Chapter 8 Ronan
Eight
Ronan
I followed Shiloh to the living room where she explained her dinner plans to Bibi.
“Sounds marvelous,” Bibi said. She was on the couch with a pile of yarn on her lap. Two gray cats watched me through slitted eyes. “Do you like ribs, Ronan? Tony’s makes the best plates with slaw, biscuits, and extra-crispy onion rings.”
“Sounds good,” I said. Much better than my usual frozen dinner or fast-food takeout.
“Shi, why don’t the two of you walk downtown, and you can introduce Ronan to Tony?”
“Walk?” Shiloh said, looking alarmed. “It’ll be faster if we drive. In fact, I can just hop down there and back…alone.”
“There’s no rush, dear.”
Shiloh bit her lip. “The food will get cold…”
“Nonsense. It’s a lovely night for a walk. Don’t you agree, Ronan?”
I coughed. “Sure.”
Shiloh glared at me. Wrong answer.
“If you’re into that sort of thing,” she muttered. She grabbed an oversize cardigan from a chair near the door, tied it around her waist, and kissed her great-grandmother’s cheek. “Be back soon.”
“Take your time, you two.”
We headed out, Shiloh facing forward, not looking at me. Clearly, she was regretting her casual dinner invite.
Or being alone with me.
“Shiloh, take the damn car if you want. I don’t care.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Fine,” I said, strolling with my hands in my pockets. “Uh-huh.”
She frowned. “It’s no big deal.”
“It’s no big deal, but you’re going to be pissy the entire time.”
Shiloh glanced up at me. “I am not pissy.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m just…walking.”
I chuckled, which only irritated her more.
“Pardon me if I don’t want my great-grandmother’s food to get cold before she eats it. Bibi deserves the best.”
I smirked and shook my head.
“You disagree?”
“No, I one hundred percent agree your great-grandmother deserves the best.”
That’s why she has you.
“Well?”
“Well, you’re stubborn as hell.”
Her eyes—fringed with long, soft lashes—widened. “Me?”
“It’s not a bad thing. It means you want what you want.”
“I do,” she said, her tone softening a little. “It’s hard to compromise, especially where Bibi’s concerned.”
“How is she?” I asked. “Any more dizzy spells?”
“None, thank God.” She shivered a little, though it was still warm out. “But it’s scary, you know? She’s eighty and… Never mind. I don’t want to talk about it. Like inviting bad stuff in.”
“Yeah, I get that.”
She gave me a small smile, and the tension evaporated.
Or maybe it just changed. Shiloh was wearing high-waisted, flowing white pants and a short white T-shirt with the beige cardigan tied loosely on her hips.
The T-shirt revealed her midsection. Bracelets and rings—all her own making, I guessed—decorated her slender arms and hands, and her ears were pierced a dozen times, the rings and studs visible when she pushed her braids off her shoulders.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off her, and my hands wanted to touch all the different textures of her. Hard metal and soft skin. Her hair where it was braided and where it frayed at the ends into soft waves.
So much for keeping my damn distance.
The walk to downtown from Shiloh’s neighborhood took about fifteen minutes. Her quiet street gave way to rows of galleries, restaurants, coffee shops, and bars. We passed a tattoo place with a Chinese dragon on a screen hanging in the window.
“What makes you decide to get a tattoo?” Shiloh asked with a nod at the shop. “There are an infinite number of designs or quotes to choose from. How do you pick?”
“You narrow it down to the most meaningful or important. Something you want to wear forever,” I said and thought of my owl. “Most times, they pick you.”
As if she were reading my mind, her dark eyes went to my shoulder—to the Indian eagle-owl.
In life, they were brown and gray with black stripes along their stomachs and long earlike tufts over bright-orange eyes.
My tattoo had no color but for the eyes.
Shiloh looked like she was going to ask about it but changed her mind.
She did that a lot, I noticed. Like tonight, letting herself get personal, then retreating.
I couldn’t blame her. Something in her pulled something out of me too. I had to keep reminding myself who I was.
The son of a murderer.
“Sooo, do you have an idea about the topic of your paper?” Shiloh asked. A neutral subject. “Like probably half the class, I picked the Romanov assassinations.”
“I was thinking the Khodynka Tragedy.”
“What’s that? Baskin hasn’t talked much about it.”
“It occurred about twenty years before the revolution.”
Shiloh arched a brow. “And? Don’t leave me hanging.”
