The childcare room was supposed to be quiet.
It wasn’t.
It was a bright little box off the main corridor, painted in cheerful colours that felt like an insult under fluorescent light. Toys were scattered like evidence. A Disney film played soundlessly on a wall-mounted screen. Two frazzled staff members in lanyards tried to herd a handful of kids into something resembling calm.
And in the centre of it all — like a tiny ringmaster who’d mistaken chaos for a birthright — Oisín Byrne stood on a foam mat with a microphone in his hand.
Not a toy one.
A real one.
He’d somehow acquired it from somewhere backstage, and he held it with the easy confidence of a child who’d never once considered the possibility of being told no.
His curls were the colour of fresh straw in weak sunlight, soft and wild around his ears. His eyes — huge, bright blue — took in the room like he owned it. And when he smiled, it was that lethal, dimpled kind of smile that made adults forget their own rules.
Saoirse felt the full-body rush of relief and dread at the exact same time.
“Where did you get that?” she demanded, pitching her voice low even as her heart climbed into her throat.
Oisín glanced at her like she’d asked him where the sky came from.
“From the man,” he said, clearly satisfied with himself.
“The man,” Saoirse repeated, because the universe loved taking the piss.
He nodded, solemn. “He said I was loud.”
One of the childcare staff — early twenties, hair scraped into a bun, eyes pleading — half-jogged over. “We are so sorry. He — he’s very charming. He asked for a microphone and we thought he meant one of the toys.”
Saoirse’s mouth tightened. “He always means the real one.”
Oisín lifted the mic to his lips. “Mum. I’m practising.”
“For what?” she asked, because she already knew the answer and she was going to hear it anyway.
“For my show,” he said, like it was obvious.
Saoirse pinched the bridge of her nose. “There is no show.”
Oisín’s brows drew together, offended. “Yes there is. This is the show.” He swept his free hand toward the whole room. “And they’re my audience.”
Two toddlers looked up, vaguely alarmed. A little girl with plaits started clapping anyway, because children were easily impressed by confidence.
Saoirse reached for the microphone. “Gimme that.”
Oisín stepped back, still smiling. “No.”
“Oi —” Saoirse lowered her voice. “Oisín. Now.”
He turned the smile up another notch, like he’d perfected it in a lab. It was adorable. It was criminal. It was the kind of smile that got him extra crisps at the shop and second chances from strangers.
Saoirse knew exactly where he’d gotten it.
She also knew who was standing in the doorway watching, because she could feel him the way you felt thunder before it arrived.
Fionn Kavanagh didn’t step into the room. He didn’t have to. The air changed around him anyway — like all the noise had to make room.
He looked… wrong.
Not wrong as in bad. Wrong as in stunned, drained of colour, as if something inside him had cracked clean open and he hadn’t yet decided whether to bleed or bolt.
His coach badge hung from his neck. He’d left his chair. He’d left the stage. He’d come here.
For a second, Saoirse’s anger at him — at the refusal, at the judgement in his eyes — faltered under something colder.
Fear.
Because he wasn’t looking at her.
He was looking at Oisín.
Fionn’s gaze tracked the boy’s face like he was trying to solve a problem with his bare hands. The curl of hair. The shape of the mouth. The way Oisín lifted his chin when he was about to be bold.
Fionn swallowed.
Oisín spotted him and went still, then smiled. Bigger. Brighter. Like he’d just found a new person to charm.
“Hi,” Oisín said into the mic, loud enough for the corridor to hear. “I’m four.” He held up four fingers, because he was always making sure people understood the important facts. “What’s your name?”
One of the childcare staff made a small choking sound of laughter.
Fionn blinked, like he’d forgotten adults were meant to speak.
“My name,” he said, voice rough, “is Fionn.”
Oisín considered this. “That’s a good name.” Then, without missing a beat: “Are you famous?”
Saoirse shut her eyes for half a second, because of course that was where he went.
Fionn’s mouth twitched — almost a smile. It was tiny. It was reflex. It vanished as soon as it arrived.
“I suppose I am,” he said.
Oisín nodded, satisfied. “Okay. Then you can listen to my song.”
He raised the microphone again as if the decision had been made by a committee.
“No,” Saoirse said, stepping between them. “He can’t. He has work.”
Fionn’s eyes flicked to hers. The storm was still there, pressed tight behind them.
