Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
brAN
Kael’s face is a grainy square on Cotton’s laptop, the secure call window open on the den coffee table between my knees.
“Tell me you’re exaggerating,” he says.
“I’m not,” I answer.
He swears in Irish, then in English for emphasis. “So—serial killer at her window, serial killer in her inbox, you in Gallagher’s house, and Tallulah thinking this is all a fun little logic puzzle. That about right?”
“Close enough.”
He leans back in his chair, fingers steepled, eyes narrowed. Behind him: bookshelves, heavy curtains, the corner of a framed photograph I don’t let myself focus on. Kael’s version of home. Mine’s a duffel bag.
“How bad is she?” he asks.
My brain supplies images in response to the question. Tallulah with her hand flat on the table, fighting not to shake. Her eyes wide with vulnerability and fear as her fingers hovered over the laptop.
But then, better ones. Easier ones. Laughing with Saoirse while the kid puts glitter stickers on her laptop. In the kitchen, stuffing her face with a cookie that looked suspiciously like a dick and giggling over it.
“Depends on the five-minute interval you catch her in,” I say. “She’s scared, but she’s not trying to pretend she’s not. She’s still functional. Still sharp. Hasn’t tried to sneak out ‘for a walk’ yet.”
“That I believe,” he mutters.
He watches me too closely.
“And you?” he says.
“I’m fine.”
“You look like you haven’t slept since Reagan,” he says.
“You’re older than me,” I remind him.
“Yeah, but I’m pretty,” he says. “You just look like a busted shovel on a good day. Today you look like somebody hit it with a truck.”
I huff out a breath that’s almost a laugh. Almost.
“I slept,” I say. “Some.”
He doesn’t push. He knows the numbers I’ll give him will be lies.
He tilts his head, studying me. “You want out, Kelly? Say it now.”
It actually surprises me.
“You offering to pull me?” I ask.
“You’re no good to me or Tallulah if you’re burned down to the wick,” he says. “I can put someone else on it. Atlas. Ryan.”
“That won’t be necessary. She trusts me.”
“You don’t say.” We both hear Philly in the silence that follows. Kael waits. He’s good at waiting, the asshole.
“This is different,” I say.
One of his eyebrows goes up, slow. “Is it.”
“She’s different,” I say before I can stop myself.
“And there it is,” he says.
“For once, it’s useful,” I push. “She doesn’t listen to people she doesn’t trust. She barely half-listens to the ones she does.
She lets me in the room when she works. She talks through her thought processes.
If you replace me with someone, she’s gonna chase him, and she’ll just do it alone.
Brady will try to bench her, she’ll blow past it, and we’ll be cleaning that mess off the mountain next. ”
He’s quiet for a beat.
“You think you’re the only one who can keep up with her,” he says.
“I think I’m the only one who won’t shove her in a corner for her own good and then act surprised when she climbs out the window,” I say. “She doesn’t do ‘safe.’ She does continuous forward motion. You have to know that about her, Kael. Someone has to stay between that and stupid.”
That gets me a short, humorless smile.
“Fair,” he concedes. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”
“Or Tinkerbell, god forbid.”
“Tinkerbell.”
Shite.
We sit in silence long enough for the house to bleed in—pipes tick, a door closes somewhere upstairs, the faint laughter of Cotton in another wing—and me to curse my big mouth.
“How attached are you?” Kael asks quietly.
I knew it was coming.
I look at the grain of the coffee table, the worn patch where other hands have rested. “She’s not just a job,” I say.
He snorts. “That’s a yes.”
“Kael—”
“Don’t,” he cuts in. The humor drops out of his voice.
“We’re not doing the part where you pretend this is neutral.
Cotton’s already called me twice. Gallagher’s texting like he’s got shares in you.
Shiloh Ford sent me a paragraph about how ‘Twiggy is not allowed to die’ and how glad she was that Bran Kelly was here. ”
He leans closer to the camera, eyes flat.
“So listen very carefully,” he says. “You are in my cousin’s house, wrapped around my other cousin and a girl all of them consider theirs.
If you so much as look like you’re putting your hands on her in a way I don’t like while Henry is still breathing, I will come down there myself, break all your fingers, slice off your dick, and send you back to County fucking Clare. ”
The air in my lungs goes cold.
“I’m not—” I start.
“I am not joking,” he says, quiet and vicious.
“You want her? Fine. Want whatever you want. I don’t care what you do with yourself when this is over.
But while this is active, while she’s in your care, she is off limits in any way that isn’t ‘keeping her alive.’ You don’t get to bleed your damage into hers and call it protection. ”
The words land like blows because they hit bone.
“I know the line,” I say, and my voice sounds rough even to me.
