Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
DAMIEN
I dreaded nightfall. It was torture—the way she’d hide from me, the crying, or worse, the silence—but something had changed between us.
Everything had changed.
Instead of cowering behind a boulder as far away from me as she could get, the girl was out where I could see her, reclined against the wall and reading by the light of a burning ammo box.
And the silence wasn’t agonizing anymore. It was almost … content. The crackle of the fire and hiss of melting plastic. The turning of her pages and scratching of my rock against the sheet of metal I’d pulled out of the inlet. The sun had already set, but there was enough twilight left for me to finish my etching. Once it was done, I planned on giving it to her. Not that it was enough.
The girl had saved my life, dressed my wounds, given me shelter, water, food, and all I had to offer in return was the bloodstained shirt off my back and a few primitive drawings. I felt like a fucking animal. But there were words forming on the tip of my tongue—I was thinking clearly again and was pretty sure I’d be able to speak if I tried. With food in my belly and water in my veins, I’d managed to stay conscious the entire day, and the pain was now more of a dull throb than a stabbing agony.
Setting the sketch down next to me, I watched the sky darken over the sea. Now that I remembered where I was and how I’d gotten there, I couldn’t stop staring at the aftermath. I was home, but I was homeless. I was alive, but I had nothing to live for. I was healing, but I was so fucking broken.
“Done with your drawing?”
I glanced over at the girl and watched the firelight dance across her innocent features, her eyes never lifting from the book on her lap. I stared at those nearly closed lids so hard I could almost see the emerald-green irises hidden underneath. I remembered their exact size and shape, and if I let my vision blur and my imagination take over, it felt like she was looking at me again.
The way she did every night in my dreams.
“I could read to ya, if you’re bored,” she said without looking up.
Yet another kindness that I didn’t deserve, but was too fucking selfish to refuse.
Leaning back against the wall, I stretched my legs out in front of me, wincing slightly from the pain.
“This story’s called The Ghost of Glenshire .” She closed the book and gazed at the cover with a wistful smile. “My ma used to read it to me. It’s from a series of fairy tales about this little village in County Kerry called Glenshire. The author’s note says that all of her books are based on folklore from the area, and the way she describes it …” She shook her head. “I want to go there so bad.”
Her smile faded. “It’s sad though. The author died before the series was published. She and her husband were murdered, right there in Glenshire, and they never found out who did it. Can you believe that? She was only twenty-two.”
Jesus Christ.
“Darby Donovan,” she said, gently touching the letters on the cover.
“Darby.” I spoke the word not from my mind or my mouth, but from the depths of my fucking soul. It tasted familiar, like dark berries and sweet vanilla.
The girl’s eyes shot up in surprise but didn’t make it any higher than my chest before she jerked her head away, like a hand that had almost touched a hot stove. “You spoke again.” She smiled weakly, her voice still laced with sadness. “See? You’re gonna be singin’ in the choir by Sunday.”
“Darby?” I tasted the sounds again, clung to them, but they floated away from me like ripples on the surface of a lake, the accent changing from Irish to American as they faded into the darkness.
“Me? No, I’m Clover. Clover Doyle.” Her face fell as she glanced down at the book in her lap. “I wish I were Darby Donovan—I would love to write like her one day—but … she died before I was born.”
I slumped back against the wall, my head suddenly pounding.
The girl, Clover, began to read, and with every passing page, the coals of rage that had been smoldering inside of me since I was fifteen years old burned hotter and brighter until they eventually caught flame. By the last few pages, it became brutally clear that this was, in fact, my own personal hell, and Satan was using this girl to mock me.
Her sweet voice and slender fingers read directly from the story of my dreams—a gray-eyed boy and a green-eyed girl, the woods, the farm, the lake, the cemetery, the evil house, and the man who lived there. The visions I’d been having since returning to Ireland came pouring out of her pink lips, only in her version, everything was wrong. It was despondent and demonizing. Tragic and hopeless. The boy didn’t get the girl in this version—she abandoned him. Then, after years of abuse and solitude, he finally became the monster everyone in the village believed him to be. He killed his own father and burned his house to the ground. The villagers suspected the boy had died in that fire as well, and now, his ghost haunted the forest of Glenshire, still waiting for his one true love to return.
