Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Elias
He knew.
Ronan knew I had lost control and that I was here because of my stupidity. I could see the story click into place as his studious gaze flittered to the evidence in the room. It was no surprise why his mother was here. I often saw her fall further into her addiction, especially when Ronan had moved away all those years ago.
I couldn’t think about that night. It hurt too much. The pain was like a vice…
* * *
The door creaked open behind me, and my heart skipped. My breath caught in my chest as I heard the unmistakable sound of slapping.
What moron was Maria screwing now?
I froze, my eyes drawn to the figure leaning against the wall.
Ronan.
For a long moment, everything was suspended. The air thickened with tension, and my gaze locked on him. Ronan’s face was pale, his eyes wide with a mix of panic and something else—something that made my stomach twist. His chest was bare, all those tattoos dancing on his rippling back and shoulders. The world seemed to shrink, all the noise and chaos fading into a distant hum as I stood there…watching him.
Maria was underneath him, and her body was…wound around and into his. It felt like a knife to my chest, a cruel reminder of what I’d suspected but never fully allowed myself to believe. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out at first.
“Ronan?” my voice was barely a whisper, strained and thick with the confusion that clouded my mind.
My gaze flickered between him and Maria while my heart shattered in my chest.
I needed answers, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from Ronan or break the grip of whatever it was between us. The silence stretched, suffocating me.
“Stay out of this,” he muttered, his voice low, filled with a rawness I could feel deep in my bones. “Just get out, Elias.”
Ronan’s words were like a punch to my gut. The coldness in his tone made my chest tighten further, but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t pull myself from the mess we were caught in. And Maria? She seemed to sense the gravity of the situation, her eyes soft with understanding, but there was hurt and anger there, too, a reflection of my own.
“Why?” I said, on a choked sob.
The word slipped from my lips before I could stop it. It wasn’t just a question. It was a plea. A desperate cry for something I didn’t know I needed, something that could make sense of this tangled mess.
Ronan’s face twisted with pain.
“I thought…I thought if I could just…” he paused, his gaze darting to Maria, still half naked with his fucking dick buried inside her, then back at me. “If I could just make it go away. If I could just…be with someone else…maybe I could forget.”
The words felt like a slap to the face, like something sharp and jagged piercing through the fragile barrier I’d tried to build around my heart. But then I saw it—the guilt, the regret, the shattered look in his gunmetal eyes. He was breaking, too.
Maria was trapped between us, but she deserved any pain she was feeling. She deserved to hear what she had done.
“You chose to pretend to be normal with my fucking sister , Ronan,” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could think better of them. “You didn’t have to pretend with me…”
I stepped closer to him, but his gaze was elsewhere, his body tense like he was trying to hold everything together with fragile strings.
“I don’t know how to stop,” he said, his voice shaking. “I don’t know how to make it go away, Elias. You…You’re all I fucking think about. You can’t live in my mind. You are poisoning me. I need you to get out of my fucking head, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t. So if fucking your sister will force you to do it for me…then so be it.”
My breath caught in my throat. He just said everything I’d ever hoped to hear, except for that last sentence. He wanted…to forget me.
I didn’t know what to do with this. I didn’t know how to fix this. I just wanted to pull him close, to erase the hurt from his eyes, to make it all stop hurting…and to commit murder by shoving my fucking sister out of our window.
“You’re a coward,” I said, my voice steady despite the storm raging inside me. “If you wanted me gone…you only needed to say the words.”
I stepped forward, two more viciously heavy, heart-crucifying steps.
“I’m…sorry,” he whispered, his voice barely audible, like he was breaking under the weight of his own words. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I just…I can’t. I need…to stop feeling this way for you.”
He was sorry. The apology, regret, and guilt were visible and tangible.
But I wasn’t just angry. No, I was shattered, and that was something far worse. I was a fence with nails shoved deep in the grooves. No matter how many times one tried, and even if the steel was removed…I was never going to be the same.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, trying to steady myself.