“Knowing it and not putting your hand on it are different things,” he replies.
“You remember how this works, Kelly. The minute you touch her like she’s yours—really touch her—you stop being the shield between her and the monster and start being another man she needs protection from.
You lose focus. I will not let that happen in my orbit. ”
I swallow.
“I hear you,” I say.
“Good,” he says. “Then hear this too: I sent you because you have that unfortunate weakness for small, stubborn people who poke their noses where they shouldn’t. It makes you good at this. It also makes you stupid. Stay good. Don’t get stupid.”
“Understood,” I say.
His gaze stays hard for one more beat.
“If you need more bodies, you say so,” he adds. “I can get you two more men by tomorrow. I know you like playing lone wolf, but this isn’t the job.”
“More men spook the town and make Tallulah feel like she’s under arrest,” I say. “We’re better off invisible where we can be.”
“For now,” he agrees. “Keep me posted. And Kelly?”
“Yeah.”
“Hands to yourself,” he says. “Don’t make me come down there.”
The call clicks off. The laptop screen goes dark, my reflection ghosted in it—eyes shadowed, mouth a tight line.
How attached are you?
Too much to walk away.
Not enough to be allowed to touch her.
I find Tallulah in the kitchen with Cotton and Saoirse. There’s flour everywhere.
I mean that literally. It’s on the island, the floor, Tallulah’s hoodie, in Cotton’s hair. Saoirse has a streak across her nose like war paint and is wielding a cookie cutter like a weapon.
“What in the name of all the saints exploded in here?”
“We’re making sugar cookies,” Cotton says. “Duh.”
“It’s pretty obvious,” Tallulah agrees, elbow-deep in dough. “Flour, sugar…child. But I do think we deviated a little from the recipe. It said ‘lightly flour the surface,’ not ‘summon a blizzard.’”
Saoirse grins up at her. “I’m helping.”
“You are,” Tallulah says. “You’re my chaos goblin.”
The warmth in her voice does something to my chest I don’t have a name for.
She glances up, and her smile shifts, grows smaller, sharper. It hits like a punch.
“Hey,” she says. “You survive whatever Kael just served you?”
“More or less,” I say.
She studies my face like she’s reading a code, fingers still working the dough. Cotton’s gaze flicks between us once, quick and knowing.
“Gentry,” I say, before I can overthink it. “Can I talk to you? Alone.”
Cotton’s brows lift, just a fraction. Saoirse is too busy stabbing the dough to notice.
Tallulah stills. Her hands are white to the wrists. “I get the surname treatment. This sounds ominous,” she says lightly.
I shake my head, just a fraction, but it’s enough to let her know that I’m not joking. I can’t joke.
She wipes her hands on a towel, dusts flour off her hoodie. “Don’t burn anything down while I’m gone,” she tells Cotton.
“I make no promises,” Cotton says. As I step back from the doorway, she adds, “Put a sock on the doorknob if you need to, Gallagher.”
“It’s not that kind of talk,” I mutter.
“Uh-huh,” she says, unconvinced.
I lead Tallulah down the hall to a quieter stretch, past the mudroom, stopping in a little alcove between the back stairs and the side door. No portraits. No windows. Just a piece of wall and a bench and enough privacy to make this worse.
She folds her arms over her chest, leaning one shoulder against the wall like she’s bracing for impact. “Okay,” she says. “Lecture away, Agent Broody.”
“This isn’t a lecture,” I say.
A frown dances over her delicate features and disappears. “Then what is it?”
I rake a hand over my face, Kael’s voice still in my ear. Don’t touch her. Don’t make this harder than it already is. Don’t make me choose.
“Last night,” I say. The words feel like glass. “What happened on the couch.”
Her chin tips up a notch. “Yeah,” she says cautiously.
“It can’t happen again.”
There it is. Clean cut.
She blinks. For a second, something raw flashes across her face—embarrassment, maybe. Hurt. Then it shutters, replaced by a brittle sort of calm.
“Okay,” she says. “Message received.”
“That’s it?” I ask, thrown by how fast she puts the shield up.
“What did you expect?” she snaps. “That I’d fall to my knees and sob because the big scary man doesn’t want to kiss me anymore?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s what you meant.” Her arms hug herself tighter. “You kissed me. In case your memory’s fuzzy. You didn’t look like you were hating it.”
I don’t have a good answer for that. The memory hits hard and fast—her in my lap, the taste of sugar, the way she’d made that broken little sound into my mouth.
“I didn’t hate it,” I say, because if we’re doing honesty, we’re doing all of it. “That’s the problem.”
She laughs once, sharp and humorless. “Right. Because what’s worse than kissing the girl you’re supposed to be protecting? Liking it.”