“I can listen,” he said, and Saoirse hated the gentleness in his voice because it made her want to trust him. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” she replied. Her throat felt tight. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Fionn didn’t look away. “I’m here because…”
Because what? Because he’d seen the resemblance and his whole world had tipped? Because he couldn’t stay sitting in a red chair pretending it didn’t matter? Because the past had just walked up and grabbed him by the throat?
Saoirse’s stomach turned.
Oisín used the moment of adult tension to step around her and address Fionn again like she was background.
“I can sing really good,” he announced.
“I can hear that,” Fionn said, and there it was again — softness, warmth, the kind of attention that made kids bloom. He crouched slightly, bringing himself closer to Oisín’s height without taking the mic, without invading. “Do you like singing?”
Oisín’s face lit. “Yes.”
“What’s your favourite song?”
Oisín frowned, thinking hard. “The one Mum sings when she’s sad.”
Saoirse’s chest squeezed.
Fionn’s gaze snapped to her. Just for a second. Like the words had hit him somewhere tender and he didn’t know what to do with it.
“What’s that one called?” he asked Oisín, voice still careful.
Oisín shrugged. “It’s not called anything. It’s just… the sad one.” He leaned in conspiratorially and lowered the mic a fraction, as if he was telling a secret. “Mum cries sometimes. But she says she’s fine. She’s not fine.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Saoirse muttered, cheeks burning. “Oisín.”
“What?” he said, innocent. “It’s true.”
Fionn looked like someone had put a hand around his throat. He stood slowly, the movement controlled, but his eyes were wild now.
He took one step back, as if he needed distance to think.
Then he faced Saoirse fully, voice low enough that only she could hear.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Saoirse held her chin high. “Not here.”
“Off-camera,” he agreed immediately. No argument. No theatrics. “Not on this set. Not with him listening.”
Something in her loosened, just a fraction. He wasn’t trying to make a scene. He wasn’t trying to trap her on telly. He was drawing a line.
It would’ve been admirable if it didn’t terrify her.
Fionn’s gaze flicked down to Oisín again, quick, helpless.
“Tonight,” he said to Saoirse, voice firm now. “After filming. Somewhere neutral. Somewhere private.”
Saoirse’s pulse hammered. “I —”
“And if you say no,” he added, jaw tight, “I’ll still need answers. But I’d rather you told me the truth than have me digging for it in places neither of us wants to go.”
Her mouth went dry.
He wasn’t threatening. Not really. He was warning her that he wasn’t a boy anymore, waiting to be lied to.
Saoirse forced herself to breathe. “Fine,” she said, because there was no other word that wouldn’t crack her open. “Tonight.”
Fionn’s shoulders dropped like he’d been holding the weight of the building on them.
Then, very deliberately, he looked away from her and back to the child — because even now, even furious, he couldn’t ignore him.
Oisín had been watching the adults with narrowed eyes, trying to decode. He raised the mic again and declared, “Mum. I’m hungry.”
Saoirse’s head tipped back. “You ate a banana ten minutes ago.”
“That wasn’t food,” Oisín said gravely. “That was banana.”
Fionn made a sound — half laugh, half pain.
Saoirse glared at him, because how dare he laugh at her life when he didn’t know the half of it.
But the laugh was thin. Frayed. Like it cost him.
“I’ll let you get him sorted,” Fionn said, and his voice was back in that controlled professional register, the one he’d used on stage. “I’ll send my assistant your number if I can’t get it through production.”
Saoirse’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have my number.”
“I know.” His gaze held hers. “I will.”
Then he did the most infuriating thing of all.
He stepped away.
No lingering. No attempt to touch. No attempt to soften the moment with charm. He walked back into the corridor like a man returning to a fire he’d chosen to walk into with his own feet.
Saoirse stood there, heart in her mouth, while Oisín hummed into the mic and the childcare staff watched her like she was a celebrity and a disaster all at once.
She took the microphone from Oisín with the practised speed of a woman who’d been negotiating with a tiny dictator for years.
He let her take it — only because he’d already gotten what he wanted, which was Fionn’s attention.
“Mum,” he whispered, tugging her sleeve. “Is he your friend?”
Saoirse’s throat tightened. “No.”
Oisín’s eyes widened. “Is he your enemy?”
Saoirse gave a short, humourless laugh. “Something like that.”
Oisín nodded, satisfied with the complexity. “Okay.” He patted her cheek, the way he did when she looked like she might cry. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”
Saoirse’s eyes stung.
