Chapter 10 Aoife
Aoife
Aran comes bursting into the bathroom, kicking the door practically off its hinges. The lock snaps, and I jump a mile, keeping my eyes on the… thing.
Gun raised, he barges in, scanning left to right until his gaze lands on me, and he lowers it. “What is the problem?” he asks.
I gulp and raise a finger. “That. Is. The. Problem.”
He frowns and looks to where I’m pointing in the shower cubicle. He moves closer and bends down. “Oh, that is a big boy.”
“Get. Rid. Of. It.” My jaw is clenched so hard, I’m giving myself a headache.
He rises and gives me a strange look. “You have arachnophobia?”
My gaze shoots up to his, and my brain starts whirring again. “No,” I say, shaking my head. “A phobia is an irrational and debilitating fear of something. My fear of spiders is very rational and very real. I don’t trust anything with more than four legs.”
“Good to know,” he murmurs, and bends down again.
I look around and grab the first thing I see as a weapon. My hand closes around the toilet brush, and I drag it out of the holder. “Here. Use this.”
He turns, still crouched and stares at it before he lifts his eyes, those perfectly blue and amused eyes, to mine. “You want me to scrub it?”
“I want you to squash it!” I wave the brush at him.
“I’m not squashing it,” he says. “It’s just doing what spiders do. It’s an innocent bystander.”
Those words hit home, and I gulp, but I don’t lower the brush. “Well, make it crawl onto it and throw it out the window then.”
“I’m not using the toilet brush,” he says and turns back to the shower. He reaches in and scoops the spider up in his hand.
“Oh my God,” I groan. “I’m going to pass out.” I scoot back as he straightens up.
“Open the window.”
“No, you do it,” I say, pressing myself against the wall.
“It’s not going to hurt you,” he says, but his tone is kind and not mocking.
I think. It’s hard to tell because all my focus is on not looking at all those millions of legs.
Okay, maybe I am being slightly irrational. But in my defense, that is the biggest spider I’ve seen. And it wanted to share a shower with me.
Aran opens the window and gently places the spider on the windowsill.
“You are insane,” I mutter.
“No, maybe a bit unhinged, but perfectly sane,” he remarks, closing the window.
“What kind of person admits to being unhinged?” I croak.
He turns to face me, that smirk in place. “An unhinged one.” He takes a step towards me.
I brandish the toilet brush like a sword. “Wash your hands.”
“What?”
“Just do it,” I say.
He rolls his eyes, but does as I ask, thoroughly cleaning his hands. He dries them and turns back to me. “Happy?”
“Nowhere near. I’ll skip the shower for the rest of my life.”
“Then you will stink my house out, and I’ll be forced to drive you into the countryside and leave you on the side of the road. Use mine.”
“Hmm?”
“Mine. In the en-suite.”
I look at the shower cubicle. Then back at him. The spider is gone, but my skin is still doing that thing where it remembers the spider was there and refuses to let it go.
“Fine,” I mutter, dropping the toilet brush back into its holder with more dignity than the situation warrants. “But go and check it first.”
He leaves without another word, which gives me pause. I’m ordering around a giant mafia man who associates with terrorists, and God only knows what else, and he just… obeys.
I follow him out into the corridor because I don’t have a choice. His bedroom door is open. I stop in the doorway.
It’s exactly what I expected. Gray sheets. White walls. One lamp. Wardrobe. Nothing on the nightstand except a phone charger. No photographs. No clutter. No evidence of personality beyond the fact that the bed is made so perfectly, even Sandra would be proud.
He emerges from the en-suite and stands back. “Clear.”
“Are you sure? You’re not messing with me?”
“I wouldn’t do that. It’s mean.”
“Mean? Pretty sure you are mean.”
“How would you know?”
“You are a criminal.”
“And? I saved you and the spider all in one day. How does that give you the impression that I’m mean?”
I purse my lips. “Why do you have to be so rational?”
He doesn’t answer that. Just steps back and gestures at the en-suite like a hotel concierge who moonlights in kidnapping.
I walk past him, keeping a careful distance, and step into the en-suite.
It’s bigger than my bathroom, which is not hard.
Bigger than my kitchen and bathroom combined, then, probably.
White tiles, a walk-in shower with actual water pressure judging by the showerhead, and a glass shelf with a single bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap lined up like a ruler was involved.
I peer into the shower and note it is clear as advertised. I turn on the shower and wait for the water to heat. Steam rises fast.
“I’ll find you something to wear,” he says from the doorway.
I turn.
He pulls the door shut behind him.
I stand there for a second, listening to his footsteps cross the bedroom. A closet opens and closes. A drawer.
I strip off the hotel uniform and step under the water.
The pressure is incredible. I stand there and let it hit the back of my neck, my shoulders, the knot between my shoulder blades that has been there since approximately the moment a giant hand closed around my arm in a hotel corridor.
The water runs hot and stays hot, which is a luxury I’ve forgotten existed.
My shower at home gives you seven minutes before it turns passive-aggressive and starts cooling down.
This one has no opinions. It just delivers.
I wash my hair with his shampoo. It smells like nothing in particular, which I suppose is on brand.
I scrub the hotel off my skin, the bleach and the rubber gloves and the residue of two floors of rooms I’ll never have to see again, because Sandra will fire me for not showing up, and I can’t even be angry about it yet.
That is queued up behind approximately forty other things, and it’ll get its turn.
I turn my face up into the spray and close my eyes.
And then, because the adrenaline has finally burned all the way out and left nothing behind except the truth of what happened today, I cry.
