Keira
He only has to say my name with that gravelly voice of his, and every sensible part of me melts.
There’s a cut above his right eyebrow, fresh enough that my gaze finds it before I force it away.
I didn’t come here to care or ask what happened.
“I want to set the record straight.” My voice comes out steadier than the rest of me.
I point to the bulky bag near the couch, the one I’d dropped before he came in.
“Then I’m leaving Black Heath.”
He takes a step closer.
My hand snaps up, knowing it’s safer if there’s distance. “Stop. Just hear me out, and then I’ll go.”
He goes still, and I sense it’s not because he wants to. I recognize the restraint locked through his shoulders, the way his jaw muscles tighten.
The entire cabin seems smaller with him facing me, all shadow and dried blood, a man who’s clearly been in a brawl.
“Keira.” My name comes out in a low rasp.
“No, Saint.” I press my nails into my palm, needing a sharper sensation than the flutter in my chest. “Let me speak.”
His eyes hold mine, and when he nods, it almost undoes me. Saint Tallon doesn’t obey anyone. However, he’s giving me a voice.
I hate that my father never did, while this dangerous man standing in front of me, covered in blood, is offering me the respect of his silence.
I breathe through my nose and keep going. “I shouldn’t have let you get close to me.”
His expression hardens, and his forehead creases.
“It was wrong,” I say. “Not because of who you are or what people say about you. Because I know what my father does, and I knew he’d use me, eventually.”
Saint’s gaze drops to my mouth for a racing heartbeat, then flicks back up.
“He put the land in my name to turn your own plan against you. I had no idea he’d tied me to it until tonight, when he told me in front of his dinner guests.”
His chest rises as he listens.
“He expected me to talk to Crowley. I refused. Only so it didn’t stop me from leaving. The investigation alone would’ve kept me in Black Heath longer than I wanted.”
The lies are ugly in the quietness of his silence.
Saint drags a hand through his hair, the movement rough enough to disturb the black strands already falling over his forehead. His split knuckles disappear into it for a second, and when his hand drops, he just stares at me.
“Why does it matter to ya what I think?” he asks.
I could tell him it doesn’t. I could lift my chin, reach for the bag, and leave him with lies, but I came here for the truth to give me closure.
“Because I’m not coming back to Black Heath,” I whisper. “And I wanted you to know I wasn’t my father’s puppet.”
I hate the tremor in my voice. “And because it was real for me. I fell for you, Saint, and my father destroyed it by tying my name to the land you risked everything for.”
His breathing changes. A man like Saint gives almost nothing away, but I notice the rise of his chest, and the moment his hand curls and releases at his side.
He takes another step, and I back up.
“I’m not here for you,” I say quickly, before he can speak. “I’m here for myself. So I can start over with a clear conscience.”
“Don’t lie to me.” His voice rumbles through me.
“My father made me the trap,” I say. “But you still looked at me and saw the bait.”
I turn to the couch and grab my bag strap, hauling upward and swinging it onto my shoulder.
“Goodbye, Saint.”
I swivel away and walk toward the door, then glance over my shoulder. “Whatever I do next is up to me. Not my father and not you.”
“Put the bag down.” His tone is firm, demanding, and enough that I stop before I think better of it.
I don’t turn to face him. “No.”
“Keira.”
“You told me to get off your property without even a goodbye.” The knot in my chest pulls tighter. “You made me believe we had something.”
“I could’ve forced ya to stay,” his voice slips over my shoulder. “Dragged every signature and family secret out of you until I found a way around him. But I let ya leave. So don’t stand there and tell me I don’t know what this costs.”
I keep my grip on the bag because my hands are shaking. “My father has already turned this into a story that serves him, and if I stay here, you’ll both keep fighting. I’ll be stuck in the middle.”
My lashes lower for half a second, then I take a deep breath before my emotions spill over.
“I can’t live between two families who’ve hated each other longer than I’ve been alive.”
“I don’t expect ya to live in the middle, Keira,” he says. “I want ya beside me.”
When I turn away from the door, he’s closer than before.
“I saw your name before I saw you,” he says. “That’s on me.”
“But the land,” I say. “My name. My father. Your father. My aunt. Sera. Every time I ask a question, another lie opens underneath it. I don’t know what’s true anymore.”
“Me and you, Keira…that’s true.”
“How could it be?” I shake my head. “The way you turned so cold on me… You just cut me off.”
“You wanna know where I was earlier?” He holds out his hand, turns it, and closes his fingers into a fist, the dried blood on his knuckles cracking. “I went to your fancy mansion across the heath to get ya. I almost put a bullet in your brother’s head when he told me you’d left.”