I didn’t have many good memories, and the ones I did have never really happened. They were fading glimmers of dreams that I clung to because without them, my life would be just as tragic as that story. Which was the whole fucking point. The Devil had found the one remaining source of pure happiness in my life—my dreams—and he’d corrupted that too. I could hear his laughter in my head as I pushed myself to stand.
“Fuck,” I sneered, bracing my forearm against the wall as the earth tilted beneath me.
“What are you doing?” Clover asked as my vision went black around the edges.
Pressing my forehead to the cool stone, I took a deep breath, waiting for the dizziness to pass. I didn’t know what was beyond that cave, but it had to be better than the psychological torture of being hated, feared, cared for, and mocked by a demon who was impersonating an angel.
My angel.
“Christ, you’re gonna fall.”
Keeping one shoulder pressed against the stone, I took a single step and exhaled in relief when it was easier than I’d expected. Less painful. Once the dizziness subsided, I would leave. I needed to fucking leave.
The sound of crunching gravel filled the cave as the imposter leaped up and sprinted over to me. “At least let me help ya.”
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to rip her face off and expose the lying monster underneath. I wanted to burn every shred of this illusion to the ground and show the Devil that I knew exactly what the fuck he was doing.
But mostly, I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up again so that I could find the redhead—the real one—and stay in her world forever.
The girl appeared on my right, slipping between me and the stone. Wrapping her arm around my back, she fit against my side as if she’d been carved from it, and some angry, empty space inside of me felt the same way. My rage evaporated. My wrath simmered. And when I pushed away from the wall and draped my arm over her shoulders, allowing her to help me stand, a new pain demanded my attention—a searing burn behind my eyes.
I could feel her heart pounding against my ribs, feel the rise and fall of her lungs, just as hard and fast as mine. And I could sense her hesitation before her cheek pressed against my chest and her chin began to quiver.
This was no fucking demon. This was a human being who was in even more pain than me.
I held my breath and lifted my arms as she wrapped herself around my torso, my muscles tensing violently as they prepared to fight back. The only times I’d been grabbed round the middle were during sparring matches in the Kletka, after which the fucker would find himself on his back with my knee inside his rib cage. My heart rate skyrocketed as I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe through it, to focus on her scent, her size, her soft hands, and her shuddering breaths.
Even as a kid, no one had touched me like that. My ma had worked nights as a dancer, and when she was home, the last thing she’d wanted was another arsehole grabbing at her. I thought that had helped me survive in the Kletka. I’d learned to live without human touch long before I got there.
But this girl hadn’t. She was so desperate for comfort that she was seeking it from the same man who’d destroyed her life. I’d never been in that much pain. I would let my father torture me before I ever let him touch me.
My father.
Jesus Christ, I had done to this girl exactly what my father had done to me. Killed her family. Ripped her away from her home. Put her in a cage where survival was a daily challenge.
I felt fucking sick.
I’d thought I’d won. By forsaking my own humanity, by suppressing my basic instincts, my moral compass, I thought I’d been denying him the satisfaction of breaking me. But really, I’d done exactly what he wanted all along.
I’d become just like him.
Lowering my arms, I wrapped them around Clover’s shoulders stiffly, mechanically. My muscles throbbed with unspent adrenaline. My hands balled into fists. My rapid, heavy breathing ruffled her hair as I fought an all-out war against my urge to defend myself. But Clover didn’t seem to notice.
She was busy fighting her own battle. I could feel the weight of it, of everything I’d taken from her, pulling her toward the ground. Her fingertips dug into my upper back as a silent sob racked her body. A few moments before, I’d hardly been able to stand, but if Clover needed me to, I would help her carry that burden forever.
It was the least I could fucking do.
I held her like that until the grief finally retreated. Once her shoulders stopped shaking and her legs could bear weight again, Clover released me and wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her jumper. A cooling wave of relief washed over me as soon as she let go—my body still interpreted human contact as threat—but I found myself leaning toward her rather than pulling away.
