Destroying Declan (The Gilroy Clan Book 5), page 1
Destroying Declan
The Gilroy Clan vol. 5
Megan Ward
Ardor Press
Destroying Declan © 2018 by Megyn Ward. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner, whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from the author, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
FIRST EDITION 2018
Book design by Megyn Ward
Cover design by Megyn Ward
Cover photo by Adobe Stock
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: This book deals with sensitive subject matter and may trigger those who have dealt with or experienced trauma due to suicide.
Created with Vellum
Contents
Declan and Tess’s Playlist
1. Tess
2. Declan
3. Tess
4. Declan
5. Tess
6. Declan
7. Tess
8. Declan
9. Tess
10. Declan
11. Tess
12. Declan
13. Declan
14. Declan
15. Tess
16. Declan
17. Tess
18. Declan
19. Tess
20. Declan
21. Tess
22. Tess
23. Declan
24. Tess
25. Tess
26. Declan
27. Tess
28. Tess
29. Declan
30. Declan
31. Tess
32. Declan
33. Tess
34. Tess
35. Declan
36. Declan
37. Declan
38. Tess
39. Tess
40. Declan
41. Declan
42. Declan
43. Declan
44. Tess
45. Declan
46. Tess
47. Declan
48. Tess
49. Declan
50. Tess
Mr. Wrong
51. Elle
52. Lex
53. Elle
About the Author
Also by Megyn Ward
Declan and Tess’s Playlist
Honey Whiskey – Nothing but Thieves
November Rain – Guns & Roses
I Really Want You to Hate Me – Meg Myer
Remember You - Skid Row
Ghost Whistling – Nothing but Thieves
No Light, No Light – Florence + The Machine
Blood in the Cut – K. Flay
Fall to Pieces – Velvet Revolver
Summertime Sadness – Lana DeRey
Alone – Heart
Hurt People – Two Feet
One
Tess
March 2005
I hate dresses.
I hate how vulnerable they make me feel. That I can’t run in them. Climb trees. Play ball. Change a tire. Be myself.
But my mother loved them. I don’t think I ever saw her wear pants. I’m not sure that she even owned a pair of jeans.
She was beautiful and kind. She had a temper and loved springtime. She loved cats and hummingbirds. She made a mean red sauce and loved surprises. She cried a lot—almost as much as she laughed. She let my father name me Tesla, even though she had her heart set on Maria, after her mother.
And now she’s gone.
I’m sitting on the Gilroy’s back porch, in a dress I hate, listening to a houseful of people whisper and cry over platefuls of church casserole, about how much they loved her. How missed she’ll be. How lost my dad and I are without her.
I can’t cry.
My mother is dead.
We buried her today, and I can’t cry.
I sat in the front pew of the church and stared at her casket, draped in flowers we can’t afford, listening to the priest talk about salvation and everlasting life. About how my mother is waiting for us to join her in heaven. My dad sobbing quietly beside me. Mary Gilroy’s hand on my shoulder, comforting me from the pew behind me while she cried for the loss of her best friend.
Staring at that casket, my eyes were bone dry.
They still are.
The screen door squeaks behind me and I brace myself. Wait for one of my aunts or the neighborhood ladies to come and offer me a tissue. A plate of jello salad. A shoulder to cry on. They all want to know how. What happened. How a woman barely into her thirties could die so suddenly.
Someone sits down beside me.
I know right away it’s not Mrs. Gilroy. It’s not a neighborhood lady. It’s not even Henley, even though I know she’s here somewhere with her mother and brother.
The person sitting next to me on the porch steps is too big to be a woman. Smells like fresh-cut grass and clean-smelling soap. Even though I know he’s trying to give me space, I can feel the impossible width of his shoulders pressing in around me, my own shoulders pressed somewhere between his elbows and his shoulders.
Declan Gilroy.
I have no idea why he’s out here. Probably as sick and smothered by the crush of people inside his house as I am. He’s sixteen. Even on a Sunday afternoon there must be a thousand things he’d rather be doing than sitting vigil at his next-door neighbor’s funeral.
I do my best to ignore him, which is hard considering he’s roughly three times my size.
“When I was in the fifth grade, I faked a stomach ache at school to get out of a history test.” His voice, low and deep, draws my gaze to his face. His dark blue gaze is aimed at the hummingbird feeder hanging from a tree in the backyard. “My mom was busy with Con—took him to the doctor or something—and couldn’t come get me, so the school called your mom.” The corner of his mouth kicks up in a flash of a smile, so quick and brilliant I feel my breath catch in my lungs. “Sophie took one look at me and knew I wasn’t sick. Instead of calling my mom or taking me back to school, she took me to the movies.” Now he looks at me, his smile fading into something worn and sad. “I really liked your mom.”
