Chapter Fourteen
Abbott
Things with Rian are different today, and I’m trying to figure out why.
First, the breakfast surprised me, then whatever that conversation afterward was.
I don’t know what to think about it, and honestly, I don’t know what to think about myself either, because my head is a jumbled mess where he’s concerned.
I hate him.
I hate what he stands for, who he is, and what he does.
He’s going to be the man who kills me—if I can’t figure a way out of this situation, that is.
Then why do I feel an unexplainable connection to him at the same time?
Why do I feel sorry for him? Why do I care about his relationship with his son and wonder why my own father can’t care enough to want to make things right with me the way Rian does with Cillian?
It’s a mind fuck and not a good one. I’ve always prided myself on being grounded in logic, knowing right from wrong, and living by what I feel is right. But here is this man, this murderous, dangerous man who lives in the gray, and there’s a part of me that wants to understand why.
“Okay,” I say when the silence has stretched too long between us.
We go back to the bedroom, the one I’ve been sharing with him the past couple of days while he slept.
“I can help you wash up.” He can’t have a shower yet, but I can give him a sponge bath.
“No, thank you. I can do it.”
“Well, I’d like a shower,” I reply. I haven’t had one since arriving here.
“Okay. I won’t look.”
So clearly, I can’t even shower on my own, though I don’t know what I expect.
Rian waits outside of the bathroom while I undress and get in, then I hear him join me in the bathroom, the sink running while he washes up.
I wrap a towel around my waist when I get out and see him eye me, his gaze locked on my shoulders. “What?”
“Freckles,” he says.
“Yep. I got a lot of them. If I promise not to pocket a razor, can I shave?”
He nods, and watches me the whole time like he’s learning something, like he doesn’t know how to shave and I’m teaching him. It’s unnerving but also makes goose bumps travel up and down my skin, make it heat in ways that I really shouldn’t feel.
He steps out again while I get dressed and then I meet Rian in the room.
“I’ll help you get a shirt on.” There are two suitcases full of clothes that his friend brought.
I find a button-up shirt, since that would be easier, then make my way to Rian.
He’s standing by the bed now, gun sticking out of the waistband of his pants.
My gaze flicks to it, then back to Rian’s face again, and he pulls it free, setting it on the bed. “You don’t like guns?”
“Not particularly.”
“Have you ever shot one?”
“No.” I shake my head. “And I don’t want to, either.”
“Good.”
I frown, not having expected that to be his response, but then, it seems I never know what to expect from Rian.
I lift my arms and begin working the sling free.
“How old were you when you first shot one?” From everything he’s said, I’ve gathered that what he does is a family business, something that was passed down to him from his father.
Is his son involved too? Did Rian bring Cillian into this angry, violent world he lives in?
“Four,” he says.
“Jesus.”
“It is what it is. My father had me kill my first man at eight.”
My hands stop moving, resting against him as though I’m frozen in place. I feel the walls of my heart soften, like that one admission is breaking down the protective case I keep around it—that I always have, not just because of Rian.
I don’t want to feel sorry for him, but I do. “Eight?” I ask, as though I didn’t hear him correctly.
“Yes. My father hated him. He brought me into a room with the man tied to a chair. He was bloody and beaten when my father handed me the gun and told me to kill him. I stalled for a moment because, well, I was a fucking child, but I understood what death meant, and I knew it was coming.”
“How?”
“It’s who my father was. My brother had been even younger, though he’d asked if he could do it.”
My hands fall away at that, heart slamming against my chest with the force of an out-of-control freight train. His brother had asked, and his father had let him?
“If you think I’m bad, you would have hated Sloan. He’s dead now, though. But yes, I knew what was expected, so I did it.”
“And you’ve been doing it ever since,” I add.
“Yes,” Rian replies. “Are you going to finish, or do I have to do this myself?”
“An hour ago, you didn’t want help cooking breakfast, and now suddenly, you’re okay with it?” I’m not sure where the levity of my comment comes from. I guess I just need it in this moment.
“I’m a complicated man. What can I say?”
He’s right about that. I never saw myself as complicated. I thought I was pretty simple, but the way I’m being with him has me wondering if I’m more complicated than I’d realized.