Touching her might have felt like a war, but some wars were worth fighting.
“Sorry.” She sniffled, keeping her gaze cast down. “I came over here to help you, and instead, I …”
“Don’t.”
Grasping her chin, I tilted her face up until I could see the shame all over her sweet, tormented face. She avoided looking at me at first, but when I made no move to release her, those dark brown lashes eventually lifted, revealing two endless emerald pools.
A riot of images exploded in the space between us. Blackberry bushes next to a lake, water in a teapot, biscuits in a sugar bowl. Trees and mushrooms and crumbling stone cottages. Missing teeth and freckled cheeks. Big green eyes …
Like the ones that were looking at me now.
I knew in that moment that I’d been right—this was an illusion. And the illusion was that we were strangers. I knew those eyes. They might have been set in a different face, surrounded by a mane of different hair, but every fleck of gold and facet of green was exactly the way I remembered—like the sun shining through a canopy of trees.
But I remembered them smiling. These eyes weren’t smiling. They were glistening with tears that spilled over the moment she tore them away.
“Sorry,” she apologized again, ducking her face and shielding it from me with her hand. “I can’t look at you. You remind me of someone, but he doesn’t exist, so—”
“I feel the same way,” I interrupted. The words came so easily that it was as if I had channeled them from somewhere else.
Clover froze at the sound of my voice, pursing her lips and tilting her head. “Can you say that again?”
I hesitated, unsure if I could speak while I was consciously thinking about it.
“It’s fine if ya can’t. It’s just … the way you said that sounded … Irish.”
One hopeful green eye peeked through two splayed fingers, and when I answered her unspoken question with a nod, the grin that followed enslaved me on sight.
“No. You’re Irish?” Clover’s squeal echoed through the cave as her eyes darted from my face to my wounds to my empty gun holster to my heart, which was beating its way out of my goddamn chest.
“Oh my God!” She beamed. “This makes perfect sense. When I found you, the Russians hadn’t made landfall yet, so I didn’t understand why you’d already been beaten and shot, but it’s because the Russians did that to you … on the ship!”
I could see the gears spinning in her head as she fabricated a story almost as far from the truth as the one she’d just read to me.
“Maybe you were wearing their uniform to sneak on board, or maybe you were deep undercover, like a spy—I don’t know, but they must have found out who you were and attacked. Maybe they even threw you overboard or—”
Her mouth fell open as her wide, round eyes shot back up to mine.
“It was you … that night, during the bombing. I was on the cliff”—her gaze fell away as the joy drained from her face—“and a drone found me.”
It was her. The girl I’d seen on the cliff. The one I’d risked everything to save. My injuries were for her , not some heroic spy mission. And they’d been fucking worth it.
“I was gonna let it kill me.” She swallowed. “Everything was destroyed—my home, my … family.” Her voice broke. “I just wanted to die along with them.”
Her eyes stared a hole through my chest as the memory hijacked her vision, but it felt as if she were staring directly at my heart, watching it splinter with every word she spoke.
“But then I saw you. In my mind. You were standing in a lake, and you looked so handsome.” Color rushed to her cheeks as she smiled. “You held up your arms, and you told me to—”
“Jump.” The word spilled from my lips as I pictured her the way I had that night. Lighter hair, perched in a tree, too far for me to hold … or save. That single word encompassed everything I was feeling—the hope and the hopelessness, the regret and need for redemption, the desire and the fear.
And when she lifted her eyes, smiling through the tears, she echoed my plea with a whispered, “Jump.”
Past and present, life and death, heaven and hell—it all blurred into meaningless nothingness as I stood, suspended in her grateful, awestruck gaze.
I used to want to come back to Ireland. Now, all I wanted was to make that girl look at me that way as often as possible for the rest of my life. Or eternity, if I was, in fact, already dead.
The world around us burned away as I dived headfirst into the flames.
