Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
RONAN
The walk back to the house takes longer than it should, every step dragging like I’m wading through quicksand. My head is pounding, a brutal, punishing rhythm in my skull.
I can still feel her on my hands, and against my mouth. Her body pressed between me and the wall. Her breathless, shattered gasps weaving through my mind.
My legs are unsteady beneath me, the adrenaline crash hitting hard and fast. The cold air bites at my overheated skin, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I’m still hard in my jeans, and it feels uncomfortable and wrong, my body refusing to acknowledge what my mind knows.
I just destroyed the only good thing I ever had in my life.
Nausea rises with each step, and I stumble, catching myself against a streetlight and forcing air into my lungs. The street is empty, and there are no witnesses to watch me fall apart.
Small mercies I don’t deserve.
Her perfume clings to my clothes, filling my lungs with every breath I take, making what I did impossible to ignore.
I touched her when I knew better. I let her touch me when I knew what the cost would be. But I did it anyway, and now she’s under my skin again, burned into me as though she never left.
The door slams behind me, and the silence of the house bears down. My hands won’t stop shaking. I scrub them over my face, through my hair, trying to shake her loose. My fingers smell of her, that mix of arousal and perfume that fills me with want and self-loathing in equal measure.
I need to get her off me.
I need to get her out of me.
But she’s everywhere. The taste of her lingers on my tongue. My fingers twitch, recalling the way her body melted beneath my hands, the way she tightened around me, and how she gasped my name like she didn’t care that I was poison in her veins.
In prison, I told myself she was an illusion. A figment of my past warped by desperation. She wasn’t as soft as I remembered, or as warm. She wasn’t waiting for me on the other side. She was just a name on my tongue, a ghost in my mind, a lie I had to carve out of myself just to breathe.
But she was real tonight.
And I ruined her all over again.
My stomach lurches, and I shove open the bathroom door, flicking on the light. My reflection in the mirror stares back—wild eyes, too-pale skin, lips still swollen from kissing her. There’s a smudge of red at the corner of my mouth. Her lipstick. Evidence of what I did.
I look like a man who devours things. Destroys things. One who doesn’t stop when he knows he should.
I drag my shirt over my head and toss it aside.
The fabric is damp with sweat, saturated with her perfume.
My hands move to my jeans, yanking at the buttons, but my fingers fumble and it takes three attempts to get them open.
I’m still too aware of her, aching with the shape of her pressed against me.
She’s not just under my skin, she’s carved into my fucking bones.
I force the water on, cranking the handle as far as it will go. The pipes groan before the spray blasts down in an icy torrent. I step under it, letting it slam into me, punishing my overheated skin. The cold shocks my system, stealing my breath, but it doesn’t fucking help.
I’ve told myself for years that I didn’t remember her right.
That her hair wasn’t that shade, her voice wasn’t that soft, and the way she looked at me was all in my imagination.
I spent years convincing myself I’d exaggerated the way she felt against me, and imagined the look she’d give me like she was convinced I could hang the moon for her if I fucking tried.
She wasn’t real.
That’s what I made myself believe. I had to, otherwise I wouldn’t have survived that first six months.
But my body remembers her too well. The way her breath hitched when I pressed against her, and she looked up at me, wide eyed, pupils blown, and lips parted. So fucking willing. As though she’d already decided she belonged to me again.
Like she’d never stopped belonging to me.
A groan rips from my chest, raw and broken.
My head drops forward, forehead resting against the tiles.
The water beats down on my shoulders and back, running in rivulets over the ink that covers almost every inch of my skin.
I grab the soap, scrubbing at my hands and arms, anywhere she touched.
My skin turns red under the rough treatment, but her scent won’t disappear. It’s soaked too deep.
Dropping the soap, my fingers curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. I need to stop thinking about her.
I need to stop wanting her.
She’s in my head, a fever under my skin that no drugs will ever be able to heal.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but the memories push through anyway. Her scent. Her warmth. Her soft moans when I traced my fingers down her body. The way she shuddered when I pushed them inside her. The sounds she made when—
“Fuck!”
The word bursts from my lips and I slam my fist into the wall. Pain flares through my knuckles and I welcome it. I hit it again, harder this time, relishing the crack of impact. It’s something to focus on. A target for rage that drowns her out.
Yet even with the pain spreading through my hand, my body betrays me. Even as I tell myself I hate myself for doing what I did to her, I’m still hard and aching.
The contradiction makes me sick.
