Chapter 25
Rhys
Istep into Trace’s luxury flat in the Lancaster building to show my face for Sunday brunch the day after Friendsgiving. I’m halfway through a poppy-seed bagel that could make a grown man cry when Mum sidles up next to me.
“So,” she says in her thick accent, “who’s the lass?”
The table stills, but my eyes swivel to my brother, trying to hide unsuccessfully behind a mimosa.
“Thanks, Trace,” I grumble.
His wife Shea-Lynne visibly kicks her husband under the table. “Are you kidding me?”
“Ouch,” Trace shrieks from real pain.
Shea-Lynne, an O’Rourke from Astoria, is as delicately poised as she is lethal in an ivory cashmere wrap. “Our Rhys has a girlfriend, and you don’t tell me?”
Like her youngest brothers, Cormac and Darragh, she doesn’t speak with an accent.
I swallow too fast and nearly choke. “Hang on.”
“Her name is Fallon,” Trace reports. “She’s his neighbor.”
My father leans back, grinning. “Leave the lad be. If he wants to talk about his girlfriend, he will.”
“She’s not—” I cut them off, ears burning.
They’re all staring at me.
Mum touches my arm gently. “Is she nice, darling? Is she Irish?”
Trace and I exchange a look because we’re not entirely sure what she is. Other than being a little delusional and talking to her plants. Something I’m thinking I shouldn’t bring up right now.
I picture Fallon cross-legged on the counter, deep in an argument with Basil over a tomato plant he’s convinced can’t be trusted.
“She’s…different,” I hedge, my chest twisting.
“Different how?” Shea demands. “We’re all different. Me, Darcy, Ava, Lennox, Raina,” she ticks off all the Quinlan wives. “Define different.”
“She talks to her plants,” I blurt, since I’m being pushed for details.
Right now, it’s all I have on Fallon. We just started spending time together.
Silence blares in a flat of five people.
Dad blinks. “Like…metaphorically?”
“No,” I mutter, and tear off another piece of bagel with my teeth.
“There’s nothing wrong with speaking love to your plants,” Mum says serenely. “Eccentrics make the best lovers.”
Trace barks a laugh, and I choke on the bagel. At least Mum sounds excited that she might have something in common with Fallon.
I need a drink… “Pass me one of those orange juice contraptions.”
Shea rests her chin on her hand. “Are you bringing her to Thanksgiving?”
“No,” I say automatically, not thinking anything of it.
“Why not?” Trace claps back immediately.
I look up to see that every face has swiveled in my direction. “Because—”
“Because what?” Shea cuts in. “You can’t hide her forever.”
I glare at my plate.
If I say she’s not really my girlfriend that I’m just pretending because she witnessed me committing murder and this is blackmail-adjacent damage control, my mum will have a stroke.
I don’t think my mother fully understands what I do, hence the letter she wrote asking all kinds of intrusive questions a couple of years ago.
Dad wasn’t a capo like Uncle Aiden. Mum just loves seeing Trace in his suits, thinks he’s some Security Director, and that Quinlan Empire is a Fortune 500 company.
And I’m just one of my brother’s guards.
It’s best she doesn’t know the sins I commit and the darkness that occupies my soul to do this job. Or the money Griffin’s lawyer Kai Powers deposits in my account every month. Money I may never live to spend.
I don’t want Mum to worry, so I give in.
“Fine,” I mutter. “I’ll bring her.”
“Excellent,” Mum declares, beaming. “I’ll make an extra turkey.”
I spend the rest of brunch worrying about putting Fallon in the spotlight in front of my family. But at least I get to do it over a flawless New York bagel and fresh cream cheese.
Hours later, I knock on Fallon’s door. She answers with her usual smile and a warm hug against my chest.
After a kiss on her forehead, I ask, “How did you sleep?”
She stiffens and steps out of my embrace. “Why are you asking me how I’m sleeping? My father asks me that to check that I’m taking those pills.”
Her voice is so shrill, I feel like I’ve been doused with ice water.
“When did you speak to your father last, Fal?” I ask, touching her gently.
“He calls once a week,” she says, then chews on her bottom lip.
“Asking how you slept is just an expression,” I tell her. “I left you alone last night. I was…curious.”
Her head tilts. “Because you’re my boyfriend and you care about me, right?”
“Exactly.” I kiss her on the forehead again, liking how she sighs dreamily when I do it. “And since we are doing holidays together, I am officially inviting you to spend Thanksgiving with my family. That’s if you don’t spend it with your mum and dad.”
Fallon glances at the whiteboard, and my eyes follow hers, finding the date. Thanksgiving is the only empty square. How did I miss that?
