Chapter 11
Saint
By the next evening, I’m in a bad enough mood that even Bricks stops trying to make it worse for entertainment.
He sits to my left at the bar with one boot hooked around the stool rung and a glass of whiskey resting untouched near his hand, which tells me he’s waiting for the room to decide whether tonight is going to end in laughter or blood.
Bricks doesn’t ignore liquor unless something more interesting is happening, and right now, the interesting thing is Oisín sitting on my other side with a glass of water between his hands and a lie still caught somewhere behind his teeth.
He’s been wrong all day. Quiet, which is normal for him, but not quiet in the way he goes when he’s watching a room.
This is different. He keeps glancing toward the front door when it opens, keeps losing track of conversations halfway through, and keeps touching the rim of his glass without drinking from it.
Tally asked him twice if he wanted food, and both times he answered a second late, like he had to drag himself back from somewhere else before his mouth could work.
I know where he went last night. Bricks told me before I came upstairs, and Oisín confirmed it by lying badly enough to insult us both.
A coffee shop six blocks away with Varina waiting in a back booth.
My pretty little Rogue coming home with damp cuffs, a pale face, and a story about missing his sister.
He still hasn’t told me what she said.
My hand rests at the back of his neck while I talk business over him, thumb moving in slow circles against the pulse beneath his ear. The contact is public enough that everyone in the bar understands the message and controlled enough that only Oisín knows the pressure is for him.
His shoulders stay straight, but every time my thumb drags over that sensitive place under his hairline, his breathing changes.
He tries to hide it by lifting his glass or looking toward Moth’s tablet or pretending to follow the conversation about the false route pattern, but his body answers before pride can get in the way.
That should satisfy me. It doesn’t.
For four nights, I’ve gotten used to him under my hands.
Worse than that, I’ve gotten used to the silence in my head afterward.
Oisín gives me something I didn’t ask for and don’t know how to want cleanly, a peace I can’t seem to find anywhere else.
After I denied him last night, I spent the night staring at the ceiling while he shook beside me and pretended not to need what I refused to give.
The static came back meaner than before, crawling through every thought until morning felt like punishment.
Bricks looks at Oisín, then at my hand on his neck, then back at me with the kind of expression that means he’s about to say something he already knows I won’t appreciate. “You keeping a tighter leash than usual, brother?”
Oisín stills beneath my palm, and the nearest conversations lower by a fraction. Demo, carrying beer behind the bar, freezes with one crate against his hip. Tally doesn’t turn around, but the towel in her hand stops moving.
I look at Bricks. “Mind your business.”
“Usually do.” He finally lifts his whiskey, takes a drink, and sets the glass down with a soft click. “Then your business sits beside you looking like he might bolt if somebody breathes too hard.”
Oisín’s fingers tighten around the water glass. His voice comes quiet, but not weak. “I’m right here.”
Bricks shifts his attention to him, and the edge of his grin dulls into something almost respectful. “I know. That’s why I kept it polite.”
Tally snorts from behind the bar. “That was polite?”
“For me, it was goddamn diplomatic.”
Demo snorts. “You once got stabbed in a Waffle House parking lot over hash browns.”
“They were on my side of the table.”
A small movement catches at the corner of Oisín’s mouth before he can bury it.
It’s gone almost instantly, but I feel it beneath my hand when his neck loosens by a fraction.
He’s still carrying Varina’s words, and yet Bricks being a violent idiot can pull a smile out of him.
The contradiction irritates me because it makes him harder to categorize.
He doesn’t belong neatly in any box I try to build around him: Rogue, spouse, liability, asset, liar, good boy.
Moth crosses from the far corner and sets his tablet on the bar in front of me. “The false pattern is in place. Two windows remain unchanged, one dead drop has been staged as active, and Pike’s people are rerouting through the county access road instead of the spur.”
I glance at the screen, then angle it toward Oisín. “Look.”
Surprise flickers across his face before caution shuts it down. Good. Let Cade and every other bastard with a mouth understand the man at my side isn’t decoration just because he looks soft enough to bruise.
Oisín studies the map for a few seconds.
