Chapter 27
Aran
She’s sitting there looking at me like she has all the time in the world.
I don’t deserve her.
Draining the rest of the whiskey, I set the glass down harder than I meant to. The sound cracks through the kitchen. She doesn’t flinch.
“I’m thinking,” I say, “that I handed Connor a grenade and pulled the pin, and now I have to stand back and watch what happens.”
“And that bothers you.”
“It bothers me that I can’t control what comes next.”
She nods slowly, like that was the answer she expected. “Nessa.”
“No. You.”
“Me? You’re worried Connor might come after me?”
“What? No. He wouldn’t dare. He knows who you are to me. I’ve brought you along to two meetings. I’ve threatened him over you. He knows you are untouchable.”
“What then?”
“I can’t control what you think, what you want. If either of those things doesn’t involve me…” I trail off, hating being this vulnerable. It goes against everything in me.
She stares at me for a long moment. Then she gets up from the chair, crosses the kitchen, and stops right in front of me. Close enough that I have to look down at her.
“You’re scared,” she says.
“Don’t push it.”
“You are, though.”
“I don’t scare easily.”
“I know. That’s what makes this interesting.”
I reach out and pull the cap off her head. Her hair falls loose. I set the cap on the counter. “I’ve kept people safe before. Moved them. Hidden them. Done the job and walked away. This is different.”
“Because?”
“Because walking away from you would kill me.”
“I know the feeling,” she says. “How fucked up is that?”
I don’t answer that. Instead, I say, “Connor will move on Nessa quickly. By tomorrow, this will be over one way or another. You will be free to go home and live your life. Maybe beg Sandra for your job back.”
She doesn’t laugh.
I was half expecting her to.
“Is that what you want?” she asks. “For me to go home?”
“No.”
“Then don’t offer it like a prize.”
I take her in. All of her. The way her hair falls around her shoulders now that it’s free, her face clean of makeup, and beneath those jeans, my mark carved into her skin.
My name. She looks like she belongs here, and that thought makes me want to both lock the doors against the world and throw her out before she sees how easily she could tear me apart.
I’ve put bullets in men’s heads with steadier hands than I have right now.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I say. “The job, I know. The rest of it.” I shake my head once.
“The rest of it being me.”
“Yes.”
She tilts her head. “You carved your name into my skin and told me I was yours.”
“I know what I did.”
“And now you’re standing in your kitchen looking like a man who just realized what that actually means.”
She’s right.
I stand there and let that land because it deserves to.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s exactly what’s happening.”
She doesn’t look worried, or upset. She looks steady, which is somehow worse for what it does to me.
“I meant it,” I say. “All of it. That hasn’t changed.”
“I know you meant it. That’s not in question.”
“Then what are you asking?”
“I’m asking if you’re going to let it mean something tomorrow, or the day after, or next week, month, year... When this is over, and you don’t have a reason to keep me close.”
I reach out and take her jaw in my hand. Not gently. Not roughly. Just holding her face so she can’t look anywhere but at me. “I don’t keep people. I’ve never wanted to keep anyone.”
“But?”
“But I want to keep you.” The words come out raw and stripped of anything resembling control.
“Not because you need protecting. Not because of what happened in that hotel or what you know or what you’ve seen.
Because when you’re in the room, I can fucking breathe.
And when you’re not, I’m already thinking about how to get you back. ”
She’s very still in my hand.
“That’s not nothing,” she says quietly.
“No. It’s everything. That’s the problem.”
Her throat moves against my palm as she swallows. Her eyes stay on mine, and I watch her take that in, watch her turn it over, and I wait for her to do what people do, which is flinch from it or use it or make it smaller than it is.
She doesn’t.
“I’m staying,” she says.
I stare at her. “Just like that.”
“Just like that.” She reaches up and wraps her fingers around my wrist, digging her nails into me hard enough for me to feel it.
“You’re not the only one who can’t breathe properly when the other one isn’t in the room.
I noticed it at Connor’s. I noticed it in that car park when you walked toward Granville, and I was supposed to just sit there. ”
“You were supposed to sit there.”
“I know. I nearly didn’t.”
My chest tightens. “Aoife.”
