Chapter Eighteen
Rian
Abbott doesn’t rise right away. Is he trying to wrap his head around what we just did too? Does he regret it? I wouldn’t blame him if he did.
It’s a lot easier for me to focus on that, on him, than to let myself dwell on my own feelings. If I go down that route, I’m going to spiral—to lose my fucking shit the way I did all those years ago when Moira died.
Because this was…different. Having sex with Abbott was different from any sex I’ve had in what feels like an eternity, and it has nothing to do with the fact that he’s a man.
I don’t give a fuck about that. What matters is how much I crave him, how much he makes me feel, and that’s exactly what I don’t want to think about, so I say, “Come on. Get up,” and hold my hand out for him.
Abbott ignores my hand, pulling up his pants and underwear, before doing the same for me. I still hold it out for him, though, and eventually, he takes it, allowing me to pull him to his feet.
I kissed him.
He sucked me off.
He jerked off for me.
I want to kiss him again.
“You’re good?” I ask, trying to keep this transactional, not allowing myself to look him in the face.
“Yes.”
“We should go check dinner.” I turn away from him, but am stopped by his hand on my face, by Abbott turning my head so I’m looking at him.
I shouldn’t let him control me like this. I should walk away so he knows this wasn’t about anything more than both of us getting our nut, but I don’t believe that, and he’s too smart to believe it either.
So when Abbott doesn’t let go of my face, instead leaning in to press his lips softly against mine again, I don’t stop him.
I kiss him back, tasting my release on his lips, on my tongue, and craving more of it.
More of him.
“I don’t regret it,” he says when he pulls away. “No matter what happens.”
My nape tingles, my heart pounding against the wall of my chest.
Goddamn this man. This beautiful, kind, sad man. I didn’t see it at first—the sadness. Maybe because he hides it well or maybe because I’ve spent too long blinded by my own sadness, but it’s there—thick and weighty inside of him.
A sort of sadness that matches my own.
“I don’t regret it either.” How can I? It was the first moment of true ecstasy, of true belonging that I’ve felt in a long time.
“You smell like me.” I smile and kiss him again. “Like my cum.” Like he’s mine. But he can’t be mine, and I’m not supposed to want him to be.
“That was the point.” Abbott returns my grin. “I want to smell like that for the rest of our time together. Like I belong to someone.”
My heart stumbles, nearly dies, then picks up again, my body flushing hot to do exactly what he said…to claim him. Mark him. Make him mine.
What is he doing to me? I’m not supposed to want anyone who isn’t her.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I lie, hiding the sadness back into the depths of me. “Let’s go check dinner,” I say again.
Abbott nods before the two of us go inside. When we’re back in the kitchen, I point to a chair at the table. “Sit.”
He cocks a brow. “Is that an order?”
Because it could be. In the situation we’re in, it could be. “A request.”
He nods and does as I ask, as I grab a potholder and open the oven.
It’s been years since I’ve taken care of someone, but it’s something I’ve always loved doing. My life’s been so erratic, so wild and volatile, that moments like this were hard to plan for, but when I was able, when my life gave me time to spoil and caretake for someone, I’d always loved doing it.
Like so many other things, it’s not something I ever thought would be a part of my life again, and when I leave this house, it won’t be. But for now, I want to do this for Abbott. Maybe I even need to.
“We’re not washing our hands, huh?” he jokes, and I chuckle.
“No. I’m not. You’re welcome to if you want.”
He doesn’t get up, watching as I struggle to pull the pan out of the oven with one hand, but thankfully, not offering to help.
It’s like he knows I need this, which shouldn’t be the case.
It shouldn’t feel like we know each other so well, but it does for me, and I can’t help but believe it does for him too.
The chicken and potatoes are done, so I plate both, then set one in front of Abbott at the table and one beside him for myself.
I get drinks, silverware, butter, and condiments, placing those on the table as well.
“You forgot our vegetable,” he says when I sit down.
“Fuck off.” I give him the finger, and Abbott laughs.
“They’re good for you.”