I jammed my hands in my pockets. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s dumb.”
“I’m sure it’s not dumb.” She nudged my elbow with hers. “Tell me.”
“Okay, so…at the coronation of Nicholas II, there was a big banquet held in a field for the citizens. But five hundred thousand people showed up—more than anyone planned. A rumor went around that the beer and souvenirs were going to dry up, which started a stampede. Fourteen hundred people were killed.”
“Holy shit…” Shiloh breathed.
“Yeah. And the fucked-up thing was Nicholas knew about it. As he rode in, he saw wagons of the dead being carted out. But he went on with the celebration anyway. Making speeches. Business as usual.”
“Sounds awful. What made you want to write about that?”
“Because it set the tone for the revolution,” I said. “Really terrible shit happens to regular people, and the ones who’re supposed to be watching out for them don’t.”
Shiloh was staring at me as if she was seeing something that hadn’t been there before. Then she blinked and looked away. “Sounds like you know what you’re talking about, paper-wise. Not sure how I can help.”
“I checked out some books from the library, but I’m still really fucking far behind. You might have notes for a better topic.”
“I don’t think you need a better topic. I think it’s perfect.”
I looked down at her, and she looked up at me, her features soft and unguarded for a split second, then she faced forward again. Drawing close and retreating, like a tide.
We walked in silence for another minute or so, then Shiloh stopped at an empty storefront that used to be a tiny laundromat. The place was cleaned out, paint peeling off the walls, and two small front windows were plastered with GOING OUT OF BUSINESS signs.
“This one,” Shiloh murmured, almost to herself. “Perfect location. Perfect square footage. Perfect everything.”
“For your own shop.”
She nodded and heaved a breath. “My own shop… I can feel the weight of the responsibility just saying the words. Excitement too, though maybe that’s just anxiety and self-doubt in disguise.”
I glanced down at the intricate ring on her finger, easily imagining it on a display in her shop.
“How did you get into jewelry making?”
“When I was about ten years old, Bibi showed me how to make trees by twisting copper wires into a trunk, then branching them out and hanging little plastic gems off them for leaves.”
“Yeah, there’re a few in your living room. You made those?”
She nodded. “I was obsessed. Bibi thought it’d pass the time for a few afternoons, but I wanted to make more and more—trees with green leaves, with gold and orange leaves for autumn, pink and white for cherry blossoms. A whole forest of them.”
I nodded, thinking of those trees differently now, knowing that Shiloh made them.
“I loved making something beautiful, but I didn’t like that they just sat in a case.
I started wrapping coils of copper around my fingers and wrists, adding the little gems, and that was it.
As I got older, my designs became more difficult and required real work and tools.
Bibi wasn’t too keen on the soldering iron or the hand torch at first, but she trusted and supported me every step of the way. This is now her dream too.”
Shiloh turned her gaze on the empty laundromat, populating it in her mind with displays of her art. I’d never seen anything as beautiful as that girl in that moment, drenched in twilight, her future in her eyes.
And my fight with Dowd had slowed everything down.
“Sorry I missed so much work.”
“I don’t care about that. I care more that you got hurt.” She glanced up at me, her eyes soft. “I mean…of course that’s more important.”
In that moment, the tide of her attention and warmth flowed in as she looked up at me, her face open, her lips parted.
The air thickened, and my heart was a hammer in my chest. My eyes roamed but kept coming back to her mouth.
Fuck, her mouth was perfect—round and ripe like fruit I wanted to bite and suck.
Shiloh held still, as if she were waiting.
Her pulse jumped in the hollow of her throat.
I felt myself draw in to her, her small, lithe body dwarfed by mine.
Then my shadow fell over her. I caught our reflection in the glass of the shop she wanted.
Me in black, tattooed and bruised, and her glinting gold…
She is beauty. I’m everything ugly.
My head reared back, and I took a step away from her. I gave a jerky nod to the laundromat. “So…you going to make a bid for this place?”
“Oh, uh…no,” Shiloh said, retreating. Her open face reverted to its usual focused, no-nonsense expression. “I mean, yes, I’d love to. But I’m not ready yet, and it’ll be a miracle if it’s still available this summer.”
“This summer? How old are you?”
“Eighteen in December. I want to be the youngest entrepreneur in town,” she said as we continued our walk. “Not that that means anything. Mostly, I just don’t want to waste time. I know what I want, and I’m working really hard to get there, so I see no reason to wait.”
“Seems like a lot of work.”