Not dramatically. Not sobbing. Just the quiet, ugly kind where your face crumples and the tears come whether you want them or not, and there’s nothing you can do about it except let them come.
I press the back of my hand against my mouth and breathe through my nose. The water covers most of it. The rest I swallow down until it passes, which takes longer than I’d like but less time than I deserve.
When it’s done, it’s done. I turn off the water and stand there, dripping, breathing steam.
I’m not a person who cries in other people’s showers.
I’m not a person who cries, full stop, if I can help it.
Two years of rebuilding yourself from scratch, teaches you that tears are a luxury, like manicures and concealer, and you ration them accordingly.
But my body has apparently decided that today qualifies as an emergency and submitted the claim without my consent.
I wipe my face and step out.
There’s a towel on the heated towel rail. White. Fluffy.
I dry off and wrap it around myself, listening for any sounds in the bedroom before I cautiously open the door. On the bed, is a dark t-shirt. Enormous. Clean. Left there without comment.
I stare at it for a second.
There’s something about the gesture that I can’t quite look at directly.
Like staring at the sun. He didn’t have to do that.
He didn’t have to feed me either, or fix my knuckles, or get rid of the spider with his bare hands instead of laughing at me.
He could’ve thrown me in a spare room with nothing and locked the door, and I’d have had zero grounds to complain given the general trajectory of my day.
I pull on the t-shirt that hangs to my knees. At least it covers my ass. I’m going to have to arrange some underwear pretty quickly.
My clothes are in a heap on the bathroom floor.
I pick them up, fold them out of habit, before hanging the damp towel on the back of the bathroom door.
I grip my clothes tightly and cross through the bedroom out into the hallway.
The house is quiet. I take the stairs slowly, conscious of being naked under the t-shirt, and when I hit the bottom, I head for the kitchen again.
Aran isn’t there, but I don’t need him to show me where the washing machine is. It’s in the laundry room attached to the kitchen and smells like fabric softener. My jeans haven’t been washed in days, and my tee is pretty crusty as well. The tunic stinks of cleaning products and sweat.
Embarrassed to be taking the opportunity of doing my laundry in a kidnapper’s house, I shove everything in anyway and add a washing capsule from the box on the shelf.
The machine hums to life, showing me a forty-minute cycle. Good enough.
I move back into the kitchen and fill a glass of water from the tap. My knuckles pull when I close my fingers around the glass. I look at the butterfly strips Aran applied as calmly as if he’s done this before, on himself and others, probably in worse circumstances.
I look at the mug on the drying rack with its handle pointing left, and I can’t resist. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I turn the handle again to point right, then I step back and freeze when Aran comes into the kitchen.
I look up at him, daring to comment on the mug, but instead, he says, “Making yourself at home?”
“My clothes needed washing. You have a washing machine.”
“I do, and a tumble dryer. Just do me a favor and come away from the windows.”
“Why?”
“Precaution in case someone tracked you here.”
I take that in and move away, hovering near the door. Aran’s eyes linger on my bare legs before they home in on the mug.
He growls softly and picks it, placing it in a cupboard without comment, handle facing left.
“Why left?” I blurt out.
“That’s the way it goes.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being so in control?”
“No.”
“Is there anything haphazard in your life?”
“You.”
Right. Me.
“I’m going to lie down.”
“Want me to check for spiders?” he asks.
I freeze in the doorway, but then lift my chin. “No.”
Hearing him chuckle, I head back up the stairs and find a guest room made up all in white. I step in and close the door, eyeing up the bed with longing. It’s a double and looks like a cloud. I crawl onto it, and as soon as my head hits the pillow, I sigh with contentment.
But now that I’ve stopped, my brain fires up on all engines. Sean Granville. The woman. The fight. Aran grabbing me and hauling me out of my life and into his.
I lie on my back with my arms at my sides and stare at the white ceiling, because it’s better than closing my eyes and replaying the corridor. The bed is comfortable. The kind of comfort that makes you aware of every terrible surface you’ve been sleeping on for the last two years.
I should sleep. My body is begging for it. My brain has other plans.
Sean Granville. The name lands heavily every time I turn it over. I didn’t know it before today, but now I do, and knowing it feels like holding something radioactive. You can’t unknow a name. You can’t unsee a face. I saw him, and he saw me see him.
The woman. She walked to that elevator like she knew where she was going. No hurry, no backwards glance. Blonde hair, black jacket. I thought nothing of her at all. She was just another guest. Background noise in a day full of background noise.
Now she’s the one keeping me alive by the sounds of it.
Think, Aoife, think. What else?
I press my fingers against my eyes until I see spots.
What do I actually know? I know a man named Sean Granville ran out of room 412 and looked at me.
Dark hair. Late forties, maybe. Lean. A face that was calm in a way that didn’t match the situation, which is somehow worse than if he’d looked panicked.
Panic, I understand. That kind of calm is something else entirely.
I know a woman walked to the elevator and didn’t look back.
I know I’m lying in a stranger’s guest room in nothing but his t-shirt, and my clothes are in his washing machine, and I have no phone and nowhere to go.
I know his name is Aran O’Neill, and the O’Neill name in Dublin is one you hear in certain tones. Lowered voices. Sideways looks. The kind of name that gets mentioned and then immediately not mentioned again, like saying it too loud might summon something.
And I know that he made me eggs. Fixed my hands. Evicted the spider without making me feel stupid about it.
I know that when he caged me against the counter, I didn’t want him to move.
That last one I shove down hard and fast, the way you shove something into a drawer and sit on it.
None of this helps me.
Sleep doesn’t come for a long time. When it does, it comes all at once, like a door closing.