Redeeming 6 (Boys of Tommen, #4)

by Chloe Walsh

He’d been raised like a fucking prince, with countless portraits and pictures of him adorning the walls of his family home, while I’d been born into hell and dragged up on the streets.

“Letting me.” He spat out the words like they were offensive. “You don’t get to let me do shit, Aoife. I do my own thing.”

“I’ve loved your daughter for six years,” Joey finally broke his silence by saying. “I can easily love her for another eighteen.”

Joey stomped around my room like a powerhouse, stopping every few minutes to realign a crooked poster on my wall or to fold one of the many items of clothing I had strewn on the floor.

My heart cracked clean open in my chest.

Don’t hate me. I hate me. I hate me.

With eyes full of unrestrained emotion and his tone thick with gritty sincerity, he looked me dead in the eyes and vowed, “I won’t.”

Johnny Kavanagh’s mother looked like she had fallen from heaven, while his father looked like he had been carved from gold. Seriously, the boy had some damn fine genes flushing through his veins. He was almost as blessed in the looks department as the little bruiser growing in my belly was going to be.

“No,” I mumbled, body stiffening as her face broke through the darkness. The only face I’d been able to see since I was twelve. Blond hair. Green eyes. Smiling. Loving. Warmth. Light. That face. Her face. Queen.

My flag was still stitched to his broken mast.

The light in her eyes slowly dimmed into the darkness.

“Maybe before they moved on, someone wanted to make sure his first love had a fighting chance with her first love.”

“I’m surprised you remembered my number.” “Are you kidding? I memorized your number when I was twelve.”