Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Green-Veined Promises
Cillian
The couch is stiff. Unforgiving. A punishment I chose.
I stare at the ceiling, counting the hand-cut beams like prayer beads, each one stained with sleepless nights and the ghost of her laughter.
It used to echo through here in my dreams. Now she’s just down the hall, wrapped in blankets and silence, and I still can’t sleep.
This house was never mine. Not really. It was hers. Ours.
The old stone stable we used to sneak into, years ago, back when love was easier and the future was a whispered dare.
She’d climb up onto the hay bales and hum whatever piece she was rehearsing, fingers dancing in the air like phantom keys.
I used to think she looked like a painting—wild curls, flushed cheeks, all light and sound.
She told me once, lying on my chest and staring at the cracked rafters, “One day, I’ll live in a place like this. Books on every wall. Candles lit like prayers. A green quilt, like moss after rain.”
I remembered every word. So I saved it. Rebuilt it from the bones. Stone by stone, floor to rafter. I made her dream real—even when I knew she might never come back. And now she’s here.
I push up slowly, bare feet whispering over the old pine floor.
The hallway feels sacred—like walking through memory.
My hand rests against the doorframe. She’s curled on her side, sound asleep in my bed, the one I dreamed we would share.
The green quilt is pulled to her chin. Her arm is stretched across the mattress like she’s still reaching for me.
I swallow the ache. She doesn’t know what this place means.
That I carved our initials into the back of a beam, like I was still seventeen and stupid in love.
That I sanded the piano bench by hand, hoping her fingers would one day touch the keys again.
That I’ve spent every damn year wishing the door would open and she’d be standing there with nothing but her music and a suitcase and that smile.
I built her a dream. And now she’s sleeping in it like it never belonged to us both. I step back before I ruin it. I’m furious. Furious that I still want her. Furious that I ever stopped pretending I didn’t. Because I never really did. Not truly.
Not the night she left, not the first time I saw her name in a playbill in New York, not when I tried to forget her in someone else’s arms. No one ever looked at me like she did. Like I was a symphony in motion. Like she could hear something beneath the silence.
She still does. Even now. Even after everything. Even after her silence. Her absence. Her choice to walk away. But she came back. That’s what haunts me.
Not a phone call or a letter over the years.
She didn’t even go up the manor drive. No, she came here.
To this place. To the old stable turned home, the one I rebuilt from childhood whispers and adolescent dreams. She stole my goddamn car, my car, parked at my goddamn hotel, where she’s staying on my goddamn dime—and drove straight here like she knew.
Like some part of her still remembered what this place was to us.
And that’s what twists the knife deeper.
She didn’t accept my father’s invitation just to escape some married prick who broke her heart in the city.
I’ll handle him later, tear him apart slowly, methodically.
But this? This was more than heartbreak and bad decisions.
She’s here for something. Something she hasn’t told me yet. Because Siobhán Kelleher doesn’t do anything without a purpose. No, Dublin’s Darling Daughter is much more clever and conniving than that.
What is she running from? And why come home to a man she left behind?
I clench my jaw as I stand in the hallway, eyes on the bedroom door like it might give me answers.
The silence on the other side is soft. Peaceful.
It makes me want to tear it open and demand she give me the truth—all of it—every secret she’s still keeping behind that guarded smile and the piano-stitched grace she wears like armor.
Instead, I pace. Because if I open that door again tonight, I won’t stop at questions. And I can’t afford to touch her like I used to. Not until I know why she came back. Not until I know if she’s staying.
The kettle clicks off with a soft hiss. It’s early. The kind of golden quiet that hums low through the walls, the scent of toast and chamomile steeping in the air. I set the mug down gently on the counter, next to a plate of buttered brown bread and eggs I barely managed not to burn.
I didn’t sleep. Not really. Not with her in the next room.
In that room. In that bed. The one I built for her.
I tell myself it’s just muscle memory—the way my hands know her favorite tea without thinking, the way I toast the bread the exact right amount, the way I move through the kitchen like I’ve been rehearsing this morning for years.
But the truth is simpler. It’s love.
And when she walks into the room, it hits me like a blow to the chest. That green robe clings to her hips like it was made for my hands to unwrap. Hair down, lashes still heavy from sleep, and lips pink from where she’s bitten them too many times in silence.