“My mother passed away,” Fallon says, knocking the wind out of me. “My father started taking whatever new wife he has at the time on a vacation for the long holiday weekend.”
Having parents who have been married for over forty years and joined at the hip, I admit, this is something I don’t know how to comment on.
I clear my throat. “That stinks. Unless you like being with your dad.”
“He’s been…weird the last couple of years.” Her eyes stay on the whiteboard. “Wow, I have plans for both Friendsgiving and Thanksgiving this year!”
At first, she lights up like a star-filled summer night. That’s what gets me. But then she goes straight into anxiety overdrive.
“Okay.” She dashes to her calendar and grabs a marker, black this time, which I am nervous about.
“I’ll need a dress. And wine. I don’t have time to grow grapes.
Is storebought, okay?” She doesn’t let me answer.
“I can make something. A basil butter spread for the turkey? But Daddy Basil might try to smother me in my sleep if I clip any more leaves for a while.”
“Fallon,” I say gently and pull her into a hug. “Fuck, love, you’re shaking.”
Does she really believe these plants can move around and maybe kill her? Like an evil plant version of Toy Story?
I eye the squat pot of aromatic green leaves and send it a warning: Touch her and you die. You and your little brother drying up in my flat.
I swear I see his leaves shudder.
God, I’m sinking into this delusion. But if I have to live in a semi-authentic world to be with Fallon and make her happy, I’ll do it. Reality is overrated.
“You don’t have to bring anything,” I tell Fallon, smoothing her hair. “You’re a guest. My guest.”
“You’re so sweet to me,” she whispers.
Slowly, her body unclenches like I’ve taken the weight of the world off her slender shoulders. It makes me feel like a superhero.
It feels good to be the one who calms her. Dangerously good.
Still holding the marker, she grabs the basil plant and holds it against her ribs. “But why now?”
Christ…
Why was I a git and didn’t invite her the other years?
Thinking fast, I say, “They didn’t believe me when I said I had a girlfriend.”
Her eyes widen. “Why not?”
Errr. Okay, I wasn’t prepared for a follow-up. “Because I stopped letting things get that far. As far as intimacy.”
That’s a lie, of course, but it’s been so long it feels like the truth.
The way Fallon tenses, I know immediately she understands the concept of sex. “Oh. So then we won’t be…”
Now I stiffen. Everywhere. Especially at the sound of the disappointment in her voice that I won’t be messing up her sheets.
“Are you ready for something like that?” I ask, my voice low and bothered.
Blushing, she says, “I’m not sure.”
I’m crushed that she might be a virgin. I can’t have sex with her if she is. I won’t do that to her.
A growl scrapes up from my throat. “Fallon, have you slept with anyone else?”
Her eyes dart away from me for the first time since I got here. The image of someone pushing her legs apart to take what is fucking mine rages through me.
“Fal,” I murmur, “look at me.”
“We didn’t exactly sleep.” Her voice wavers. The tears in her eyes reignite my rage.
My pulse spikes. “I didn’t mean sleep, I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” she snaps, placing the basil plant down on the sill hard, her hands shaking. “I didn’t cheat on you, Rhys. It was a long time ago. And it was only once.”
My jaw locks. “Was it…Kosta?”
Her chin trembles as she nods.
I sense her shame, her fear of remembering. He must have hurt her.
Aw, fuck…
My vision goes red. “Did he—” I can barely say the word. “Did he force you?”
She gives another tiny nod, and her neck turns red like she thinks it’s her fault. “I didn’t—I didn’t want it.”
“Fallon,” I whisper, despite my anger and step closer. “That’s rape.”
“But. I didn’t stop him.” She blinks hard, like she’s never thought of it as an actual assault.
I’ve heard enough. I pull her to my chest because she’s shaking so hard my goddamn bones ache in solidarity.
“Fal, you didn’t do anything wrong.” My voice is gravelly. “And we don’t have to go that far. Ever. Not unless you want to.”
“What if I want to?” She buries her face in my chest.
I just hold her. That’s what she needs right now.
“We’ll do whatever’s right for us when the time feels right.” I need to know more about the medications she’s on before I get comfortable with her consent.
And God help me if I see a green light, I am going to barrel down that road with her.
On Thanksgiving afternoon the following week, I knock on Fallon’s door in a suit jacket and dark jeans, ready to parade her in front of my family.
The door creaks open, and a shadow slithers through.
Fallon is green. Not metaphorically. Literally.
With her hair sticking out at odd angles and her skin a waxy pallor, she croaks, “Rhys, I can’t go.”
My stomach drops. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sick,” she mutters, pressing a tissue to her nose. “Fever. Might be the flu. Go without me.”
“I’m not leaving you like this.” I push my way inside and kick the door shut behind me.
“Please go. You have to.”