Chapter 32
Saint
The president’s ring is still warm on my finger when I leave the main room.
Still, when I run my fingers across it, I feel the warmth like the last stubborn proof that Sol was here, that he wore this thing for years and built himself around it until no one could tell where the man ended and the title began.
The hallway outside the main room is quieter than it should be. Voices stay low behind me, the club already rearranging itself around the absence Sol left behind.
I don’t know how to feel about that. I was bracing myself for more of a fight with Sol, a firefight, literally anything than the man just handing me the keys to the kingdom.
Sol walked out under his own power. I didn’t strip him, didn’t throw him in the dirt, didn’t make the room watch him reduced to nothing so I could call it justice.
I left him his feet, his cut, whatever pride he could carry out the door with him, and somehow that feels heavier than if I’d taken everything.
A heavy sigh flows through me as I head down the hallway, ignoring the congratulations and pats on the back. Some part of me wanted this to be a monumental moment. I had dreamed so fucking long for it but even though I’ve fought for it, it feels… wrong.
I step into my office, running my fingers along the walls of maps and information we’ve gathered over the last few weeks since everything changed. The presence in here used to feel so stiff but with Oisín here, it feels warm.
My mind drags me into the office further down, into the place that’ll now become mine. I don’t feel the same need to take over what my father built, though. It needs change. It needs a new touch, a new perspective… maybe even a new direction.
Needing space from all of it, I head toward my bedroom, a place I haven’t slept in almost two weeks, catering to my husband in the full service guestroom. Oisín is sitting on the edge of the bed when I open the door.
He shouldn’t have walked all the way here without help.
Harlan would have my head for it if he had any authority here beyond the kind Tally gives him by glaring at people until they comply.
Oisín’s shoulders are slightly rounded, one hand braced against the mattress near his thigh, the other resting over his ribs beneath the loose dark shirt he must have changed into.
His cut is folded over the chair by the dresser. The lamp beside the bed is on low, softening the bruises still fading along his face and making him look younger than he is, though nothing about his eyes is young when they lift to mine.
I close the door behind me, crossing the room to drag Oisín into a kiss before I stop myself. As much as I need him right now, I have to show him I won’t revert to always taking. Unless he asks.
I walk to the bed and sit beside him, close enough that our knees almost touch, far enough that he can decide whether the distance closes. The mattress shifts under my weight. Oisín watches my hand when I open it.
Oisín’s gaze drops to the ring on my hand. “Are you all right?”
The question is absurd enough that I almost laugh. He’s the one still healing from a chair in a Rogue repair barn. He has no business asking if I’m all right.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Oisín’s expression shifts, just a little.
He didn’t expect the truth, or maybe he expected me to dress it up as anger first. I pull the ring off and set the ring on the nightstand beside the lamp, staring at it for a second longer than I need to.
Without it on my finger, I feel strangely lighter and exposed at the same time.
“I wanted to take everything from him,” I admit. “I wanted to strip his cut off his back in front of every man who ever feared him. I wanted him to feel what it’s like to stand in a room and know nobody is coming to your side because they love you, only because they’re afraid not to.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” I look down at my hands, at the faint crescent on my finger where Sol’s ring dug in. “I thought it would feel better.”
Oisín’s hand moves toward mine. I turn my palm up, letting him choose the contact as his fingers slide over mine. “Maybe it will later,” he says. “Maybe not feeling good is the point.”
I huff a breath that almost becomes a laugh. “That sounds like something Harlan would say right before telling me I’m bleeding through a shirt.”
“You usually are.”
“Traitor.”
His mouth softens. “Husband.”
I lift his hand and look at the ring on his finger that I all but shoved onto his hand weeks ago.
He wore it through pain. Through Canon’s chair.
Through Varina’s betrayal. Through every moment I didn’t have the words and every moment he had to decide whether my violence was enough to trust. My thumb moves over the metal once, then over the knuckle beneath it.
