Chapter 18 Verity
Verity
Cannoli was my weakness. With each delicious sweet, buttery mouthful washed down with the best coffee I'd tasted since leaving Italy, my mood lifted. Honestly, it was hard to be depressed while scoffing food this perfect.
By the time I'd cleared my plate, Conal appeared amused.
"Would you like another one? That cannoli went down quick."
"No, I'm good," I replied, embarrassed at my gluttony. I bet his glamorous girlfriend, Maeve, didn't shovel food down her throat like a starving person. No doubt he thought I was a greedy bitch. He had a point.
"Sure? I'm having another coffee."
I shook my head. My jeans were already snug, so one more cannoli would tip me over the edge into fatsville, population: me.
"I'll have another coffee, though." Black espresso only had, like, two calories.
Conal raised his hand and Jo came rushing over.
"You want something else?" She glanced at my empty plate, smiling with satisfaction. The woman was a feeder. I’d put money on it.
"Two more coffees, please, Jo."
"Coming right up." She grinned and bustled away. A pair of soaked hikers with a wet spaniel entered the cafe, chatting about the shit weather, and then approached the counter. I gazed at the dog longingly, wishing it was mine, then looked away when I felt Conal watching me. He saw way too much.
"Why did you bring me here?" I asked eventually, once Jo had brought us fresh coffees.
"Because you needed to get out for a bit," came his reply. He picked up the small blue and white cup and sipped his steaming flat white. The spaniel had flopped in front of the wood burner, a hopeful gleam in its eye as it watched its owner eating a slice of chocolate cake.
I looked past the dog and scanned the paintings hung haphazardly on the whitewashed walls. Local landscapes. A few of them were good. Seriously good.
Conal shifted in his chair, drawing my attention back to him, like iron filings attracted to a magnet.
How had he known I was going stir crazy?
"I figured a trip to Jo's, and some fine baked goods, would make you feel better," he said after a sip of coffee.
"Thank you." And I meant it. Already, I felt marginally lighter. At least a little.
Rewinding the last few days and erasing the library kiss would make me feel even better about myself, but without a time machine, that wasn't possible. But I shoved that thought down.
We sat in silence for a while, with me trying not to stare at his chiseled jaw covered in sexy scruff or the way his pecs stretched his white tee. Thankfully, the cafe had filled up in the time we’d been sitting here. A group of middle-aged cyclists and their chatter helped distract me.
A teenage girl had appeared to help Jo serve. I caught her watching Conal with a dreamy expression on her face and wondered if that was how I looked like to casual observers.
Conal hadn’t noticed.
The longer we stayed enjoying the cafe's ambiance, the more the tension left my shoulders. It was good to be somewhere different, among people who didn't look at me with pity in their eyes.
As Conal relayed an amusing anecdote about Saoirse from when they were kids, my phone, which I'd placed on the table in case Saoirse called me, blipped with a message from my 'unknown number' asshole, aka Anton using a burner phone.
Two words.
Fucking whore.
Conal glanced down at the message on my lock screen and his face morphed from relaxed to furious in a heartbeat.
He snatched my phone and stared at the offensive message.
Another blip and a new message. This one was evidently disgusting enough to trigger a fatal embolism, judging by the way a vein throbbed ominously in Conal's temple.
"Ignore them," I advised. Anton would get bored with messaging me one day soon. If he didn't, I'd change my number.
"Unlock your phone," Conal demanded, passing me the phone.
"Why?"
He looked pointedly at the handset, so I raised it to my face and unlocked it, then handed it to him. He snatched it from me, jumped up, and stormed outside. As I watched, he jabbed at the screen and placed it to his ear.
Shit.
"Why didn't you say something?" Conal growled as we walked back to his SUV. He'd finally given me my phone back, and when I looked, the messages were gone.
I shrugged. "Didn't seem important."
He spun around and pressed me back against the passenger door. The rain had slowed to a faint drizzle. Faint rumbles of thunder heralded another incoming weather front, but Conal didn't seem to notice.
"You should have told me. Told us. The stuff in those messages…Jesus." His jaw ticked with anger. "Goddammit, Verity! No woman deserves that shit, and especially not you. I wish I’d fucking gutted the bastard."
My eyes widened in surprise. How did he know the messages had come from Anton?
Then I sighed. Nothing in Anton's messages was new to me. He'd said a lot of the same shit to my face during arguments. Perhaps I'd become immune to it. Or more likely, I just accepted it as my due because, subliminally, this was what I felt I deserved.
Conal brushed a strand of wet hair off my cheek. The gentleness of his touch shocked me from my introspection.
"Sweetheart."
I looked up, rain blurring my vision. Or were they tears?
"Those messages are bullshit. You are beautiful…perfect."
I huffed derisively. "Stupid, more like.
" Stupid enough to fall for Anton's superficial charm.
Stupid enough to believe Evan when he told me he loved me.
Especially stupid enough to give him my virginity.
