Chapter Twenty-Nine
Abbott
I’ve done my best to avoid Conan as much as I can, which honestly, isn’t too hard because he doesn’t seem interested in paying me any attention. He sits in the living room with a laptop and cell phone, while I do my best to keep busy.
I make breakfast and coffee, eating in the kitchen.
Rian took my phone, much like how they took my old one, but he gave me another new one when we’d gone upstairs before he left.
Apparently, they just have the things hanging around the house or something.
I appreciate at least having that, even if he did ask me not to contact anyone I know for now and not let anyone know where I am—as if I have anyone to contact other than colleagues anyway. At least I can do some searching…
And I start with the O’Sheas…and then Rian O’Shea.
Big mistake.
They definitely do their part playing upstanding businessmen in the city—real estate, clubs, and things like that—but there are stories too, accusations of things they’ve done.
The death of his father, another brother a long time ago, and then Sloan—Tiernan’s father.
There’s been so much violence and death.
Every time he walks out of the house, I’ll worry about him.
If we somehow find a way for this to work—which I have to think Rian wants if he’s telling Cillian—then for the rest of my life, every single day, I’ll be afraid of someone taking him away from me…
of him being killed or tortured. Of him getting arrested.
Can I handle that?
Do I want to?
But the truth is, I don’t really have a choice. That’s not how my brain or heart works. They’ve both chosen him, and walking away to avoid stressing about what-ifs, would kill me too.
“Let’s exit out of this search,” I say to the phone while sitting on a stool at the counter in Rian’s kitchen. Trying to distract myself from how things might be going with Cillian, I start researching the local music scene—the local orchestras and any kind of sales numbers on shows I can find.
I mark some things that I can show Rian later, then do a shitty job of not thinking about Cillian.
I don’t want to hurt Rian’s son. From everything Rian’s told me, it would be impossible not to know how much Cillian loves his mom.
It’s made even more complicated by the way Rian lost himself to his grief so completely, and in that pain, hurt his son.
I don’t want to be something else between them.
I don’t want my love for Rian to damage his fragile relationship with Cillian.
Eventually, I do some exploring of Rian’s house. I find a room with a treadmill and some other workout equipment, and use that, then shower, and get dressed.
When I head back downstairs, Conan cocks a brow at me while holding the phone to his ear. “What?” I ask.
“Do you mind?”
“I do actually.” Walking over, I sit in the chair across from him. I’m being a dick, but hey, it takes one to know one, and really, I’m just hurting myself because it’s not like I want to spend time with him.
“Let me call you back,” Conan says to whoever he’s speaking to before setting the cell down on the table. He doesn’t speak to me though, instead just types on his laptop—the click, click, click the only constant in an otherwise quiet room.
I try not to speak, try not to care that he didn’t want to talk to whoever had been on the phone in front of me, that he doesn’t have anything to say to me. Then again, I’ve always hated being ignored.
My father ignored me most of my life. The only time I mattered to him was when he needed something from me, and so it makes my skin crawl, makes me shift uncomfortably…
makes me angry…and I feel unworthy. “You have no reason not to like me,” I eventually say, immediately regretting it.
Why did I let him know he’s getting to me?
“I don’t dislike you.” Conan keeps his gaze on the computer.
Oh, that’s right. He just doesn’t give a shit about me.
That stings more than it should, my brain telling me that it shouldn’t matter what this man thinks of me…
but it does. He’s important to Rian. He helps protect Rian, and that means something to me.
He doesn’t do it the way people who follow orders from my father do it—because they have to, because they’re paid to—he does it because Conan cares about Rian, and Rian deserves that.
There’s something so pure about the care they have for each other, the loyalty. I never would have thought it would be shared among men like them, but it’s stronger, more sincere here between them than it is with people that society would consider better men than Rian and his family.
“I won’t hurt him,” I say. “I would do anything for him. I’m…in love with him.” That’s not something I want to say to Conan at all, and certainly not before I tell Rian, but the silence is getting to me, and this man is such a huge part of Rian’s life—the life that I want to be a part of too.
“Despite what he does?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“What happens if he goes too far for you? When you decide you’re too good for him? When he does something you don’t like, and it changes your perception of him? Love always has conditions.”
I frown at that, not having expected Conan to say it. Has he been hurt before? By whom? “Does your love for Rian have conditions?”
“I’m the same kind of man he is.”
“So? You’re the one who said love always has conditions. It doesn’t for you, so why does it have to for me?”
He doesn’t answer, just closes the laptop and leans back on the couch. “It nearly killed him losing Moira, and even when she was alive, this life hurt her. She loved him, was good to him, and she was Rian’s world, but it’s not easy loving someone who lives the way we do.”