“The county access road works if you vary departure times by more than forty minutes. Anything less, and you’re still giving them rhythm.
Also, don’t move the same drivers from the original run to the false window.
If someone is watching faces instead of vehicles, they’ll know which pattern matters. ”
Moth’s eyes narrow slightly with interest. “That’s correct.”
Bricks leans back. “Christ. There’s two of you now.”
Tally slides a plate toward Oisín without asking. “Eat, genius.”
Oisín colors at that, but he takes the plate. “Thank you.”
I keep my hand where it is and feel the pulse under my thumb jump again.
He likes being useful when the word isn’t a knife.
He likes being heard before he’s dismissed.
He likes it so much that he doesn’t know how to receive it without looking startled, and that does something unpleasant to my temper because it means Canon spent years teaching him praise was a trap or a debt.
I tell Moth, “Run it his way. Put Halo on the false window.”
Moth’s mouth tightens. “He’ll complain.”
“That’s why I’m telling you instead of him.”
Bricks mutters, “Leadership.”
The business moves on, but Oisín doesn’t settle.
He picks at the food, drinks water, looks toward the side door twice, and keeps his throat soft under my hand like he doesn’t know whether he wants comfort or punishment from it.
I let it continue until my patience thins down to wire.
Then I stand, my palm sliding from his neck to the back of his chair.
“Room.”
He looks up at me. Whatever he sees in my face makes him set the fork down carefully and follows me down the hall.
The moment we get inside my room, my eyes widen a fraction.
Oisín steps toward my bed and then kneels near the foot of the bed with his hands on his thighs and his head slightly bowed, curls falling forward enough to shadow his face.
It isn’t pretty in the polished, performative way some people make submission into theater.
He chose the floor before I put him there, and now I have to stand over a man who keeps giving me things I don’t ask for and pretend it isn’t something I want.
“Is this an apology for last night?”
His fingers press into his thighs. “I don’t know.”
I step closer, and he tips his head back slowly.
His eyes are tired and wary, still carrying the bruise of whatever Varina said to him.
I can work around lies. I can break through deflection.
This quiet, wounded honesty is harder because it makes me want to touch him before I know whether I’m reaching to comfort or control.
“What did she say to you?”
His mouth tightens at the corner. Varina cut him somewhere soft, and he has spent a day hiding the blood.
I thread my fingers into his curls, his lashes fluttering in response. The reaction should satisfy me, and part of it does, but my hand starts to shake before I can turn the satisfaction into anything useful, a tremor small enough that most people would miss it.
Fuck. I drag my hand back to my side, Oisín’s gaze lifting to my hand, then my face.
“She wanted to talk,” he mumbles as his shoulders rise with a slow breath.
“I don’t think my family is using this as an alliance.
Not really. Varina was supposed to marry you because Canon wanted her close enough to learn Obsidian from the inside.
Routes, people, pressure points. XR3, if she could get near it. ”
There it is.
The shape of the knife.
I suspected it from the beginning because Canon Ward is too proud to crawl unless the crawl brings him close enough to bite. Varina always looked more like a blade than a bride. What matters is Oisín saying it out loud, kneeling at my feet while he hands me the truth his sister wanted him to hide.
“What did she ask from you?”
He swallows. “Names. Doors. Trust. Anything I could notice without looking like I was noticing.”
“That all?”
“Not forever.”
My gaze narrows at him, wondering how deep this goes or if it’s truly just that simple. Slowly, I fold my arms across my chest. “And what are you using this for?”
He looks up quickly. “What?”
“The alliance. Obsidian. Me. What are you using it for?”
Oisín hesitates for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Try.”
“I don’t know,” he says again, quieter. “I’m not trying to take anything from you. I’m not trying to help Canon. I’m not trying to hurt Varina. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
For one stupid second, I want him to say he’s staying for me.
The thought is pathetic enough to make me angry.
He’s been in my life for days. I put him in my bed because the contract let me and because I wanted him badly enough to turn strategy into excuse.
We come from clubs built to eat each other alive.
He owes me nothing, and I haven’t given him anything to ask for that kind of answer.
I point to the bed. “Get up.”