Chapter 63
Chapter Sixty-Three
TALLY
T ime and space have different meanings to different people.
I was talking about returning to them when I’d had the chance to catch my breath. After I’d mentally worked through the declarations and confessions each of them had given, or demand I listen to.
Joe found me sitting on the back stairs, Ronin’s puffy snow jacket wrapped around me. The morning sun hadn’t yet peaked over the snow-capped tops of the Dolomites. Dawn’s deep blue indigo light was as calming as it was beautiful.
The inside of my cottage mirrored the peace and stillness I was enjoying out here, since almost everyone was still asleep.
I’d slept in my bed, alone. Not at my insistence.
It actually wasn’t a topic we discussed at all, it just happened.
I mean, they were so close to me, I could feel their presence even in my sleep, but no one had snuck in to snuggle up during the dead of night.
It was both a relief and a letdown, which is the fragile workings of a bruised soul. What I want and need change as quickly as I decide what it is I want or need.
Joe walks past me. I guess he thought I might not be wearing my hearing aid, but he waits until I can see his face properly before he speaks. “Come on, Tally, let’s walk.”
“I can hear you.” I draw my hair back behind my ear as proof I have my hearing aid in.
He gives me a look which confirms how I’d felt immediately after telling him I could hear him, a bit daft really. And with a look of challenge, he hands over my walking stick, as if to ask if I’m going to say the same thing again.
“Shut up. I am allowed to bitch about my life, you know.”
“God, I know.” He winks, holding a hand out to help pull me to my feet. “I’ll lay some more truths your way, give you something else to lament over.”
He laughs at my look of you did not fucking say that , completely unapologetic, but at the same time, his paternal love is obvious in his scent, his smile, in everything he does.
The snow stopped falling mid-afternoon yesterday, and as soon as it did, Tynan was out, clearing a path outside. Color me surprised—his clearing followed my favorite walking track. Exactly. Harris, the snitch, had obviously been telling secrets.
Joe buries his hands in his own puffy jacket. The morning is frigid, our breaths coming out in frosty white puffs. We make a handful of steps. “Out with it, then. You're usually not this amenable.”
“Jesus, Tally, you make me sound like a right arse.”
I don’t deny it. Perhaps I am in more of a bitchy mood than I thought. Until my guilt eats at me. “You’re not. You’re the person I’ll forever look to for advice and the love only a father can provide.”
The words rush out of me. Joe’s only response is his arm moving over my shoulder and staying there. He envelopes me in his love and support, like always. We make it all the way down to the furthest corner in quiet, companionable space.
I stop us, because through this opening in the garden, you can see the heavily wooded creeks, and this one vista is my favorite. I point it out to Joe, and then he turns to face me.
“I took the liberty of speaking with UKPPS. I wanted to get a feel of where we’re at from them before you make any decisions. Especially in light of the recent…” He takes a long exhale, thinking of the right way to word Ronin murdering O’Leary and Oscar without implicating Ronin for the crime.
Of course, Ronin showed me all the photos he’d taken.
And there had been a few. He’d told me that he and his pack had been thorough and vicious in the way they’d cleaned house.
I didn’t flinch while looking at the savage proof that they had.
Not even the various images of Oscar’s body upset me.
Honestly, all I felt was free after seeing them.
“Unsolved killing? Demise?” I suggest.
“Either would work. But now it seems we’ve got a new issue.
DOCB and UKPPS are increasingly concerned about the recent spate of killings in Ireland and the ones in the US.
All victims have had their left ring fingers hacked off, and the perpetrator is souveniring the fingers.
Hallmarks of a serial killer. And that makes everyone nervous. ”
I belt out a laugh so loud and sudden, a flock of Italian sparrows take off in fright. Snorting my way through endless giggles while trying to catch my breath, and not fall face-first into the snow, has Joe making a grab for the back of my jacket.
“Don’t touch my wife,” Keegan hisses, melding out of the shadows straight to my side.
“Don’t be mean to Joe,” I manage before squealing in delight as Keegan sweeps me up into his arms. “I wasn’t going to fall.”
“You sure about that? Yesterday, I got the distinct impression you already had. It’s okay to admit you fell for me, dude,” Keegan teases, but he does it in such a way he’s dragging our history into every conversation we have.
“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Dude? Nope. Honestly, Tal, of all the things I thought might come out of your mouth, you calling me dude was not one.” He laughs, his Irish accent heavy, highlighting how wrong dude sounds. He bites the crook of my neck before guiding my feet back to the ground.
“Shoo, I’m talking to Joe.”
He uses his hand, making a blah-blah motion, before he goes back to where he was. Far enough away to give us privacy, close enough to swoop in and rescue.
“If they’re suffocating you, Tally, I will have them arrested.” Joe glares towards the tree line where Keegan’s hiding.
“I can handle them,” I say quietly, and I really can. “I just can’t handle me.”