“You’ve already hurt me, Ronan,” I said, quiet devastation leaking out.“So say the words, Ronan Saint Clare. Tell me you don’t want me. Tell me to leave. Or are you still just a coward?”
Maria gave us one last look before quietly walking out, leaving us to face the consequences.
Now, we were alone.
Ronan’s eyes met mine again, and now I saw the love, regret, and longing that was hiding behind his lame-ass apology. But I wasn’t sure if I could ever have him, not like this. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted him anymore.
“Mon Pur,” he said.
‘My pure one.’ The nickname he had given me as a kid stuck. Even now, at sixteen years old, the running joke remained. I was the light to his darkness. But hearing it now…the name stabbed another nail into my fragile heart.
“Don’t,” I said, my voice shaking, my knees threatening to give way.
Slamming into the wall, I sagged. I was unable to hold myself upright any longer. “Elias. Please. Fuck’s sake. Please. Just look at me.”
Anger flooded me. How dare he beg me at this moment for forgiveness.
“Fuck you,” I said. Tears that I’d held back flowed down my cheeks, and my vision blurred. “Ronan, what are you…”
His naked body pressed into me, his lips smashing mine in a hard, demanding kiss.
I couldn’t help myself. I opened for him, my body helpless to deny him. I was pathetic, desperately accepting the love he was willing to give after he just broke my soul into pieces.
“Fuck, Mon Pur. I have always wanted to taste you. Always dreamed of your lips. But I never imagined it would be salty from the tears I have caused.”
I returned his sloppy kiss, the dam of my heart shattering further and further and my tears falling down harder. “Neither did I.”
Our first kiss.
“I hate you,” I said, unable to pull myself away from him.
Our lips sipped and tasted the undeniable pull we had for one another—years of stolen looks and true happiness finally connected into this spellbinding kiss.
His cock pushed into mine, and my jeans strained as I was desperate to meet him. My dick was harder than it had ever felt.
My shirt was ripped off my body, and I watched Ronan’s tongue trail over my flesh. I was his opposite in every way. Where he was tan and tattooed, I was pale and unmarked by any art. I was soft, and he was made of hard ridges and thick binding ropes of muscle.
He was…
“Stop,” I said, my brain finally catching up to my heart. His gray eyes blazed with lust and pain.
I pushed my hand harder on his chest.
“Stop. Ronan.”
With a frustrated growl, he pulled away. His cock was so long and prominent as it protruded away from his body. I always knew he was massive, but it was dizzying when he was erect like this.
Suddenly, I realized the wetness coating his cock head was my sister’s passion. Rage and disgust rose inside me, and I growled.
“If you aren’t brave enough to say the words…I will.”
The words hanging in my mouth I wouldn’t be able to take back. Any more than he could take back fucking my sister.
“I don’t want to see you again. Ever. I hope you enjoyed Maria’s used-up pussy, because that’s all you will ever have. Get the fuck out. And Ronan…go to fucking hell for what you did to me.”
* * *
I blinked at the painful memories. Too many years had passed, yet the pain that his presence brought back now was as fresh as seeing him ten years ago with Maria.
The sterile scent of antiseptic filled the air, a reminder that I was still here, still alive, still breathing. My knuckles throbbed with each passing second, and the tight wrap the nurse had applied only seemed to make the pain more pronounced, more real.
I couldn’t shake the sensation of being broken—physically and emotionally. Was it always like this when someone hit something too hard? Ending up with bruises and pain?
The worst part was the reason I was in this mess. The reason I’d hurt myself—whether it was through boxing someone’s head like these people believed or the truth.
And there was ‘the truth’ standing there in the doorway, just watching me while Doctor Mitter attended to his mother’s broken wrist. I hadn’t expected him to show up here, of all places, and I didn’t know what to do with him anymore now than when he was in my confessional. After all these years, seeing him again felt like a punch to the gut.
Seriously, did he need to stand there so still?
I glanced down at my hand, the wrapped bandages starkly contrasting with the rawness I felt deep in my bones. I hated this. I hated showing weakness and needing help. But I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe…just maybe, it was a sign.