“I want you,” I push out, my voice barely above a whisper, the confession surprising even me.
Oisín’s breath catches, as he waits for me to finish the thought.
“I want you but I want you to choose this,” I tell him, keeping my eyes on our hands because if I look at his face too soon, I might retreat into something easier.
“Not because I dragged you out of that meeting when I first met you as a Rogue. Not because I put my name beside yours and made it official before anyone could talk sense into either club. Not because you sleep in my bed or wear my cut or because I can put a hand on your neck and make the whole room understand what happens if they get stupid. I wanted all of that before I understood the difference.”
His fingers tighten slightly around mine.
I make myself continue. “You chose me when you didn’t have to.
You chose Obsidian when blood gave you every reason to look away.
You stood at my table and told me no when I was ready to do exactly what my father would have done and call it leadership.
I don’t know how to hold that without turning it into something I can own. I’m trying.”
Oisín looks at me now, bruised face open and guarded at the same time.
“And if I have to let you go,” I say, though the words taste like metal on my tongue, “then I will.”
His expression changes so fast I almost reach for him. His brows draw together, his grip on my hand tightening with more strength than he’s had all week.
“Have you learned nothing?” he asks.
I blink at him, thoroughly confused.
“I’m not trying to leave, Saint.”
“You said—”
“I said you had to prove you were different from your father. I didn’t say I was looking for a door.
” His voice shakes with mild frustration as he shifts toward me.
“I’m not trying to find a way out. I’m trying to get you to tell me I’m more than a prop, more than peace, more than something useful you brought home because it pissed off the Rogues and made your head quiet. ”
“You are.”
“Then say it.” His eyes glaze over with tears, and the sight of that does more damage than any blade Canon put in me.
“I want you so badly it hurts. I fell for you before it was safe or right or even made sense, and I know how stupid that sounds because half of this started as strategy and the other half started in a room where neither of us knew each other’s names.
But I’m here. I’m still here. I just wanted that from you too. ”
There’s so much in his expression, hurt, need, exhaustion, and the stubborn, terrifying courage of a man who has already survived the worst of what wanting can cost and is still asking anyway.
He isn’t demanding pretty words. He isn’t asking me to become someone else all at once.
He’s sitting beside me asking me to stop making him guess whether the ground under us is real.
“I didn’t know what it was,” I whisper. “At first. I knew I wanted you under my hands. I knew the room got quieter when you were close. I knew I slept better with you beside me, which pissed me off because needing a person for sleep sounds like a disease. I knew I hated every minute you pulled away, and I told myself it was because you’d stopped giving me something I’d gotten used to. ”
Oisín’s thumb moves once over the side of my hand.
“I didn’t know why I needed you,” I force out, needing Oisín to see all of me.
It’s the only way this will work. “I didn’t know what to call it when you started mattering in places I didn’t let anyone matter.
Maybe that made it hurt more when you pulled away.
Maybe it made me meaner because I thought if I could turn it into anger, I wouldn’t have to look at anything softer underneath. ”
I force myself to lift my head and stare at the man I’ve wanted longer than I’ve let myself believe. Oisín is watching me like every word matters. Like he’ll remember them later and turn them over in his hands, checking for sharp edges.
“I think I’m in love with you,” I finally say.
For once, nothing in me tries to take them back. Oisín chuckles, reaching up to caress my cheek. “We’re kind of working backwards a little,” he teases, his words coming out a little breathy.
I stare at him. “That’s what you have to say?”
“I think we’re supposed to fall in love first and then get married.”
The laugh that leaves me doesn’t sound like mine. It’s rough and quiet, pulled out of some place I didn’t know still worked. I lift my hand slowly, giving him time to pull away and when he doesn’t, my palm settles against his cheek with more care than I knew my hands could hold.
“Nothing about us has been in the right order,” I say. “Did you want it to be?”
His eyes soften. “No.”