Clover and I collided in a space that felt untouched by the past. When she wrapped her arms around the back of my neck, I didn’t want to push her away; I wanted to pull her closer. When she pressed her lips to mine, I didn’t taste the salt of her tears; I tasted the sweetness of who she had been before all that pain. But when she parted those lips and slid a shy tongue along the seam of my mouth, something inside of me cracked open, allowing the past to come rushing back in.
Gripping her hair in my fist, I kissed her back with an urgency that bordered on panic. I knew at any moment, the Devil was going to snap his fingers and send her running back behind the boulders. Remind her of what I was, what I’d done. I knew I’d spend another night listening to her cry as she cowered from the monster who’d ruined her life. And she should.
I wasn’t some heroic Irish spy, like she was telling herself. I was the sole heir of the Russian Bratva. I was a lieutenant on the ship that had bombed her town. I’d given the order. I’d led the charge. I was a fucking monster, and by allowing her to think otherwise, I was proving it.
But I was powerless to stop myself. Clover was my first taste of heaven after five long years of hell, and no amount of guilt could have pulled me away.
She might have been desperate, but I was fucking starving.
Tilting her head back, I devoured her trust, feasted on the version of me that she saw in her mind. I wanted to digest him, embody him, so that one day, I might become worthy of the admiration and gratitude I tasted on her lips.
“Tell me you’re real,” she whispered against my mouth, clutching the sides of my neck as if I might disappear. As if she was just as afraid of losing this as I was. “Tell me I’m not crazy.”
Twisting my hands in her hair, I dropped my forehead to hers and willed myself to say the words she longed to hear. But I couldn’t. Not because they wouldn’t come, but because they would be a lie. Nothing about me was real, not the version she saw anyway. So, instead, I pressed her back against the cave wall and poured every word I couldn’t say directly down her fucking throat.
I’m sorry.
I need you.
Don’t hate me.
Clover’s tears of joy seeped into my tongue as she smiled against my mouth. They tasted like a drug I’d never had, but had been born addicted to, and any hope I had of behaving like a better man disappeared the moment she gripped my shoulder blades and arched her body against mine.
We became a desperate riot of pleasure and pain, soothing tongues and ravenous teeth, clawing hands and tender lips. Bracing myself on the wall with my forearm, I sucked a trail of starving kisses along her jaw as Clover draped her battered thigh over my hip and pulled my body flush against hers. She was still seeking comfort, seeking an escape from her pain, and I was too far gone to deny her.
A sharp pain throbbed in my side as I ground against her, but it was nothing compared to the invisible blade that pierced my heart a moment later when the Devil finally came to collect, ripping Clover out of my arms with a single flash of lightning.
The earthshaking clap of thunder that followed was drowned out by Clover’s terrified scream as she dropped to the ground and covered her head with both hands.
The next boom made her jump and curl in on herself even more.
I stared at her in absolute horror as the realization of what was happening slowly took hold.
I had done this to her.
And she didn’t even know it.
Sitting against the wall next to her, I debated what to do before I finally pulled the cowering girl into my lap, gritting my teeth as pain shot through my side.
“They’re back,” Clover cried, burying her face in my neck.
They.
As if I wasn’t one of them. As if I hadn’t led the fucking charge.
Guilt twisted in my guts as I lifted a finger and pointed at the entrance of the cave and the darkness beyond.
“Look,” I managed to say through the vise closing around my throat. “It’s just thunder. See?”
Clover lifted her head just in time to see the next flash of lightning, and after tensing in fear, she suddenly relaxed. Slumping against my chest, exhausted and embarrassed from her panic attack, Clover hid her face against my neck and apologized.
I’d broken her, and she was apologizing for it.
Cradling her tear-streaked cheek, I rested my chin on the top of her head and stroked her arm with my free hand. I comforted her like I should have before, and with every stroke, I silently begged for her forgiveness.
Clover clung to my body and drank in my remorse, not realizing what it was. I wasn’t the enemy to her anymore—I was a hero, a good guy—and suddenly, I understood why the Devil had let me kiss her.
At first, my punishment had been her suffering.
Then, it had been her silence.
Now, it was my guilt, which ate away at me like a thousand maggots as the victim of my crimes lay shattered in my arms.