Flattening my palm against the wet tiles, I reach down with my other hand, and my breath stutters as my fingers wrap around my dick. The strokes are fast, rough, and edged with disgust and need. A desperate attempt to exorcise her from my mind.
But I can hear her moans in my ears. All I can see behind my closed eyes is the way her body trembled against mine as she gave in to me. And all I can remember is the way she looked at me after, confused and hurt and still wanting.
I come with her name clenched between my teeth, spit out in equal parts curse and prayer, while the evidence of my weakness washes away, swirling down the drain and leaving me exhausted.
But the shame stays. Because even this, even hating myself for touching her, doesn’t stop me from wanting her again.
I stumble out of the shower, taking hardly any time to dry off before walking into the bedroom and pulling clean clothes out of my duffel and dragging them on. The denim sticks to my damp skin.
I don’t care.
I need to get out of the house, out of my head, and away from the silence that lets her voice echo too loud.
My reflection mocks me as I drag a hand through wet hair. Tattoos cover every visible part of my body, marking every lesson I’ve learned the hard way. Scars tell stories I’ll never share. But all I can see are the ghostly imprints of her fingers where she touched me.
Fuck.
I spin away and almost run downstairs to the kitchen. There’s a bottle of whiskey on the counter, and I snatch it up, intending to pour a glass full to numb the edges and push her voice out of my mind.
You’re lying. To me. To yourself.
Her words cut deeper than any blade I’ve ever known. She saw right through me. She always fucking sees through me.
I have to get out of this house before I go insane.
Tom’s porch light glows in the darkness. I don’t do normal conversations and casual drinks. But the silence in my house is suffocating me, and the thought of spending another minute alone with my thoughts makes my skin crawl.
I’m in front of his door and knocking before I can talk myself out of it.
“Didn’t think you’d show up.” Tom opens the door, surprise clear in his expression. His eyes drop to the bottle in my hand, and he smiles. “You came prepared.”
“Seemed rude to show up empty-handed.”
He grins and steps back. “Most people bring wine, but I’m definitely not complaining. Come on in.”
The living room holds more people than I expected. Voices mix with the clink of glasses. A woman laughs at something a man in a blue sweater is saying. An older couple sits on the couch, talking quietly. Every instinct screams at me to retreat, to run, and get the fuck out before they see too much.
“Get yourself a glass.” Tom gestures to the bar cart. “Kitchen’s through there if you want ice.”
I pour two fingers neat, hands steadier than they have any right to be. One drink will last me all night. I learned to nurse drinks from construction sites where beers after work were part of the ritual. I can make one last, and be social without being stupid.
“The wiring’s finished,” I say when Tom asks about the house’s progress. My voice comes out normal, showing none of the chaos in my head. “I’m moving onto the plumbing next.”
“Harris would be pleased.” Tom settles into the chair across from me.
The whiskey burns going down, but it doesn’t touch the knot in my chest.
Someone asks about the roof. I answer automatically, explaining the shingles that need replacing, the flashing around the chimney. The words come easily—work talk, safe talk, nothing that requires me to think about anything but the house.
A woman sits on the arm of the couch, her perfume reaching me. It’s floral, close enough to Lily’s that it knocks me off-balance for a second. I take another sip, and let the burn anchor me to this moment, this room, and these people who know nothing about what I just did.
Tom tells a story about Beverly Walsh and the neighborhood association. People laugh. I manage what might pass for a smile, and play the part of a guy who’s got his shit together. The guy who belongs on Cedar Street.
The guy who didn’t just finger-fuck the only woman he’s ever loved in an alley and then tell her she meant nothing.
The glass in my hand is still half-full when Tom offers to refill it. I shake my head.
“Early start tomorrow. Foundation inspection.”
It’s a lie. I don’t have anything planned. But I need to leave before the mask cracks or someone asks the wrong question and I fall apart in a stranger’s living room.
“Of course. Come around anytime. Door’s always open.”
The cold air hits my face when I step outside, and my house looms ahead, dark and empty. I let myself in, locking the door behind me. Moving through the living room, I sink down onto the couch, head in my hands and let the truth I’ve been avoiding since the bar settle over me.
I can scrub my skin raw. I can drink until my hands stop shaking. I can surround myself with strangers and small talk and anything to distract from the memory of her.
But none of it will ever wash away the taste of her, the memory of her, or the knowledge of what kind of monster I really am.
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s exactly what I deserve.