Siobhán fucking Kelleher.
“Is that tea I smell, or are you just happy to see me?” she teases, stretching like a goddamn cat before sliding onto one of the stools.
I smirk, barely. “Both.”
She lifts the mug I’ve already set out for her, memory’s a sharp thing. Earl Grey. Touch of honey. Splash of oat milk. And her expression softens for a breath before she shields it with that quick tongue of hers.
“You always did make a mean cuppa,” she says, sipping. “Still trying to seduce women with tea and thoughtful breakfast spreads, O’Dwyer?”
“Just the one,” I say, low and deliberate. “Always just the one.”
Her eyes flick to mine, and there it is — that crack in her armor. The one I’ve always known how to find. But she recovers fast.
“Well, your one still likes cinnamon toast,” she says, popping a piece in her mouth and moaning around it just to torture me. “Which you clearly remembered.”
“How could I forget?” I lean against the counter, arms crossed. “I built this place for you.”
The words hang there too long, and I see it — the way her fingers twitch on the edge of the mug. Her eyes drop, then rise again, calm but wary. She’s playing a part. She’s always been a better actress than she lets on.
“So,” I say, pushing gently, “why’d you come back, dove? And don’t give me the gala line again. I know you too well.”
She freezes for a beat. Then laughs softly, playing it off like it’s a harmless question. “I came back because your father offered me a stupid amount of money to play six events and smile for the camera.”
“You don’t need the money,” I say.
Her jaw tightens just a little. “You don’t know what I need.”
“I always know what you need and I know when you're lying.”
That gets her. She sets the mug down carefully, then meets my gaze full-on. “You think I flew across the ocean in the middle of winter just to flirt with you over tea?” she snaps, though the heat in her voice doesn’t match the cool calculation in her eyes.
“I think,” I say, stepping closer, “you’ve got a reason. And I think it’s not about music. Or galas. Or even that prick in New York.” She stiffens. Bingo. “I’ll handle him, by the way,” I add, voice lowering. “When the storm clears.”
“I don’t need you to handle anything for me,” she snaps, standing.
“You came back, Siobhán.” I move in, crowding her space now.
“But not to the manor. Not to the family. You came straight here. To this house. This stable we used to dream about when we were kids. You broke in, made yourself at home, and waited for me to find you.” Her breath hitches.
“That wasn’t about the music,” I say, voice soft now.
“So what is it? Why are you really here?”
She looks at me for a long moment, jaw tight, chest rising with shallow breaths. I see the battle in her — the truth clawing at her throat, the lie trying to keep it caged.
But then she smiles. Sharp. Wicked. “Maybe I missed the way you beg,” she whispers, brushing past me.
Fuck me.
She walks off like she didn’t just tear something open in me. I give her five seconds, maybe six, then follow. Quiet steps. I know this house better than my own name. I find her in the bedroom, standing in front of the open closet like she belongs there. Because she does.
Her fingers trail over the clothes hanging neatly in rows — silk, cashmere, wool.
Every piece hand-picked. Every one in her size.
Some with tags still on. Some from designers she used to drool over in magazines, lying on our backs in this very stable, years before it ever had a roof.
She doesn’t turn to face me when she speaks.
“You didn’t know if I was ever coming back,” she murmurs, fingers ghosting over a deep green sweater. “And yet here you are. Filling closets. Building homes.”
Her voice isn’t mocking, but it’s not soft either. It’s something else entirely — like awe laced with accusation.
I take a step closer. “You say that like I ever stopped waiting.”
Now she turns. Her eyes find mine, sharp and shining. "Don’t romanticize it, Cillian. You don’t wait. You prepare. You stockpile. You plot."
“You make it sound dirty.”
She raises a brow. “Isn’t it?”
“I call it faith.”
She scoffs, just barely. “You’re not a man of faith.”
“No,” I admit, moving in until the closet doors frame us both. “But I am a man who knows exactly who the fuck he wants. Always have been.”
That gets her. Her breath hitches, but she covers it by brushing past me again, pacing toward the bed like she didn’t just swallow a damn thunderclap. “This place was our dream,” she says over her shoulder. “I used to talk about it like it was a fantasy. You… you turned it into a shrine.”
“Not a shrine.” I follow. “A promise.”