“She killed herself.” No one else knows except my dad and his mother. When people ask how, he tells them she had an aneurysm and Mary helps him lie. But that’s not what happened. “My mother committed suicide.” I say it again when he looks at me like he doesn’t believe me. I don’t know why I tell him. Maybe because all of his memories of her are good ones and it feels like a lie. Maybe because even though we’ve been neighbors my whole life and our mothers were best friends, Declan and I don’t know each other. Not really. “I came home from school and she was in the tub.” She left a note on the bathroom door addressed to me.
Hummingbird ~
Don’t open the door. Call Mary. She’ll know what to do. I love you. You are the best thing that ever happened to me. Please don’t ever doubt that. This isn’t anyone’s fault. I’m just tired.
Love you forever ~
Mom
I opened the bathroom door.
“She must’ve done it right after I left for school.” I whisper it, my gaze fixed on the row of buttons holding his dress shirt together. “Used my dad’s straight razor to sever her femoral artery.” It occurs to me that straight razors are dangerous. That my mom might still be alive if we hadn’t had something so sharp in the house. “I got your mom, like she said…” The buttons on his shirt start to blur and swim in my field of vision. I’m exhausted. Haven’t slept in days because every time I close my eyes, I see my mother floating in a tub full of cold water, thick and red with blood. “She said she loved me but that can’t be true, can it?” I look up at his face, find his gaze with mine. It’s blurry. Everything is blurry. “If she loved me, why would she do something like that?” I can feel tears running down my face. Dripping off my chin. Pooling in the palm of my hand, warm and wet. I can’t breathe. My lungs feel like soggy sponges. Drowning me. “You don’t do things like that to people you love. You just don’t. She—”
I feel his arm fall around my shoulders. His huge hand closes over my arm so he can pull me close and I don’t fight it. I let my head fall into the crook of his shoulder and breathe in the smell of him. Clean and solid. My heart flutters in my chest for just a moment before it goes still and calms.
Declan doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t try to reassure me.
He doesn’t tell she loved me.
That my mother is in a better place.
He just holds me and lets me cry.
Two
Declan
I can’t stop thinking about her.
Which is weird, right?
I mean, before today, I never gave Tesla Castinetti a second thought. She was just a neighborhood girl. One who never so much as looked in my direction. One who didn’t look in anyone’s direction, really. Not like she’s too good or too smart. More like she doesn’t even know or care that there are guys checking her out or trying to get her attention.
I’ve seen plenty of guys try to talk to her but the only guy I’ve ever seen her talk to, outside of trash-talking during a pick-up game of baseball, is my brother’s best friend, Ryan. He spoke to her today at her mother’s funeral, outside the church, a
Watching her walk away from him, the way she slipped through the crush of people crowded into my parent’s living room like a ghost, I found myself following her through the house. When I got to the kitchen the only person there was my brother, Conner. Most times he’s pretty good at pretending to be normal but today his freak is showing. Must be the houseful of people.
“You alright, fuckface?” I say, not because I care or anything, mainly because I don’t want him to think I’m following Tess.
“I’m fine,” he mumbles, too engrossed in whatever he’s scribbling across the piece of paper in front of him to even bother with an insult. Probably math. Not regular math. Weird math about alternate dimensions or parallel universes or some shit. He’s tried explaining it to me but as usual, I had no fucking clue what he was talking about. No one does.
Instead of pestering him, mainly because talking to him when he’s like this is like talking to a brick wall, I stand in front of the sink and start to rinse the dishes in the bottom of it so I can stare out the window without someone thinking I’m doing what I’m actually doing, which is watching Tess.
She’s sitting on the back porch steps, her navy blue dress pulled down over her knees. Dark hair pulled away from her pale face. Gaze aimed across the yard at the back of her own house. Our mothers are best friends—they bought houses next to each other. Got pregnant together. Talked their husbands into taking down the wooden fence that separated their yards so their kids could play together. Run free between the two homes.
Were.
Our moms were best friends.
Were because Mrs. Castinetti is dead.
Now there’s a brand new fence between our yards and a FOR SALE sign in front of their house.
“Why don’t you just go talk to her?”