I don’t respond to his question, not that I expect he wants me to, and finish removing his sling. I can’t get what he said out of my head, though, the things he’s done, what his father made him do when he was nothing more than a child. What is that—second or third grade?
How…sad. He never had a chance to be anything other than what he is.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
It seems I don’t need to tell him that I’m apologizing for how he was raised and what he was forced to do because Rian says, “I know. You would be. That’s who you are.”
“That’s who most people are.”
“Not most people who have been kidnapped and held against their will.”
Maybe. Maybe not. In reality, it doesn’t matter.
I help Rian slide one arm into the shirt, then the other, before I begin buttoning it. “Does your son…”
“I didn’t do that with him. Not in the same way. I already told you I’m a bad father. I’m not trying to say otherwise, but I didn’t do that with him. He’s never had to do anything until he was ready.”
Anger shoots through me, making me jerk away. “When he was ready? How the fuck can he ever be ready for that? He was a child, Rian. And you’re his father! It was your job to protect him, to make sure he had things better than you did! That he is better than you.”
“You don’t think I fucking know that!” he shouts, the anger in his voice palpable, but that’s not the only thing that’s there.
It’s impossible to miss how it’s fused with pain.
“I told you who I am. I told you not to romanticize me. I am the leader of a crime family. I kill people, and yes, my son has followed in my footsteps. There was a part of me that was proud of that…and there still is. We come from different worlds, Abbott. Stop trying to pretend that I’ve ever known how to live by the rules of yours. All it will do is disappoint you.”
He’s right. I keep hoping that he will surprise me, that I’ll realize none of these horrible things about him are true. Why though? Why do I care? Because you feel a connection to him, and if there’s a connection to someone who is this bad, what does it say about you?
Rian continues, cutting off my thoughts. “And he is better than me, even if you’ll never see it. Even if you can’t look past the things he has done. He would have chosen Ollie in a way I never did with Moira. He would have walked away from it all for Ollie, and I never gave her that.”
Moira. That must be his wife. He’s said that name numerous times in his sleep over the past few days.
He’s talked about her…told her he loved her. His friend held a gun to my head and told me never to repeat anything Rian had said, but the only thing he’d talked about was her…Moira, love, and something about tingling.
He’s breathing heavily, brows pinched in pain that I have a feeling is both physical and emotional.
I should turn away from him in disgust. I shouldn’t go for a walk with him, and we should spend our days here in silence, in our own worlds, but instead, I ask, “Why are you sharing this with me?”
“Why are you listening? And asking?”
That’s something else I don’t know, and I have a feeling he doesn’t either. As much as I’m not acting the way I would expect with him, Rian isn’t with me either. Rian is being different with me. Conan made that obvious.
“Exactly,” Rian says. Neither of us needs to use the words to know we’re on the same page.
I’m intrigued by him in a way I shouldn’t be.
And he’s the same with me.
“Come on. Let’s get this sling back on you.” That’s a much safer topic, one that makes more sense than whatever else the rest of it is.
Rian doesn’t argue with me as I put his sling on.
He sits on the bed, gun on his thigh, while I go into the bathroom and change as well, leaving the door cracked open.
Rian doesn’t allow me to help him with his shoes. I guess he’s had enough assistance for now. God forbid someone needs support. And then he’s turning off the house alarm, holding the door open, and signaling for me to go outside.
I do, the fresh air immediately warm and welcoming on my skin.
“This is the first time I’ve been outside since…”
“Since you tried to escape?” He smirks in this light, fun way that he’s shown glimpses of. Who is this man? There are so many layers to him, more than just the one I saw that first day he took me.
Kidnapped me.
I need to remember that.
“Yes. Since then.” I watch him as the two of us go down the porch steps.
“I’m not going to fall,” he says.
“That’s not what I’m waiting for. Where is the lecture? Don’t try to run, don’t scream, I have a gun, blah blah blah.”
“You’re not stupid. You know what’s at risk. I don’t have to keep reminding you.”
Truth. And I’m not foolish enough not to know he could pull the gun from his waistband before I had the chance to get away anyway.
And bringing someone else into it would only ensure they were killed too, and I would never do that.
“Well, shit. Put some eggs and toast in you, and you’re suddenly much more agreeable. ”
“I’ve been much kinder to you than I would have been to anyone else.”
“Lucky me,” I joke.
“Wow. He jokes.”