6. Declan #3
Maeve finds me in the kitchen shortly after four, standing over a glass of whiskey I have not touched.
She has changed into one of the shirts she borrowed tonight, black silk with sleeves too long for her arms. Seven years ago, she stole my shirts because she liked waking with my scent against her skin.
Now she wears this one because everything she owned was abandoned in a safe house decorated with bullet holes.
The distinction should make it easier to look at her.
It does not. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, and exhaustion has stripped the anger from her face, leaving behind the woman who once waited awake when my work took me out after midnight.
“You are bleeding again.” Maeve takes the glass from my hand and places it on the counter. “Apparently threatening people has reopened your cut. You may need a gentler hobby.”
“I tried drinking.” I watch her open a cabinet and remove the medical kit. “You objected to that as well.”
“I objected to you becoming drunk enough to mistake misery for a personality.” She motions toward a stool. “Sit down before you bleed on something expensive and accuse me of treason.”
I obey, which should concern both of us.
Maeve stands between my knees and cleans the cut along my jaw with a damp cloth.
Her touch is clinical at first, but her fingers hesitate against my skin when I turn toward her.
We have occupied this position before, though the memories contain fewer weapons and less clothing.
She used to patch my wounds in the bathroom of my old apartment, cursing every man who managed to touch me and promising to improve my reflexes through cruelty.
Once, after stitching a knife wound beneath my ribs, she climbed into my lap and kissed me because she said anger required somewhere useful to go.
I married none of the women my family placed in my path because some treacherous part of me remained in that bathroom with her.
“You used to kiss me after this part.” I let the memory settle between us. “I found the treatment unusually effective.”
“You used to deserve it.” Her fingers still against my jaw before she reaches for the antiseptic. “Medical standards have improved.”
“I never deserved you.” The admission leaves before pride can strangle it. “That did not stop me from having you.”
Maeve looks at me then, and the room becomes smaller.
Desire is there, but it is tangled with grief too old to remain clean.
I remember her beneath me, laughing when I tried to command her and biting my shoulder when I succeeded.
I remember waking with her leg across mine and believing, with the arrogance of a man who owned everything, that she would always be there.
I did not understand that love could be frightened out of a room. I thought possession meant permanence.
“You did not have me.” Her voice is quiet enough to hurt. “I gave myself to you. There is a difference.”
“I know that now.” I close my hand around her wrist, feeling her pulse jump beneath my thumb. “Seven years too late, but I know.”
She does not pull away. Her gaze drops to my mouth, and hunger moves through me with enough force to make restraint feel like violence.
I could drag her closer. I could remind her body of everything her anger wants forgotten.
The man I was would have done it, then called the result inevitable.
The man staring at her now understands that taking what she has not offered would make me exactly the monster she once fled.
Maeve’s breath touches my lips when she leans closer. “If you kiss me tonight, I may kiss you back.”
“That sounds less like a warning than you intended.” My hand tightens around her wrist, but I do not pull. “You have always struggled with threats.”
“If I kiss you back, it will not mean I forgive you.” Her free hand settles against my chest, directly over the heart I trained myself to deny having. “It will mean I remember who we were before you chose an order over me.”
The truth stops me more effectively than a gun. I release her wrist and take the cloth from her fingers, though every part of me objects. “Then I will wait until you know which man you are kissing.”
Pain crosses her face before she hides it. She closes the medical kit and steps away, taking her warmth with her. “Do not become honorable now, Declan. It is unsettling at this hour.”
“I am not honorable.” I watch her retreat toward the doorway. “I am patient.”
Maeve pauses without turning around. “You have never been patient.”
“Seven years would disagree.”
She leaves before I can see whether the answer wounds her or reaches whatever remains between us.
The whiskey stays untouched after she goes.
Her blood no longer stains my hands, but the memory of her pulse remains beneath my thumb, stubborn and alive.
For the first time since she returned, I understand that getting Maeve back will require more than proving I never ordered her death.
I must become a man she can choose without betraying the woman who survived me.