Darragh huffed out a sigh. "No, it's not up to me. Because I don't want out. I don't want to leave. So it's up to you, Haley. Because if you don't want to make this work, if you don't want to be with me, then I can't â I can't do anything about that. I can't stay in if you're out, and I know you don't know â I understand, that you don't know." He would stay, would put up with whatever purgatory, whatever punishment, even if the end was inevitable. Because he couldn't bring himself to abandon ship, or expedite this slow death. Because, ultimately, Darragh loved Haley in a way that consumed him, and he would be eaten alive by this love like carrion to a corpse before he turned away from it a second time.
He squinted, looking at Haley, wondering how she could wonder why he'd want to stay. It certainly wasn't duty. Padraig has survived his divorce, even if he'd fallen from favor for a while with the family. Ultimately, he knew that if he and Haley couldn't fix their marriage, that his family would figure out how to reconcile the bifurcation from their faith and the tenants that drove them day by day. "I love you more than I love myself, Haley. I literally don't know what my life would be, if it wasn't one spent with you. I can't see beyond this, okay? I literally cannot see beyond this love. I can't â I can't â" He shook his head, exasperated. "What do you think I'm still doing here? Do you think it's because I love you, and I want to fix this, or do you think it's out of duty? What's your impression of me?" Darragh was desperate to know, truly. "I don't even have my faith anymore, Haley. I lost that when..." He shrugged uselessly. "I was taught that God was supposed to be at the center of my marriage. But even when I still had my faith, I didn't feel like that was right, like that was fact. Because the center of our marriage was our love. And the love that â the love that made â" A baby. He couldn't say it. There were so many words, seemingly, he couldn't force out.
"I know you think that you want to know, but I promise you, you don't." But then, ultimately, it wasn't for him to decide whether or not she wanted to know. And he couldn't stand the prospect of another secret, another transgression that would crack the frame further. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe, in whatever way, they were just trying to do right by you." Darragh's jaw clenched, the hurt still so raw, the pain still like it had been inflicted only seconds prior. And it radiated off of him, the tension. "Your parents came to me and asked me to grant an annulment. They said I should be fine with that, because Catholics get annulments all of the time, so I could weather it. And if I agreed to an annulment, they'd pay me a lump sum to free you." Darragh's gaze shifted to the hood of the car, desperate to keep his cool, despite the heat that felt like it was rising from his chest to his head. The shame, and the embarrassment that he still felt from the encounter was obvious. "I didn't think that you were trapped. But they told me you felt like you couldn't tell me â that you wanted out, and you'd told them, but you couldn't figure out how to tell me. And I know it makes me a fool, but in that moment I believed them." He brought his head to his hands as they rested on the steering wheel, his forehead pressing against his knuckles as he rested there for a few seconds, contemplating his next words. "And I guess what makes me a real son of a bitch is that even though I believed them, I refused to let you go. So what does that say about me?"