This knowledge forced a variety of thoughts to tumble through my head, including the fact he’d kissed me at the restaurant and one of his options after our kiss had included joining them—joining them for a dinner that would be consumed with his kids and ex-wife.

I also thought of something I hadn’t noticed. That they were at a four-top and they’d had their menus when Bradley and I arrived.

They’d also had them when we’d left.

But the priority thought that pushed all others aside was that Cillian’s mother didn’t come to his birthday dinner.

“Oh no,” I breathed, getting closer and lifting a hand to place it on his chest. “She was coming?”

“We have an agreement,” he said shortly, looking strange, speaking strange, like he was controlling something but only barely. “So the kids wouldn’t feel all the loss her bullshit could make them feel, we’d do what we could to give them their family on days that were special. Not goin’ all out, shit like her sleepin’ over Christmas Eve, which could give them ideas. But at the very least birthday dinners, Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving, we’d have them together. If one of us found someone, that’d be part of the deal and whoever that was would have to get that. We’ve been divorced a year and a half, separated a year more than that, and this has worked. She’s never bailed on our kids.”

“So,” I started cautiously, “did she call? Explain—”

“Oh yeah, the bitch called,” Mickey interrupted me to growl viciously.

His tone frightened me but I forced myself to stay in his space and keep my hand light on his chest, even though he wasn’t touching me and he was holding himself in that strange way he’d been speaking.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I noted quietly.

“It wasn’t,” he confirmed. “You haven’t seen it, but when she gets Cill, she fucks ’im up. He gets wound up, acts out, comes to me. Takes a day or two, but I give him what he needs, he settles in. He goes to her for her week, she unravels that, so when I get him back, he’s gone again. Vicious cycle. So tonight, the longer it took for her to show, he knew, they knew.”

“They knew what?” I asked carefully when he said no more.

“That she goes on benders.”

I swallowed a gasp as Mickey kept talking.