“So, he should just be alone forever?” Is that why you’re alone? Did you hurt someone you love? Was it too much for them?
Conan just shrugs.
“Are we talking about Rian or you?”
The cold, disconnected stare slips into place on his face again. “Fuck you,” he says to me.
I squint my eyes shut. I’m going about this the wrong way and not earning myself any points.
“That wasn’t fair. I’m sorry,” I tell him, looking at Conan again.
“I just…have never felt the way I do with him. It doesn’t even make sense to me.
I just know it, right here.” I touch my chest. “That this is right. That he’s it for me.
That I’ve found the place I never knew I was searching for, and it’s with him.
I know it won’t be easy. I know that Rian will do things, a lot of things, that I don’t agree with, and maybe that should matter more than it does.
But I love him, and he wants me, and I won’t walk away from that—not ever.
He cares about you. You’re his best friend.
I would like it if we could find some kind of common ground, but if not, you should know, I’m not going anywhere.
As long as he wants me, this is where I’ll be. ”
Conan doesn’t answer right away…just sitting there staring at me. I can’t read his expression. Hell, I don’t even know if I was right any of the other times I thought I could, but he’s even more shut down tight.
The silence stretches on, becoming more uncomfortable by the second. “I hope so,” Conan finally says. “For him, I hope so. I’m hungry. Would you like something to eat?” Conan stands, and I take his question for what it is—he’s extending an olive branch. Right now, that’s all I can ask for.
“Sure.” I stand too and go with him into the kitchen. He makes sandwiches while I cut up some fruit, and we sit at the table together and eat. “Do you think Cillian will be okay with Rian and me?” I find myself asking.
“Cil wants his father to be happy. He loves him. They love the same—the two of them—big and all-consuming. Cillian will understand because of the way he loves Ollie, and ultimately, Rian and Cillian are a lot alike. They’re both good men who will do anything for someone they love, so yes, he’ll be okay with it as long as you treat his father well.
If you hurt him…well, let’s say I won’t be your biggest concern. ”
Maybe that’s meant to scare me, maybe it should, maybe I’m getting more fucked up by the second because it doesn’t. “You’re not so bad, Conan.”
“Fuck off,” he says, and I swear, it almost looks like he’s biting back a smile.
“Any news on who wants to kill me?” I joke, trying to keep the conversation going.
“We’re working on it. You don’t have to worry, though. Rian won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I know,” I admit. “I trust him.”
“Good.”
The sound of the front door unlocking, then opening, grabs both our attention.
I turn just in time to see Rian come through the door. My body immediately tenses, nervous about what he’s going to say…about how Cillian took the fact that his father is—I still don’t know what we are—but that his father is something with me.
Rian turns and approaches us in the kitchen, brow raised as he looks back and forth between Conan and me.
“We came to an understanding. I’ll tolerate him now,” Conan says with a quiet and understated playfulness to his voice, but I can’t laugh. Can’t joke around. All I can do is look at Rian.
“Well, that’s good to know…because he’s mine, C,” Rian says, his gaze holding me.
“I want him, and he belongs to me.” I tremble at his words, this new need he’s brought out in me.
Though maybe it’s not new, it’s always been there, but it took Rian to bring it to the surface—how much I want to belong to someone…
no, to him. How much I need to be wanted by him.
“I do,” I say. “I’m yours. No matter what.”
Rian walks over to me, takes my hand, and pulls me to my feet. His response has to mean good news. It must be okay, but I don’t have the strength to ask.
He smiles—the biggest, happiest smile I’ve ever seen from him, and my spine relaxes, the tension in my body dissipating with that big, beautiful smile from this beautiful man.
“We’re okay,” he says. “Hell…I think…I think this may have even brought Cillian and me closer together…him knowing that I’m in love. ”
The words suck the air out of my lungs, but at the same time, they give me air too, make my heart pump through my body. They give me life. “I love you too.”
He cups my face. “I know.” A soft smile. “You told me in your sleep.” And then he leans in, and Rian is kissing me, his tongue deep in my mouth, his hands digging into my hips, body pushing me against the table. “I want you,” he says against my mouth, my dick throbbing and needy in my pants.
When he pulls back again, I suck in a breath, Rian having kissed it out of me. “What about…” I turn to look at the chair that had been filled not long ago, and it’s empty, plates taken off the table and moved to the counter.
We’re alone.
“He’s very quiet,” Rian says, a lightness to his voice that I want to hold on to.
“And I’m very yours,” I tell him. “Show me.”
“My fucking pleasure.”