31. Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-One
Aidan
“Ithought farmers worked all the time.”
I turn my head to look at Maeve, surprised by her line of thinking since we’ve just shared one of the most earth-shattering experiences of my life.
“Yeah?”
“It’s getting closer to harvesting, isn’t it?”
I glance down at the crease between her eyes and reach out a hand to smooth it away. Her eyes turn softer, less confused, and I lean over to kiss her.
“What’s going on in that busy head of yours now?” I murmur against her lips.
“I just don’t want you to fall behind because of me.”
I tangle my legs with hers, pulling her towards me.
“Don’t worry. I have a great team working with me. I’m not a slacker, but I can take a day off from time to time.” I lift our entwined hands and pull them back up to my lips. “And I definitely don’t regret coming here today.”
Maeve lifts her head, snuggles closer, and rests her head on my chest. Her cheeks are still flushed, sated, and if I weren’t worried that I’d scare her off by blurting out how deeply my feelings run for her, nothing could have stopped me from telling her.
The problem is that I can’t tell her. Not yet.
Not until I’m sure she feels the same about me. That she’ll surrender her heart to me.
I can still smell her on me. The taste of her pussy lingers on my tongue. All I want is to touch her.
Kiss her. Fuck her. Bite her.
Until I can see all my markings on her skin.
Mine.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I school my features and cock my head. “Like what?”
“Like you’ve been struck by lightning. You froze.
” She lifts her hand and sweeps it down my nose to land on my lips, pressing lightly.
I force my tense limbs to relax and try to come up with something, anything, to say.
I grin at her and look down, hiding my eyes.
But then I notice the scar on her lower belly, and I don’t have to come up with an answer when there’s a more vital question at the tip of my tongue.
One that I’ve been dying to ask her since the first time I saw her naked.
I lean to my side, and she moves further down the bed until we lie facing each other. In a move meant to not scare her off and still holding our hands close, I trace the outline of the puckered skin. She jerks, as if my touch tickles her, and I pull down my lips.
I open my mouth, but she puts her finger on my lips to silence me. Disappointment settles in my bones, and a heavy sadness that she doesn’t trust me enough to tell me her story fills my chest.
But then she takes a shaky breath and surprises me again.
“I was shot. A clear wound, no complications, but I was in hospital for a while.”
My breath clogs in my lungs before sickening bile rises in my throat. I force myself to move past it. To stay calm even when I feel so fucking far from it.
“When?”
“A few months before I came to Cloonmara.”
I roam her face, but the stare she aims at me is blank, as if she’s put a shield up, hiding her real emotions from me.
I hate that.
She pulls at our fingers, and I let go even though it costs me to do it. I grit my teeth and curse silently.
“Tell me.”
She moves her shoulders as if in a half-shrug. “Not much to tell.”
“Liar.”
“Don’t do that,” she snaps and sits up, turning her back on me.
“The hell I won’t,” I growl. Rattled, I curl my abs and sit up next to her, as close as I can get. “Are you seriously not going to tell me what happened?”
She pulls up her knees, keeping her gaze averted.
“It’s police business.”
I fucking hate this. I hate that she avoids me.
I slide my hand around the back of her neck and pull her gently closer until our foreheads touch. “Please. Please tell me,” I whisper. “Trust me, Mae. I need to know.”
She closes her eyes and bores her head into mine, but I stand my ground. I have to. Her body trembles, and the smallest glimmer of hope slides around my heart.
“Crap. I don’t want to burden you with my sad story,” she whispers.
“It’s not a burden, Mae. Getting shot is a pretty big fucking deal, and you’re my friend and my lover. I have to know what happened. For fuck’s sake, just trust me. I won’t break.”
Her eyes flicker between mine, indecision written across her face.
“But I might,” she whispers, and that small sign of insecurity just about ruins me.
“Then I’ll catch you.”
She sniffles and tilts her head back on a shaky breath.
“Why do you have to turn my knees weak like that?”
Despite the seriousness of our conversation, my lips stretch in a wide smile.
“Whatever it takes to make you open up to me.” I lean closer to her and kiss her softly. “Whatever. It. Takes.”
“Fine.” She sighs, rolling her eyes. “I’ll only give you the short version. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Good.” She sits up straighter. “So, you already know that I grew up in foster care. Nellie and Jack were the best, really, for someone like me. They gave me stability at a time when the course of my life could’ve taken a turn for the worse if I hadn’t gone to live with them when I was ten.