“Thank you,” she said, because the kid deserved her honesty even when nobody else did.
She signed the childcare form, shoved snacks into Oisín’s hands, and kissed his curls. Then she stepped back into the corridor, where the studio noise hit her like a wave.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A single text.
Tonight. 11:30. Car park level B. Black van. No cameras.
Saoirse stared at the screen until it blurred.
Level B.
Black van.
Like she was meeting a dealer, not the man she’d once loved and betrayed and — apparently — tied herself to forever.
Maeve found her twenty minutes later, dragging her into wardrobe and talking a mile a minute about song choice and strategy, about which camera angles worked and how to breathe through nerves.
Saoirse nodded. Smiled. Pretended she was still only a contestant with a voice and a dream.
All the while, her mind kept circling the same image:
Fionn’s face when he looked at Oisín.
Not anger first.
Not judgement.
Recognition.
The kind that didn’t care about logic. The kind your body knew before your brain could defend itself.
By the time filming ended, Saoirse felt hollowed out.
She collected Oisín from childcare, where he was happily teaching two toddlers how to shout “ONE MORE SONG” in unison. She got him into the car, buckled him in, and drove through rain that smeared the city into watercolour.
At home, she made him pasta he ate with his hands. She bathed him. She told him the same bedtime story twice because he liked the part where the hero didn’t give up.
Then he looked up at her with sleep-heavy eyes and said, “Mum?”
“Yes, love?”
“Are you gonna be on the telly tomorrow?”
Saoirse stroked his curls back from his forehead. “Maybe.”
He yawned. “Will the man be on the telly too?”
Her hand stilled. “Yes.”
Oisín’s mouth curved into that heartbreaker smile. “Good. I like him.”
Saoirse laughed softly, because he had no idea what he was saying.
She kissed his forehead. “Go to sleep.”
He was out within minutes, lips parted, breathing deep and steady. The house went quiet around her in the way it always did at night — too quiet, too full of thoughts.
Saoirse stood in the kitchen with her hands on the counter, staring at the kettle like it might offer a solution.
This was the moment she’d been avoiding for four years.
The moment where the secret stopped being hers.
At eleven fifteen she left, locking the door softly behind her like she was sneaking out of her own life.
The studio car park was fluorescent and echoing, concrete damp from people tracking rain in on their shoes. Level B was colder. Quieter. The kind of quiet that made your footsteps feel incriminating.
A black van sat in the far corner, engine off, hazard light blinking once every few seconds like a heartbeat.
Saoirse approached, keys clenched between her fingers.
The sliding door opened before she reached it.
Fionn stepped down first, and for a second she couldn’t breathe.
Off stage, off camera, he looked less like a poster and more like a man. A tired one. A real one. His jacket was dark and plain. His hair was damp at the edges. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d spent the evening trying not to lose his mind.
He didn’t smile.
He didn’t greet her with banter.
He just looked at her like he was holding his own heart in both hands and it was heavy.
“Get in,” he said.
Saoirse climbed into the van because she didn’t know how not to.
Inside, it smelled faintly of coffee and the kind of cologne men wore when they were trying to look like they weren’t lonely. There was a small table bolted to the floor, two seats opposite each other. Privacy glass. No cameras. No crew.
Fionn shut the door.
The sound of it closing felt final.
He didn’t sit straight away. He leaned against the wall, hands braced, breathing controlled as if he was trying to keep himself from shaking.
Saoirse sat because her legs didn’t trust her anymore.
Silence stretched between them, thick as rope.
Finally, Fionn spoke, voice barely more than a whisper.
“That boy,” he said. “Oisín.”
Saoirse’s throat tightened. “Yes.”
Fionn’s eyes lifted to hers, and there was no charm in them now. No performance.
Only need.
“How old is he?”
“Four,” she managed.
Fionn flinched, like the number hurt. He did the maths in his head. She could see it happen.
His jaw clenched. “And —” His voice cracked once, quickly, like he hated it. “And who is his father?”
Saoirse’s chest tightened until it felt like she might split.
She could lie. She could dodge. She could try to keep the secret a little longer, to protect herself, to protect the fragile life she’d built.
But he’d seen the kid. He’d heard him. He’d already been pulled into the truth by blood and instinct.
And Saoirse was tired of carrying it alone.
She swallowed.
Then she said it.
“You,” she whispered. “Fionn — he’s yours.”