Chapter 16
Aoife
Aran looks like he wants to believe me, but doesn’t.
I don’t blame him. My words are wild. Spontaneous.
But very real. This man underneath me did save me.
As much as I want to blame him for putting me in danger, he didn’t.
As inadvertent as it was, he saved me the first time.
The second time was a choice. He could’ve let them take me.
He didn’t.
He kept me.
Now I’m sitting on top of him, his cock still buried inside me, his cum leaking out of my pussy around him, and I feel more alive than I have in two years.
That’s the part I can’t reconcile. The danger, the death, the absolute chaos of the last twelve hours should have me catatonic. Instead, I’m straddling a man I met today—or was it yesterday, now—and feeling things I swore I’d never feel again.
I climb off him slowly, wincing at the loss, and he lets me go without grabbing. That matters. He lets me choose when to separate, and I file that away alongside the eggs, the spider, and the butterfly strips.
I lie down beside him, pulling the covers up. The room is dark and quiet, and Dublin hums somewhere outside the windows like it doesn’t know or care what’s happening in here.
“I need to tell you something,” I say to the ceiling.
He turns his head. I feel his gaze on the side of my face. “You don’t need to say anything.”
“The reason I froze in the corridor. When you grabbed me.” I swallow, ignoring him. “It wasn’t just the shock. I’ve frozen before. Two years ago.”
He doesn’t prompt me. Doesn’t push. He waits. The silence between us isn’t empty; it’s loaded with the kind of patience I didn’t expect from a man who snaps zip ties and kicks doors off hinges.
“I was in a relationship,” I say. “He wasn’t a good person.
I didn’t know that at first. Nobody does, right?
They don’t walk in wearing a sign. They walk in with charm and a smile.
The right words at the right time, and everyone loves him, but by the time you see the sign, you’re already locked inside. ”
My voice is steady. Flat, almost. Like I’m reading someone else’s story. That’s the only way I can tell it.
“He hurt me. Not at first. At first, it was small things. Controlling where I went. Who I spoke to. Checking my phone. Telling me what to wear. Then it got physical. And then it got worse.”
I stop. Breathe. The ceiling is very white and very still.
“One night, he came home drunk. More than drunk. Something else. He had a knife, and he told me he was going to kill me if I ever tried to leave. And I stood there. In the kitchen. And I couldn’t move.
My legs wouldn’t work. My arms wouldn’t work.
He stood three feet from me with a knife, and I just stood there like I was already dead and my body hadn’t caught up. ”
“I got out eventually. Not that night. Months later. I waited until he left for work, packed one bag, walked out, and never went back. Moved to the city. Got the flat. Got the job. Built the shittiest, smallest life possible because a small life is harder to find. That’s why I froze.
In the corridor. When you grabbed me. My body went back there.
To the kitchen. To the knife. To the part of me that learned how to stand very still and hope it passes. ”
I turn my head and look at him. His jaw is tight. His eyes are fixed on me with something that isn’t pity. Pity, I’d reject. This is different. This is the look of a man who is recording information and deciding what to do with it.
“What’s his name?” he asks. Quiet. Too quiet.
“That’s not why I’m telling you.”
“What’s his name, Aoife?”
He sits up and swings his legs out of bed, planting his feet on the floor.
“Aran. I’m telling you this, so you understand me. Not so you can go and do something about it.”
He looks at me over his shoulder. “No one hurts you and lives.”
It’s a statement that does something strange to my blood. Hot and cold at the same time.
“Why?” I say so quietly, I’m not sure he heard me.
He stands. Every line of him is taut and coiled in a way that has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the name I haven’t given him. He doesn’t pace. He doesn’t raise his voice. He just stands there, still as stone, and that stillness is worse than any explosion would be.
“Because you’re mine,” he says. “And what’s mine doesn’t get touched. Not before me. Not after me. Not ever.”
“He’s in the past, Aran.”
“Not if he’s still in your head. Not if he’s the reason your legs lock up when someone grabs you.
” He moves around the bed and crouches in front of me, bringing himself to my eye level.
His hands rest on the mattress. “You froze in that corridor because of him. That freeze could’ve gotten you killed. ”
“But it didn’t.”
“Because I was there. Because I’ve fallen for you in a matter of hours and will protect you with my life. I am not a hero, Aoife. I wasn’t meant to protect you. Do you understand that?”
My breath catches. “So why are you? Why are you defying the orders of your boss? And don’t give me the same answer you’ve already given me. You can’t just say I’m yours and expect that to land every time as an explanation for why you do things.”
He stares at me. Not through me. At me. For the first time since I met him, I see something crack behind those blue eyes. Not weakness. Something rawer than that. Something he doesn’t want me to see.
He drops his head for a second. When he looks back up, what’s left is just him.
“Because I look at you and I see someone who has been surviving instead of living,” he says.
“And I know what that looks like because I’ve been doing the same thing.
Different reasons. Same result. You go through the motions.
You eat, you sleep, you work, you breathe, and none of it means a fucking thing because you stopped feeling it years ago. ”
My chest tightens.
“I walked into that hotel yesterday expecting a job. Walk in, make the trade, walk out. Simple. Clean. Another day. Then I grabbed you, hauled you out of there and threw you in the trunk of my car. You looked up at me with those eyes, and as I was driving away, something in me snapped. Not broke. Snapped. I knew you were the wrong woman. I confirmed it and had my orders. For the first time in my adult life, I disobeyed those orders. I wasn’t setting you free, and I sure as shit wasn’t cleaning you. ”
“Cleaning me?” I ask and then gulp. “Oh.”
“Mine,” he says again. “Whether it means anything to you or not. I’ve laid everything on the line for a woman I don’t know, but is mine anyway.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, feeling terrible for putting him in this position, even though I realize how ridiculous that is.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Aoife,” he says fiercely, gripping my fingers tight enough that the bones crunch together. I barely even feel it.
I look at him, crouched in front of me, naked, fierce as hell, like he’s ready to tear Dublin apart on a hunch. “You can’t fix every bad thing that happened before you showed up.”
His expression hardens. “Watch me.”
I stare at him, my heart kicking hard against my ribs. He says it like it’s already done. Like my ex is a problem he can solve with one phone call and a body bag.
“You’re frightening when you do that,” I whisper.
“When I do what?”
“Look like murder is a perfectly normal solution.”
His mouth shifts, not quite a smile. “Depends on the problem. You know I will find him with or without your help.”
“I know,” I say quietly.
His gaze bores into mine, and he nods slowly. “You are absolved of any guilt.”
“Don’t,” I say, shaking my head. “Don’t tell me anything.”
He breathes in deeply and releases it as if it costs him. “Fine.”
The room goes quiet again.
Not calm. Just quiet.
He’s still crouched in front of me, his hand wrapped around mine, his face set in that hard, controlled way that somehow feels more dangerous than if he were shouting.
I don’t know what to do with him.
I don’t know what to do with any of this.
So I do the only thing I can. I slide my hand out of his and reach for his face. My fingers skim his jaw, the roughness there, the heat of his skin. He goes very still.
He catches my wrist and turns his face into my palm for one second before he stands. The movement is so sudden it steals my breath. He walks to the window and parts the curtain a fraction, checking outside.
Always checking.
Always expecting the next thing.
I watch the lines of his back, the tattoos. He drops the curtain and moves back to the bed. He climbs back in and pulls me to him again. This time, I close my eyes and will sleep to drag me back under, so I don’t have to deal with any of this shitshow of a life, for a few hours.