fix the past. But I can fight for the future.

I stand, grab my coat, and leave the compound before anyone else is awake. The city is cold and damp, streetlights still flickering against the morning fog.

The cemetery sits at the far edge of the river district, tucked behind a chain fence and a row of barren winter trees. I haven’t been here in years. Not since the funeral. Not since the night the Irish lost one of the only men who knew every secret I kept locked inside my head.

I walk the familiar path, gravel crunching beneath my boots, until I reach the small stone marker at the back corner beneath a crooked elm.

Cormac O’Leary. Friend. Brother-in-arms. The man who pulled me from the wreckage the first time I ever saw combat. The man who taught me the difference between loyalty and blind obedience. The man who told me, once over a cheap beer, “Men like us don’t love easy. You were built for war, not for softness. But if you ever find someone who makes you want softness… don’t run from it.”

I kneel beside his headstone. My breath fogs in the cold air.

“It’s been a while,” I murmur, fingers trailing over the carved letters. “I’m sorry. I should’ve come sooner.”

Silence sits heavy around me, interrupted only by a distant gull and the whisper of wind through dead branches. I swallow hard. “I messed up, Cormac.”

The words spill out quicker than I expect. “I messed up with Ailish. You warned me about that, years back. You said if I ever pushed her too far she’d walk, and that I’d deserve it. Took me until this spring to prove you right. You were right. And now…” My voice breaks, barely audible. “She’s pregnant. With my kid.”

The confession hangs in the cold air, fragile and terrifying. “And I didn’t know,” I continue. “I didn’t know, because I was too busy being angry to see what was right in front of me. Too busy holding onto old wounds. Too busy trying to outrun the idea that someone like me could have a family.”