1. Ciara #2
He crosses the room and folds himself onto the far end of the window seat, close enough that I catch soap and cedar, far enough it could almost be an accident.
“About earlier.” His voice is low, measured, like he’s already decided how this conversation goes. “I thought you were someone else.”
“I figured.”
“I’m not going to apologize for the kiss.” No smile this time. “I’m sorry I didn’t know you first. That you turned out to be my stepsister.”
“That’s not technically an apology.”
“Maybe not.” He doesn’t argue the point, which unsettles me more than if he had.
His eyes drop briefly to where my arms are still crossed over the journal, something flickering across his face, quicker and quieter than the assessment from the driveway, gone before I can name it.
“You’ve had your arms locked like that since I walked in. ”
Heat floods my face. “I’m fine.”
“I didn’t ask if you were fine.” His tone doesn’t soften, but something underneath it sharpens, like he’s found the exact spot where I’m lying. “You look like you’re bracing for something.”
I don’t have an answer that isn’t the truth, so I give him nothing.
He lets the silence sit instead of filling it, patient, unbothered, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.
My heart’s still racing, but it’s a different kind of racing than the driveway.
Slower. Warmer. Settling into something almost peaceful despite everything it shouldn’t be.
It feels like the first full breath I’ve taken since I got out of that car.
Finally he stands, in no hurry at all.
“Good night, lil sis.”
The words land somewhere between a joke and a warning, and he’s gone before I can decide which one he meant.
Pain drags me awake, not sound. A low, twisting ache spreads through my abdomen before I’m even fully conscious. I lie still, hoping it’ll pass. It doesn’t. It tightens instead, a slow, grinding cramp pulling low across my belly and down into my thighs.
My cycle’s been a mess for months, tangled up with the prolactin and the milk that shouldn’t exist. Some months nothing. Some months this, late and vicious, like my body’s making up for something it can’t fix any other way.
It doesn’t ease. It builds, sharp enough to steal the air from my chest, my back aching low across my spine. I give up on sleep. I need water, something warm, and more than anything I need not to be alone with this in the dark, even though alone is exactly what I’ve trained myself to want.
The hallway is black and unfamiliar. The stairs creak once and I freeze. Nothing. Just wind against the windows and my own pulse, competing with the cramp trying to fold me in half.
I make it to the bottom of the staircase before it peaks, hot and wrenching, and grab the banister with both hands, forehead pressed to the cool wood.
“Ciara.”
I didn’t hear him coming. I never do.
Cillian’s at the bottom of the stairs, barefoot, in nothing but soft gray sweatpants, hair rumpled like he wasn’t sleeping either. Whatever he sees on my face wipes the sleep right out of his.
“I’m fine.” A lie by the second word.
“You look like you’re about to fold in half.” He’s beside me before I can argue. “What is it?”
“Cramps.” Saying it out loud feels stupidly intimate. “My cycle’s a mess lately. It’s not usually this bad.”
I brace for the discomfort men usually show at that word. It doesn’t come. His jaw sets instead, focused, like I’ve handed him a problem he plans to solve immediately.
“Can you walk, or do I need to carry you?”
“I can walk.” Barely, the words thin as another wave rolls through.
He doesn’t believe me. His hand finds the small of my back, steady, guiding. My knees buckle on the second step and he catches me without a word, one arm under my knees, the other braced against my back, lifting me like I weigh nothing.
“Cillian, I can walk.”
“You said that already.” Even, amused now, gentler than the driveway. “I’ll get you what you need myself. Just rest.”
He carries me down the hall like it costs him nothing, like I’m not pressed against his bare chest in a way that would humiliate me if I had energy to spend on it.
He smells like sleep and cedar. Despite the pain, some small, traitorous part of me settles into the heat of him instead of fighting it.
He eases me onto the edge of my bed and disappears without a word. Water running. A kettle. He comes back with a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel and two mugs balanced in one hand.
“Here.” He presses the warmth against my stomach, guiding my own hands over it, then sits beside me like this is the most natural thing in the world. “Tea. Family recipe. Won’t fix it, but it helps. My grandmother swore by it.”
I wrap both hands around the mug. It tastes strange, floral under the chamomile, something almost sweetly milky, a little like fennel. I’m too tired to question it. The hot water bottle works fast, the sharp edge of the cramp softening into something duller.
“You can go now. I can handle myself.” I stare into the tea instead of at him. “I’m not your responsibility.”
“No,” he agrees, quieter now, more careful than I’ve heard him yet. “You’re not.” A pause, long enough that I look up. “Doesn’t mean I want to leave you folded over a staircase at three in the morning.”
I don’t have an answer for that, so I drink my tea.
After a while he asks, almost hesitant, if it would help to lie down.
I nod before I can think better of it. He eases me back against the pillows, tucks the hot water bottle into place, and when his fingers brush the hair from my face, absent, like he’s barely aware he’s doing it, something in my chest cracks open that has nothing to do with cramps at all.
He stays. Settles against the headboard beside me, one hand moving slowly through my hair, and it’s such an unbearably tender gesture from a man who kissed me like a threat hours ago that I don’t know what to do except let it happen.
“Sleep,” he murmurs. “I’m here.”
I don’t remember falling asleep. I only know that when I wake, pale light through the window, he’s still there, asleep sitting up in the chair he must have pulled beside the bed at some point in the night, arms crossed loosely over his chest like he refused to actually lie down even once I’d drifted off.
I came here dreading him. I never once expected he’d be the person I’d feel safest with in the dark.
That thought scares me more than the pain ever did.