“I’ll remember that for next time.” I work on trying to cut into my potato, which is proving to be difficult.
“Can I?” he asks, and even though, just a moment before, I’d been glad he hadn’t asked, I don’t mind this time. I’d wanted to do that part for him, but it’s different than allowing him to do something for me.
“Go for it. If not, I’ll probably end up throwing my plate across the room. This is more productive.”
Abbott rolls his eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I hate feeling helpless.”
He looks up at me, the intensity of his stare not giving me room to look away. “So do I.” So does he, yet that’s exactly what I’ve done with him—made him helpless out here.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” I say as he cuts into my potato, then starts on the chicken breast.
“Doesn’t change that it did.”
No. He’s right. It doesn’t.
“Why were you following me?”
I don’t want to answer. Honestly, I don’t even know how to, not an answer that would make any sense, but I owe him honesty after everything, so I say, “I saw you before…we walked past each other in the hallway, and I got…” I shake my head and look away.
“This is so fucked. I got this feeling. I don’t know how to explain it. The back of my neck tingled.”
When our gazes meet again, Abbott is frowning. “I don’t get it. What does that mean?”
I lean back in the chair, not allowing myself to look away from him when I answer. “Before that moment, it had only happened to me one other time—or for one other person, I should say…Moira.”
Abbott’s mouth goes slack. His hands stop moving, but he doesn’t let go of the fork or the knife, just holds them there, poked into the chicken while he watches me.
“I don’t know why that happened, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had to see you again to see if it happened a second time.”
“And did it?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer honestly. “So I followed you, waited for you, had to see what it meant, but you had to be observant and brave and confront me. You know what happened from there…assassination attempt, kidnapping, and here we are.”
“Rian—”
“I don’t know what it means,” I cut him off.
“Or what I think it means, and honestly, that doesn’t change our situation.
You’re a liability to my family, to my son.
I’ve been a terrible father to Cillian for nine years.
Some would argue I was even before that.
I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect him now, to make sure he knows he’s loved, and I have to be here—both alive and not in prison to do that. ”
“You shot him in self-defense,” he says.
“Yes, but when you’re Rian O’Shea, I’m not sure that matters. They would love to find a way to lock me up and throw away the key. And even if our connections could get me off, I kidnapped you.”
“I won’t turn you in. Come on, Rian. You have to know that by now. I literally just blew you and asked you to come on my face so I could feel like I belong to you.”
“You do,” I tell him. “For now. But it won’t always be that way. It’s easy to get wrapped up in it while we’re here, but when you’re in the outside world again, that’s a different story.” He won’t want me anymore. He’ll go back to hating me. Well, he will if he’s alive.
“Don’t tell me how I feel. It’s beneath us both.” He continues cutting my food, then pushes my plate over to me.
“I don’t want to fight with you.”
“No, you just want to kill me.”
I flinch. “I don’t want to kill you. You know that.”
He sighs, then closes his eyes. “Goddamn you. I do.”
Going off instinct, I reach over and take his hand.
“I don’t understand this…what it is. Why I felt the way I did the first time I saw you.
Why I followed you. Why I took you instead of killing you that night.
Why I kissed you…touched you. Why I want you.
I haven’t wanted anyone since her, and I know that doesn’t bring you any peace.
None of it excuses what I’ve done and what I will do.
I’m not a good man, Abbott, but you have given me something that I never thought I would have again.
Something I never thought I would want again and something I won’t want again after you’re gone. ”
Because it’s going to break my heart. I hardly survived it after Moira.
I’m not sure if you can even call it surviving, but losing someone again and being the one to take his life, I won’t be able to come back from that.
The only thing that will keep me going is Cillian and the fact that I won’t ever allow myself to abandon him again.
Abbott nods. “Tell me more about him, your son,” he says as though I’d just spoken about Cillian out loud. It’s just another way he shouldn’t know me, but somehow does.
“Okay,” I reply, and then I share my son with this man, whom I want in ways I can’t describe or understand, while at the same time, I wish he’d never met me.