I’m grateful for them and always will be. ”
I take her hand in mine again, needing to give her my strength.
“Nellie has a sister, Dot, who never liked me. I don’t know why, only that from the moment she laid her eyes on me, she took an instant dislike to me.
She’s the complete opposite of Nellie. You wouldn’t think they’re sisters if you didn’t know.
Anyway, I couldn’t escape her or her son, Joe, because they live next door to Nellie and Jack, but I just learned to keep my distance. ”
I squeeze her hand.
“Fast forward to when we were teenagers, and Joe started meeting up with the wrong crowd. He got into trouble…” She waves her hand. “Petty theft became stealing from Nellie and Jack, and when I caught him out and told Jack, let’s just say that I earned my first enemy that day.”
She moves to straddle me, and I help her, tugging her flush to my chest, not breaking away from her for a second. She loops her arms around my neck.
“Is this okay?”
“Always.” I squeeze her middle. “Go on.”
“Things calmed down when I moved away on my own, but whenever I met with Nellie and Jack, I couldn’t always avoid Dot or Joe.
I learned from Jack that things with Joe had gotten worse, that there was talk around the neighbourhood that he was dealing drugs, and…
well, you can imagine that my becoming a detective wasn’t exactly on Dot’s wish list for Christmas. ”
“Fuck,” I mutter. “What did you do?”
She pulls softly at the hair at the nape of my neck.
“I hate drugs. I couldn’t really do anything as long as there were only rumours, never anything solid, so I didn’t. I went about my life, built my career from the ground up, and put people in prison.” She chuckles. “And did a whole lot of boring paperwork in between catching them.”
“So, how is Joe connected to your getting shot?”
“He pulled the trigger.” She shudders in my lap, and I pull her closer. Her body breaks out in goosebumps, and I reach for her duvet and put it around us, trying to warm her up.
Her teeth chatters through her grateful smile.
“I always get so cold when I get to this part. My partner and I were on our way home when I saw Joe with some other blokes, looking dodgy. I thought I saw him handing a small plastic bag to a buyer, but before I could even call out, he spotted me and took off down the street. We chased him, kept on his heels for the longest run, and when he finally stopped in an alley where he couldn’t find a way out, he turned on me, pulled out a gun and then…
.he just fired it at me. Then he ran away.
” She flinches and stares over my shoulder, her eyes caught in a memory where I can’t follow her, no matter how much I wish I could.
“My partner put pressure on my wound to try and stop me from bleeding out, and he also called for an ambulance and back-up to chase down Joe, but they were too late. They couldn’t find him.”
She winces and looks down when I scrape my knuckles across her wound.
“Does it hurt?”
She puts her hand over mine, spreading my fingers until they’re splayed on top of her scar, keeping it there, and shakes her head.
“Not anymore, but the trauma does.”
I inch to hold her, but uncertainty washes over me. Uncertainty and hate for the fucker who tried to kill Maeve.
“My brave girl.”
Her breath hitches, and I raise my eyes to watch her closely.
“I don’t feel brave. Just glad that I survived, even though it also brought me a little companion known as anxiety.
” She spits out the word, the bitterness coating it easy to hear.
“After I finished physiotherapy and went to a mandatory number of meetings with a psychologist, I came back to my job, and do you want to know the first thing that happened?”
I pull her in for a hug.
“I froze, Aidan. On my first day back, I couldn’t walk inside the station.
I stayed in my car for hours, just staring at the building while I kept telling myself that I could do it.
That all I had to do was get out and walk up the stairs, and it’d be like any other day.
But I couldn’t.” She huffs and clamps her arms around my neck.
“I was so furious with myself. Pissed off that I was so weak that I couldn’t get past the anxiety and move on. ”
“You’re too hard on yourself, Mae.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t back then.
All I knew was that every day I tried to go to work, the anxiety attacks came much sooner and lasted longer, and I couldn’t function.
So, I phoned my superior, told her that I needed to transfer to somewhere with much less stress, and she told me about the vacant position here.
It seemed like fate when I ranted to Eliza on the phone one day, and she told me that I could rent Rose Hill cottage for as long as I needed to. ”
The relief I feel at hearing the spark in her strong voice makes me calm down.
“What happened to Joe?”
“They haven’t found him yet, but I’m sure they will. When they do, he won’t get out of prison for a long time.”