“I know,” she says again. “But that’s what I’m telling you. You think you have the monopoly on this. You don’t.”
I stare at her for a long moment.
Then I pull her in, my hand at her jaw and the other one at the back of her head. I kiss her hard enough that she has to grip my shirt to stay upright. She kisses me back the same way, no hesitation, no half-measure, and when I finally pull back, we’re both breathing wrong.
“You’re staying,” I say against her mouth.
“I’m staying.”
I press my forehead to hers and close my eyes for a second. Just a second. I don’t do this. I don’t stand in my kitchen with my forehead against a woman’s and my hands in her hair and feel the ground shift under me. I don’t let people past the point where it can hurt me.
I already have, and there’s no undoing it now.
“You need to eat,” I say.
She laughs, a short, tired sound against my jaw. “You always go back to food. You’re obsessed.”
“It’s something I can do.”
She pulls back and looks up at me. “Then do it.”
I let her go and move to the freezer, pulling out two pizzas. I crank the oven and tear the packaging off both. She pulls herself up onto the counter and sits there watching me, feet dangling, hair still loose from where I pulled the cap off. She looks like she belongs in my kitchen. In my life.
“Will Connor tell you when it’s done?” she asks.
“Probably not.”
She nods like she already knew that and was just checking.
I slide the pizzas into the oven and set the timer. “Do you need anything?”
She opens her legs wider and pulls me closer. “Just you.”
“Don’t start something we can’t finish before the pizza is ready.”
“Spoilsport,” she murmurs against my mouth.
I kiss her back once more before I pull away and put a foot of space between us, because if I don’t, the pizzas will burn and she’ll end up with her back against the kitchen table.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she says as she catches my eyes on her.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m going to disappear.”
“Old habit.”
She tips her head. “You do it every time you think I’m not watching.”
“You’re always watching.”
“Comes with being the woman you abducted.” But there’s no heat in it. It’s just a fact now. Something that happened and led to this: to her on my counter, my name in her skin, and the oven ticking.
My phone buzzes on the table.
I check the screen.
Connor.
I show her the screen, and she pales. I pick it up and answer before the third buzz. “Yeah?”
Silence.
“Connor?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” he says, his voice a quiet croak. He sounds like every one of his years.
“Everything okay?” I press when nothing else is forthcoming.
Aoife is on high alert, dropping down from the counter, and looking ready to run if necessary. She’s learning what my life is like, and I hate that for her.
“No. But I can’t say I’m surprised it ended this way. I’d be surprised if she’s the only one.”
I catch Aoife’s eye and shake my head. She stands down and then goes to check the pizza.
“I’m sorry.”
“What for? Bringing me the truth? Don’t ever apologize for that, Aran. You’ve protected this family from a very real, very dangerous threat. I owe you a thanks.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts,” he says briskly, sounding more like himself again. “You are a loyal man, Aran. And that woman, Aoife. She is good for you. I could see it earlier. Keep her.”
“I am,” I say with a slow smile. “Lucky for me, she wants to be kept.”
Aoife’s eyes go wide, but she says nothing. Connor hangs up.
I set the phone down on the table and look at Aoife, who is standing by the oven with her arms folded and her eyes narrowed.
“He said to keep me,” she says.
“He did.”
“Like I’m a stray.”
“Like you’re something worth keeping.” I move to the cupboard and pull out two plates. “There’s a difference.”
She considers that for a second, then drops her arms. “So he believes the evidence?”
“Appears that way.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, and he won’t. Whatever happens now is above my—”
“Pay grade,” she says with a smile.
“You’re getting it.” I set the plates on the table and pull the pizzas out of the oven.
She sits down, while I slice both pizzas and slide half of each onto her plate. She looks down at it, then up at me, before she shrugs and dives in.
I’ve never felt more at peace than I do right now, sitting across from her, eating pizza and watching her devour hers like she has never been fed. That will all change. She will want for nothing. I will give her her old life back minus that fucker Darragh.
I’m glad that the Nessa thing is out of my hands now. I’m glad Granville is heading towards his ocean view. That means I can concentrate on avenging the only thing that matters. Darragh’s time is running out, and he doesn’t even know it yet.