Has God put us together to patch up the past and hatred? Was this His way to test my faith again?
“Ronan…” my voice was rough like I hadn’t spoken in years.
“Are you okay?” he said, his voice soft but laced with something else, something I couldn’t place.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, knowing it wasn’t true.
How could I be fine when everything I’d ever wanted stood before me?
His eyes didn’t leave me, even when the nurse came over to wrap my hand more tightly and check the swelling.
I flexed my fingers, testing the bandage, wishing for some distraction from the weight of his gaze. I knew he was waiting for me to break, waiting for me to say something, anything.
Did he want an apology for kicking him out of my church?
Fat chance that would happen.
I hated that he still had this power over me.
After all this time, how could he just walk in here and undo every wall I’d tried to build around my heart, walls created solely because of him?
The nurse finished her examination, and Doctor Mitter took Miranda for X-rays, leaving us alone. After their mindless chatter and footsteps faded, I finally looked up and met his eyes.
I saw the uncertainty in them, the pain in how his jaw tightened and his hands clenched. He wanted to say something.
But I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it.
Not yet.
“You’re not fine, Elias,” he said quietly, his voice low, almost broken and angry.
He sounded like a petulant kid admitting to his faults. Ten years had passed, and in those ten years, I had walls around myself that no one, not even Ronan, could tear down, no matter how hard he tried.
“Why did you leave all those years ago?” The question slipped out before I could stop it. His face changed then, the guilt flashing in his eyes for a moment before he hid it.
“Staying wasn’t an option,” he whispered, stepping closer, his voice raw with emotion. “I couldn’t be the person you needed me to be. I couldn’t be what anyone needed me to be.”
A flicker of something inside me fluttered, anger, hurt, maybe even hope, but I pushed it down.
“You are the one who told me to leave, Elias. Did you expect me to stay?”
“You didn’t have to leave,” I said, letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “I never wanted you to go. Not really. I was angry, and after you broke my heart, I wasn’t going near you…but your mom suffered without you.”
His gaze hardened at the mention of his mother, the distance between us narrowing with each passing second.
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he said. “I didn’t want to hurt you.” The words felt like a promise, like an apology. “But I thought…I thought it would be easier if I just disappeared. Easier for everyone, including myself.”
I could see the guilt in his gray eyes, the regret that had been eating at him for years. The man in front of me, the man I once knew so well, was still wearing all the scars from our past. The difference was, this time, I wasn’t running from it. I couldn’t anymore.
“It wasn’t easy to love you,” I said, the words bitter on my tongue, but they felt true. “When you left, I realized who I was. I accepted my sin. I was reckless and threw my broken heart at anyone who would take it…but they weren’t you. They weren’t you, Ronan. I hated you for that. For so long…I hated you. I let that hate lead me to my absolution. Begging Father Franklin to take me in and make me something more than what your betrayal had left me. I couldn’t be that broken, pathetic boy anymore.”
He closed the distance between us, his hand reaching out slowly, tentatively, like he wasn’t sure if I would pull away. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
“So you became a fucking Priest?”
He sounded exasperated, like my vows were a personal nail to his coffin.
The touch of his hand on mine—just like in old times—made everything else seem small. My small barrier, the anger, the hurt, it all faded. At that moment, it was just him and me. Neither of us could run forever from this conversation.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice breaking, and I realized then that he had been carrying this weight for just as long as I had.
Tears formed in his gray eyes and spilled down his cheeks. The man I saw as pure strength my entire life was just as fragile as I was.
I closed my eyes, letting the truth of it all settle over me.
“You don’t have to be sorry, Ronan,” I whispered, my voice barely audible. “I just…I just needed you to know. Why I made the choices I have and why that won’t change. I am glad you are back for your mother. I know you will be good for Monticello. Just as you always have been…but I can’t. I can’t have you in my life again.”
At that moment, his hand slipped from mine. I could feel the pain. The invisible tether that always bound us, snapping, leaving in its wake our broken love.