I shut off the water and shoot Con a dirty look over my shoulder. He’s still hyper-focused on the piece of paper in front of him and whatever the fuck he’s writing on it. But not so focused that he doesn’t know I’m standing here, creeping on our neighbor. “Talk to who?”
His mouth quirks, the only indication that he knows I’m full of shit. “Tess.”
I hate a lot of things about my little brother but this is the thing I hate the most. He sees everything. Even when you think he’s lost in space, he’s taking in everything around him. Analyzing it and filing it away.
“Why don’t you go fucking talk to her, genius?” I turn back to the sink and stack rinsed plates in the bottom of it, my gaze aimed out the window, almost against my will.
She hasn’t cried.
Not one tear.
Mr. Castinetti is bawling like a baby while his daughter walks around like a zombie.
“Because I’m not the one who wants to talk to her, fuckstain—you are.”
Looks like Con’s come back to earth.
I look at him again, just in time to watch him stand up from the kitchen table. He gives the paper he was writing on a careful fold up the middle before folding it again and tucking it into the pocket of his dress pants. He doesn’t say anything else. He just leaves the room, pushing himself back into the throng of whispering people, standing around with plates of ham and macaroni salad. He hates crowds. Can’t take them for long. I’m surprised he isn’t in his room with the door barricaded shut and his nose buried in a book. The only reason he isn’t is because he’s not so far up his own ass to understand that it would be socially unacceptable. He’s been on this I’m a real boy kick lately. Has a lot of people fooled too. Not me. I live with him. I know what a freak he really is.
“Fucking weirdo,” I mutter to myself, turning back toward the window. Tess is still sitting there. Eyes still dry. Hands still wrapped around her knees like she’s holding herself together. Like if she lets go or moves she’ll fall apart.
Shit.
Turning off the sink, I dry my hands on a dish towel before forcing myself through the door and onto the back porch. She doesn’t so much as twitch when I sit down. It’s like I’m not even there.
So I did what Con suggested.
I talked to her.
Told her how much I liked her mom. Shared a good memory of her in hopes of jumpstarting a conversation.
She told me her mom killed herself. That she was the one who found her. That my mom knows and is helping her dad lie to cover it up.
And then she cried.
Buried her face in my neck and sobbed quietly while I held her.
And I haven’t stopped thinking about her since.
Three
Tess
May 2009
It’s Friday night.
While most girls my age are out on dates or at house parties trying to catch the attention of their current crush, I’m under a hood with a wrench in my hand.
I’m not complaining.
I’m really not.
What would I do at a house party?
I wouldn’t know how to behave on a date, even if someone did ask me out.
I push the thought away because I know where it’ll lead.
It’ll lead to the fact that my mother should be here to help me with things like that. Make-up. Hairstyles. Boy trouble.
But she’s not here.
Because she left me.
“How long are you going to hide here?” I give my socket wrench a final twist before shooting Henley a look through my lashes. Henley’s different. She has a boyfriend. Someone who wants to spend time with her. Someone who would rather be with her than with everyone else. Something pings in my chest—not jealousy. But maybe envy.
“I’m not hiding.” She scowls at me. “I’m hanging out with my best friend.”
“Well, whatever you’re doing, it’s not going to help.” Straightening, I toss my wrench back into my toolbox. How many seventeen-year-old girls can say they have their own toolbox? “Conner isn’t going anywhere.” I look at the ring she’s wearing. She never said where she got it, but I know. “He’s in love with you, Hen.” I don’t know shit about love, but I have eyes. I saw the way he looked at her this afternoon. It bothers me that she can’t see it.
She catches me looking and shoves her hand under her leg. She’s sitting on the tall stool next to my dad’s workbench. “He doesn’t love me. He feels sorry for me.”
“Bullshit.” I laugh, even though there’s nothing funny about what she just said. “Why would you even think something like that?” When all she does is shrug I feel a fire spark in my belly. “Is that what Jessica said to you to make you hit her?”
“She called me the Gilroy family pet.” She goes red, her entire face mottled and splotchy.
“That fucking cun—” I don’t even realize I’m halfway across the garage until she snags me by the back of my coveralls.
“Where are you going?” she says, her grip tightening to stop me, mid-charge.
“To Caleb Emerson’s house.” I toss her a look over my shoulder. “To black that snotty bitch’s other eye.”
She lets go of me, her hands flopping helplessly against her thigh. “Why? She’s right. Even you said it was weird that he doesn’t want to…” She trails off, her face pale under the mask of freckles that covers her face. “He’s never kissed me, Tess. He’s never even tried.”