We start walking again before Joe leans down to say, “They can. Even I know that.”
“How exactly do you see us working?”
“Us, as in you and me, or us as in you and Pack O’Connor?”
“Both.”
He hums his response as we come to a small bench. It’s something Harris made from an old tree stump and a few large rocks he found in the garden. I don’t need to take a break anymore, but I always stop here still.
“Since you’re asking for my fatherly advice…” He grins when I turn to look at him. “I think you’ve found your reason. It’s your time, Tally. And, yes, it worries me how they smother and overwhelm you, but I also think it might be exactly what you need.”
I side-eye him, and he meets me head-on with a stare full of challenge, daring me to prove him wrong. I don’t, and he starts talking again.
“Professionally speaking, the Irish Mob are violent repeat offenders engaging in illegal activities not limited to weapons and drug trafficking, extortion, gambling operations, and loan sharking. Along with revenge killings. And while I would never suggest anyone get involved in the underworld, there’s no one else I’d trust with your happiness, kid.
Do I think they’re perfect? No chance. Do I think they’re perfect for you? Without a doubt.”
“Just like that?”
Then it’s Joe’s turn to scare the birds with his laugh.
“Tally, it hasn’t been just like that. Your time with them started the day you landed in Ireland.
Pretty sure I heard you admitting you were in way over your head.
Scent-matching is as overwhelming as it is instant, and just because you’re actually considering a life with four men doesn’t mean you’re losing who you are. ”
Joe leans forward, resting his arms on the top of his thighs, finishing our chat, giving me the space to absorb everything he said. I wrap my arms around me, Ronin’s chocolate and pepper scent as rich and strong as his embrace would be.
Everything comes to a stuttering and sudden stop when the implication about what I just thought hits like an arrow through the night.
I shouldn’t be able to smell Ronin. And normally I wouldn’t, but yesterday, and this morning, I haven’t taken my suppressants.
I keep them separate from the other tablets because a part of me, my Omega part, loses my damn mind if anyone touches them. “Shit.”
“Shit?”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize I said that out loud.”
“You did. Why the shit?”
With my senses starting to come alive again, I feel Keegan’s attention on me. I can tell he’s confused, and worried, before he steps out of the tree line. “What?” His hand moves in sign, his lips clear for me to read.
A breeze blows that’s barely noticeable, really, except, with my senses suddenly deciding to go supernova, making me way too receptive, and Joe’s scent crashes into me.
I feel it like a smack to the face with a plank of wood.
Not great. The whine I make is one of pain, because all of a sudden, Joe’s presence is like sandpaper on my tender soul.
He blasts to his feet, spinning on a coin to search out what’s causing me to react like this.
“Don’t move!” I yell at him.
My voice echoes down the valley.
Joe freezes like a statue, unlike the others.
They’re moving towards me, and even though there are concrete walls and solid doors and a pretty garden full of trees and flowers separating us, it’s also like there’s nothing between us too.
Keegan’s squatting in front of me, his hands in the air, before I blink.
It’s a strange sight—his uncertainty, that is—until I remember it is me we’re talking about.
Behind us, a sound like a stampeding herd of elephants should have me running for my life. But instead of me running, I watch Joe crouching low and taking small, careful steps away.
Over my shoulder, something comes flying. It pulls my attention from Joe to Keegan, and in slow motion, I see my pill bottle bouncing off his forehead.
“Bit of fucking warning might not have gone a-feckin’-stray,” he shouts back, glaring behind me.
“Not about you right now, Kee,” Rafferty snarks, before he’s sliding past where I’m sitting, one foot up in the air. He screams and laughs as he crashes into Keegan’s legs, making him fall on his arse too. “Jesus, Tynan, you could have cleared that top path too. Fuck me, that grass is slippery.”
And the usual chaos and noise they bring is perfect, snapping me out of my JFC, my heat might be happening soon freakout. I keep on smiling as Ronin lands on the seat next to me, making me fly up in the air a couple of inches, but Tynan’s there to catch my fall.
No one says anything, but their noses do a whole lot of twitching. The four of them keep taking deep and huge gulps of air. Until Ronin gently presses his elbow into my side.
“Tally girl, looks like you’ve got yourself another decision to make. But I’m just saying, no pressure, I’d have us home within four hours. In your nest, fifteen minutes later. And, since you’re such a good wife, I’d let you have a fiddle of my stick on the way home, if you were so inclined.”
My mouth pops open, and I turn to deadpan him.
He’s laughing—of course he is—when he grips my chin and dips down to kiss my open mouth.
“I was talking the yoke, ya filthy, dirty lass. Teaching you to fly us home might be the concentration you need so you don’t send your pack into a full fuckfest at 35,000 feet.
Or the alternate is, you take more of those pills, and we’ll all go find our own place in one of the mountain streams to cool off until you’re not smelling like you need some Pack O’Connor come in your pretty little cunt. ”