The Player and the Pixie(96)

Ronan was already shaking his head before I’d finished. “Luce, even if that’s true, don’t you think it’s a little fucked up? Yeah, he might have never slept with Brona, but he still fabricated a relationship with her. That isn’t the behavior of a well-adjusted individual.”

“Listen, I’m not defending Sean or what he did to you, I’m just trying to explain a person who is a lot more complicated than one action. He is more than a spoiled brat.” I stood from the couch, no longer in danger of crying, feeling the rightness of my words as I said them. “If someone looked at me tonight, the mess I made downstairs, stealing fecking golf balls of all things, they might call me a spoiled brat and leave it at that. Yes, I’m messed up. What I did was messed up. But I’d like to think I’m not defined by—”

“No, Luce. That argument doesn’t work because you have a compulsive problem. You don’t steal because you want revenge on the K Club Golf Shop. Sean Cassidy does shite to be a mean arsehole. That’s the difference.”

“But don’t you see? Pushing people away is Sean’s compulsion. He’s been rejected his whole life. He did what he did to you because he’s jealous. He thinks you have everything handed to you on a silver platter and everybody loves you without question. It’s basic juvenile jealousy, Ronan. And I bet if you’d been friendly to him from the first time you met, things would’ve been a whole lot different.”

Ronan lifted his voice with frustration. “I wasn’t unfriendly to him. I barely even spoke to him.”

I gesticulated with my hands. “Exactly. Don’t you see? You ignored him, so he built this ridiculous, nonsensical jealousy thing. For God’s sake, you big burly men are all little boys when it comes down to it.”

“I’m not a little boy.”

“In regards to Sean you are. You both need to let this absurd feud go already. Sure, I’ll be the first person to admit he’s not perfect, that he has issues he needs to work on, but so do I, and so do you, Ronan.”

“You’re comparing me to Sean Cassidy?”

I ignored this outraged question and pressed on. “We all have issues. Human beings are flawed, and all we can hope for is to work toward making ourselves better. Not perfect, just better.”

Ronan began pacing again, his hands on his hips, his jaw set. “Bloody hell,” he growled, then a full minute later, “I hate how you make so much sense sometimes.”

I gave him a small smile, realizing the admission cost him something.

“You’d make sense too if you just took a second and thought things through before barging in full steam ahead and throwing all your toys out of the pram.”

My brother narrowed his gaze at my phrasing but didn’t deny it. “I still think it’s going to end badly. Can’t you just stop this thing before it goes any further? You think you love him but how can you? It’s not possible.”

I bristled as I shot back defensively. “I never said I loved him.”

“You forget I’ve spent a lifetime learning your ticks, Lucy. I saw you with him downstairs. I saw it written all over your face, but it’s just lust. I’m sure it’s the same on his end. He thinks he’s in love with you, too.”

It took me a good twenty seconds to recover from Ronan’s statement before I managed, “He told you that?” The question was a weak whisper, my heart clenching. I wasn’t sure why, but the idea of Sean confessing his love for me to my brother, the one person who might beat the living shit out of him for it, made me feel all warm and mushy inside.

Ronan huffed. “Yes, he did.”

I let that sink in for a moment, savoring the loveliness of it all before I circled back to the other thing he’d said. “Why do you think it’s so impossible for us to be in love?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You haven’t even slept together yet. For all you know, he could be terrible in bed.”

At this I burst out laughing, a full-on belly laugh, my hands going to my middle to hold my stomach. One, because Ronan didn’t know how apt his comment was, and two, because he thought we hadn’t slept together. I almost wanted to roll my eyes at how he still saw me as his chaste, quirky little sister.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Who gave you the idea we hadn’t slept together?”

Ronan’s distinctive eyebrows drew closer and closer until they formed one dark line of disapproval. “Sean told me downstairs.”

I found that hard to believe. “He actually said it, word for word? Lucy and I haven’t slept together?”