“You spoke to Fionn?”
“And your da,” he confirms. “I told them you’re mine now.”
I step back, my pulse thrumming. This wasn’t the plan. He’s doing that thing again…pulling me in and making me feel things I’ve no business feeling.
Saint walks into the space I’ve made as if he’s all out of patience. He stops before me, toe to toe, his chest almost brushing mine, close enough that I have to tip my chin up to meet his eyes.
“Goddammit, princess,” he says, voice rough and deep. “Put the bag down.”
My fingers tighten until the strap bites into my palm.
“No.”
His eyes darken as he leans in. “You’re here instead of up in the sky because we’re not over.”
I swallow hard.
“Be a good girl and put the bag down.”
“I only came here to say goodbye,” I whisper.
He exhales a long sigh through his nose. “No, you didn’t.”
His hand closes around the strap near my shoulder and drags it off. The bag hits the floor with a thud, and Saint closes the last inch, his hands settling on my shoulders.
My body answers before my pride can stop it, spine drawing tight, breath catching high in my lungs, every nerve under his palms waking at once.
I tell myself not to lean into his chest, that I’m about to leave.
Saint lowers his head until his eyes are level with mine.
“Me and you happened long before the plan went to shit,” he says. “We both tried to stop it and couldn’t. Fuck, princess, I’m not giving up on us without a fight.”
Us.
I shake my head because standing so close already feels like a surrender. “But I’ll never know if this is you pulling another move.”
His fingers dig in a little deeper.
“And this is how you get what you wanted all along.”
For one second, he isn’t looking at me. He’s looking through me, past me, back to whatever stretch of Black Heath carries his father’s blood and his family’s future. I see the fight in him. The old one. The one he fought before I ever came into his life.
Then his gaze comes back to mine and something in it ruins me.
“You’re everything I want, Keira.”
My throat tightens.
“But the land—”
“Keep it.” His voice is rougher now, like the words had teeth on the way out. “I’ll figure something else out.”
“You can’t just say that.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy,” he sighs. “But you matter more.”
My chest aches. “It’s not really mine.”
His forehead creases.
“It sits inside a Harrington trust. My father still has a say in it. So even if I wanted to give it to you, I couldn’t.”
Understanding moves across his face, dark and slow.
I pull out from under his hands, and when they fall to his sides, it almost breaks me.
“I should go.”
It only takes two steps and Saint’s behind me. His arm slides around my middle, and he draws me into him so my back bumps against his chest.
The contact goes through me hard, heat spreading low beneath my ribs, then lower, hotter and helpless. In his arms, I’m alive in a way that still burns even after everything.
His lips tease the edge of my ear. “You’re not going anywhere.”
His breath moves against the shell of my ear, rough enough to tingle, warm enough to make my pulse spike. My fingers close around his wrist, meaning to pull him away, but my hand only stays there.
“Really?” I say, breathless. “You think we’re right back at the beginning. That I’m your hostage?”
His arm bands across me.
“Not a hostage anymore,” he says. “You’re my girl, and you know that’s true.”
His mouth stays near my ear, and his hand splays over my stomach, holding me against him.
“And I’m asking ya,” he continues, voice lower now, “to unpack your bag and put your toothbrush in the bathroom next to mine.”
I close my eyes, and the darkness gives me my father’s smile, his blood-red wine, his commanding voice telling me my name makes me his.
“He’ll destroy this,” I whisper.
Saint holds me tighter. “I won’t let him.”
“He’ll use Crowley. Whatever happened between your father and my aunt. He’ll come for Sera again… He’ll drag me back with lies.”
Saint turns me into him, and this time, I let him, though my hands stay between us, pressed to his chest.
His eyes hold mine, his inky pupils blown wide.
“If your father thinks fighting for land makes me ruthless, he should pray he never finds out what fighting for you makes me.”
“What about your mother?” I ask. “She hates me.”
He slides his hand into my hair at the nape and nudges my chin up with his forefinger. “Leave her to me.”
“Saint…” I whisper.
“I know.”
He says it as if he understands, as if he can read the war in me because the same one is moving through him.
Despite knowing I should leave and head straight for the airport, my fingers curl into his shirt.
His lips move over mine, and the restraint in it breaks something open that force never could.
Until his hand fists in my hair and he kisses me as if he’s been starved of it, walking me backward into the wall, his thigh shoving between mine.
“Fuck,” he says against my mouth. “I haven’t been right since ya left.”
My phone vibrates in the outside pocket of my bag.
Breathing hard, I pull away and take it out.
Fionn: If you didn’t get on the jet, then you went to him.
My stomach drops because he knows. And I’ve no idea what my father will do with that information.