The Merry Men Masquerade

13. One More Promise

The sky was dark and dry when Ronan arrived home.

By the time the storm had ebbed enough for him and Sadie to run for the house, dinner had long-since been served. They had sat together before the fire, warmed by the flames and the broth in their bowls and the jackets they'd been leant, but Ronan had shivered endlessly.

An urgent tug in his chest had urged him to leave, but each and every Abrams had argued hotly until the storm waned.

Ronan had run out at the first opportunity, trading James' jacket for his own to an ensemble of protests and stepping out onto the dark, soggy country road beneath the lingering drizzle.

The rain dwindled to nothing, but the wet tracks running down his cheeks remained. He raised a hand to his face as his vision blurred, stunned when his fingers came back wet.

He didn't want to cry over this.

Ronan had been cut down by the man he loved regretfully and left for dead by his only friends in the world. He had returned to a home he couldn't bear to stand inside, where acrid memories hung in the air and burned his skin, and he hadn't cried once through all of it, because he had already shed enough tears over Vito to last a lifetime. He'd shed enough for his mother to last two.

But he leaned onto his wrists on the living-room-kitchen table as his entire body trembled, darkening the wood with salty water and succumbing, wholly and pathetically, to the chill of the rain.

It only made sense that the tears would come to him like this; quiet, covert, and all at once. With the cunning of a thief - to sneak up on a thief.

Ronan cried for heartbreak and he cried for mourning. He cried for the friends he had left behind and all of the things he would never get to experience with them, for the first time or the hundreth. He cried for all of the people who had loved him, but had never loved him enough - and then he sagged onto his forearms as it occurred to him that everyone he'd ever cared for fell into that group.

The list of things Ronan wanted and the list of things he couldn't have were one and the same. The lists of people he wanted and couldn't have were nearly identical, and the thought of adding Sadie and Amos and their family to the latter might have brought him to his knees if he wasn't so used to the feeling.

As it was, love and loss had only ever come to Ronan as one, so he pushed himself upright, rubbed the fog from his eyes, and moved blearily toward the hearth. He would make some tea.

He stripped out of his sopping jacket and dragged the blanket over from the sofa, and he wrapped it around himself and sat in front of the fire and wept, questioning why he had been born with skilled hands if they would never be able to hold onto anything.

A familiar rap sounded at the door.

Ronan pressed one fist over his mouth to muffle the sob that pitched him forward. The other gripped tight to the cup in his grasp until it burned his palm.

"Ronan?"

Why now?

He rubbed frantically at his cheeks like he might somehow be caught. His chest jumped with short, feverish breaths.

Why now, of all times?

As if he'd heard, Amir said, "I know it's a bit early. I hope that's alright. The storm has darkened the sky and lured the others to bed, and I'll admit I couldn't wait."

A shudder rocked Ronan enough to dislodge the blanket around his shoulders. He splayed his hand over his face and tried for a deep inhale. It stuttered halfway down his throat. The fire was already sputtering; the room was freezing.