An experience that left me wondering why Saoirse had lied when she said sex was amazing, because it hadn't been for me.
A firm hand cupped my jaw. "You're not fucking stupid, sweetheart." When his gaze dipped, lingering on my mouth, I swallowed hard. Given how cold it was out here, the icy wind cutting me to the bone, I should have been shivering. But the heat emanating from Conal's hard torso kept the cold at bay.
I wondered what it would be like to sleep tucked into his shoulder, cherished and protected. But that was just a dream. A broken girl like me was not meant for a man like Conal. Besides, he had a girlfriend.
"We should get back," I whispered, but neither of us moved.
Conal's thumb rubbed a sensitive spot below my ear, and I shuddered, but not from the cold. My core tightened, heat spreading up and outward. My panties grew damp, but I couldn't blame the weather.
"Not yet, sweetheart." The low timbre of Conal’s voice meant I barely heard him above the biting wind. Then he dipped his head and brushed his mouth across mine. A small moan escaped when his tongue pressed between my lips and a large hand gripped my hair, pulling me closer.
God.
He and Ronan were so alike, yet also different. Whereas Ronan dominated the kiss, Conal held something back. His kiss was almost tentative, testing my reaction to ensure I wanted this.
And I did want this.
More than anything.
Conal's damp chest melded to mine, squashing my breasts between us.
His hand tightened in my hair, pulling me closer.
The kiss deepened, and I ached for him. A slow, pulsing throb between my thighs.
A sense of emptiness deep inside, an emptiness that craved the hard, thick cock pulsing against my soft belly.
He groaned as we broke apart. "Fuck, sweetheart. I shouldn't have."
The moment his words registered, an icy chill shot through me. Of course he regretted kissing me. Ronan had, so it made sense Conal would too. Kissing me was a momentary, totally meaningless lapse in judgment.
"Your girlfriend…" Fucking bitch. I hated her.
"It's over."
"Oh." I exhaled in relief, not wanting to be that person who kissed another woman's man.
"But…" Of course there was a 'but'. There always was. Conal probably felt sorry for me. Sorry for the stupid girl who let men trample all over her like she was nothing.
"It's fine," I ground out, pushing him away. Heat burned in my cheeks and between my legs. How embarrassing to be rejected by two men in as many days. It had to be a record. Even for my lame self.
The problem was clearly me.
Anton had been right: men would never truly want me. Not really. I had nothing to offer. I wasn’t pretty enough, intelligent enough, funny, or even that interesting.
"We should get back." Now that Conal wasn't pressing me into the SUV's door, I realized how cold and wet I was. Again. With my luck, I'd end up with pneumonia. A potentially fatal infection would definitely be on-brand for me.
"Sweetheart," Conal murmured, his fingers caressing my jaw before a phone chimed loudly from his jacket pocket. With a curse, he pulled out the offending item while opening the passenger door for me.
"Wait, I'll be back shortly," he said, his jaw ticking.
I wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved that yet another moment with a Kelly brother had ended prematurely.
Conal said nothing more when he climbed into the driver’s seat. I tried not to notice the way the damp denim hugged his muscular thighs or the scent of pine and musk that filled the SUV. My body hummed with low-key arousal, causing my thighs to clench each time I shifted on the leather seat.
Thankfully, he seemed distracted, which meant he hadn't noticed my fidgeting. The last thing I wanted was for him to think the kiss meant anything to me. It was far better if I pretended to be ambivalent, given he'd caught me kissing his brother a few days ago.
Did that make me a slut?
Probably.
I really wished I could talk to Saoirse about it, as she was my usual go-to source of advice on all things man-related. But I couldn't bend her ear about this. She'd lose her shit if she knew I'd kissed her brothers.
As far as she was concerned, her brothers were strictly off-limits to her friends.
Once, ages ago, Ronan had hooked up with Theresa, a girl we met in our freshman year at college.
Saoirse had been unimpressed. She froze Theresa out of our circle the minute she found out.
Sadly, there wasn't much I could do. In Saoirse's eyes, Theresa had broken the 'sisters of another mister code' - thou shalt not fuck my brothers, ever.
I, too, had also broken the 'sisters of another mister' code twice now. There was no coming back from that.
As we turned toward the estate, a large black car came out of nowhere, so fast I barely had time to react. It veered across the road toward us, slamming at full speed into the front driver's side of our SUV. Metal crunched, tires screeched, and my airbag exploded.
The vehicle pitched and turned, rolling sideways, eventually coming to a halt when it hit a tree. The impact left me hanging, trapped by my seatbelt.
"Conal?"
Nothing. Just the sound of something drip, drip, dripping and the stench of fuel. Footsteps approached the ruined SUV, slow and steady. Rain poured in through the smashed windows, helping to wash away the awful smell of gasoline.
I looked up to see a man in a hooded coat peering in. He smiled at me before raising a gun and pointing it at my face.
Was this how my pathetic and entirely pointless life ended?