Chapter 32
ROWAN
A piece of popcorn flies at my head from the oversized armchair in the sitting room. Thank God Titan is snoring so loudly curled up next to me that she doesn’t even twitch at the projectile food flying overhead.
“Oy!” I pick up the piece and throw it into my mouth. “What was that for?”
Sorcha snorts. “Just checking you’re still alive over there. You haven’t said a word all night.”
I don’t look over at her, I can’t. If she shows me the slightest sliver of empathy, I’ll sing like a canary. And I don’t want to bitch about her brother-in-law. It’s not a fair position to put her in.
“Just tired.” I pick up a handful of popcorn from the bowl on my knee and shove it in my face before I tell her the truth.
Liam disappeared somewhere with Darragh, and I’m frustrated at how we left things.
There’s a rickety cage around the stupid thumping organ in my chest that feels like it’s a good gust of wind away from falling apart.
He’s gone and… I miss him.
I follow the popcorn with more popcorn, keeping my jaws working and my eyes fixed on the massive TV screen mounted on the wall. We’ve opted for girl’s night. Or rather, I was dragooned into it.
Sorcha rocked up with a bag on each wrist and a smile on her face. She bought us matching pj’s, slipper socks, more snacks than we could possibly get through in one night—especially considering her period’s just gone and mine’s not here yet—and she said we were watching a rom-com marathon.
I almost laughed in her face. She’s with the scariest, grumpiest fucker I’ve ever met, and she’s all googly eyed for rom-coms.
She throws another piece of popcorn at my head with freakish accuracy.
“Do you hate the movie? If you hate this movie I might need to reevaluate our friendship.” She pauses, waits for me to look in her direction, then continues.
“And your relationship with my brother-in-law.” She waggles her brows at me.
“I don’t think I could be sisters with anyone who doesn’t love How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.
It’s a fuckin’ classic.” She picks up her strawberry daiquiri from the coffee table next to her and raises it in my direction.
My body heats at the suggestion, the insinuation, and my mouth falls open. “It’s not like that.”
The racing pulse in my body is calling me a fucking liar. It used to be like that. Very much like that.
“It’s not? Must’ve picked up the wrong vibe then.” She takes a long drink, holding my gaze for a moment over the rim of her glass.
I look away, unable to keep eye contact. She exclaims in victory. “I knew it. Whatever flame was between you years ago, it’s still there, isn’t it?”
I shake my head, half starting to stutter over a denial, but she claps her hands. “This is perfect. Do you know how shitty it is to be the owner of the only ovaries in the building?”
“Maeve—”
She waves a hand at me, picking up a bag of Maltesers and biting the chocolate off like a squirrel.
“She doesn’t count. She doesn’t take their shit, but to Maeve, the sun shines out of those Mahoney boys’ arses.
They have her wrapped around their little fingers.
” She sighs. “She always takes their side.”
I roll my lips, so I don’t laugh at my new friend being outnumbered, and sip my cocktail. “Like I said, it’s not like that. I don’t know what vibe you picked up on, but you’ve gotten it wrong.” My eyes are fixed on Matthew McConaughey, heat creeping up my neck.
“Bullshit.”
Ironically, it’s at the part in the movie where Kate Hudson is playing a game called Bullshit with Matthew’s family. Sorcha’s timing is impeccable.
I glance at her. She’s not watching the movie: she’s watching me.
She points a half-stripped Malteser at me.
“Liam Mahoney is not the kind of man to discover that his prisoner has a secret mobile phone and not lose his shit over it. And to let her keep it?” She whistles.
“The boy’s got it bad, my new friend. The boy’s got it bad. ”
I shake my head like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. But the urge to talk to her almost pulls confessions from my lips.
More popcorn. It’s the only defense I have against my bubbly new friend.
“And what kind of kidnapper lets his victim sleep in his bed?”
“I had a concussion.”
She purses her lips. “Mm-hmm. A likely story.”
I can’t help smiling. I’ve missed this. Having a girlfriend to sit and talk to, watching movies and eating snacks. It almost feels… normal. Even though nothing about this entire situation is normal. My life hasn’t been normal for a long time.
“Say what you’re bursting to say, Erin-Rowan. I don’t know who we are today.” She smirks again. It feels kind of nice to be poked at for fun.
“He left.”
She waits, downing the rest of her cocktail and pouring another one from the jug next to her glass.
“I told him… some stuff.” I clear my throat, not sure what she’s allowed to know, and what I should keep back.
I don’t want to get in trouble with Liam for being loose-lipped, but Sorcha is my only friend, and she didn’t do me dirty over the burner.
“About what happened all those years ago.” I meet her eyes, words sticking in my throat.
“I told him the truth.” I pick up a piece of popcorn and roll it around my palm.
“And he just…” I swish my wrist. “Left.”
She frowns at me. “You told him why you left him, and he didn’t snog the face off ye?”
I giggle. “I didn’t expect that, but I’d have taken… I don’t know, a conversation, acceptance…” Forgiveness. “Something.”
“Fucking idiot.”
I jerk back as she puts her palm up to me. “Not you, him. Men. They’re all as bad as each other, emotionally stunted.” Her lips twitch. “So, you really are Rowan?”
My face is so hot, but the lure of freedom, of not having to pretend anymore is so fucking tempting. And if Liam had stuck around and asked me straight himself, I’d have finally confessed he was right. So, I give Sorcha a small nod.
“Do you want to talk to me about it?” She covers her heart with her hand. “Swear to God, it’ll stay between the two of us.”
Before I know it, everything tumbles out from my mouth.
The murder, the witness protection, Brian and the check-ins.
The intel he mentioned to me. The movie plays on, but neither of us are watching it, and Titan’s still out cold, snoring obnoxiously and spread out on the sofa like a fortnight’s washing.
After what feels like forever, Sorcha narrows her eyes. “So how does this protection program work?”
I give her the details as she disassembles more chocolate-coated malt balls with her teeth like a sociopath. Who doesn’t just put them in their mouth and suck the chocolate off?
“And how often did they move you? Every few years? Every other year? Seems a bit… stable.”
Now she mentions it, it has been a little less…
nomadic than I expected. I shrug. “I guess they did a good job of keeping everything where it needed to be. If the risk arose, I’m sure Brian would have moved me.
He did shortly before Liam brought me here.
” And he’d threatened to do it again on the phone.
“Huh.” She takes a drink.
“What?” Something about how she says the single word has the hair rising on the back of my neck.
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Doesn’t feel like nothing.” I take a large drink. Feels like I need it. “If we’re going to be friends, you’re going to have to give it to me straight, Sorcha. Friends don’t lie to each other. Not real ones.” I wince. “And before you say it, I only said I was Erin to protect… well, everyone.”
Sorcha’s smile is sympathetic. “I know. It’s just… something my da said when he was being investigated a few years back. They moved a witness three times in as many months. Couldn’t risk routine.”
We go quiet for a few minutes. I’m not sure what to do with that information.
It never occurred to me to question Brian.
He told me he was keeping me safe, and I believed him.
I was young, naive, scared, and would set myself on fire to keep Liam away from the trouble I’d gotten myself into.
It never occurred to me to question the process.
“He tracks me when I’m out, too. Even suggested one of those implant things to keep tabs on me. ”
From the way her face puckers, I know she’s not thrilled. “Do you have someone you can escalate to? Does Brian have a boss?”
I shake my head. “Just him.”
She hums softly, as though that’s all the information I need. “Protection shouldn’t feel like punishment, Rowan.”
I shift in my seat, not enjoying how this conversation feels in my body. I did what I had to do to survive… didn’t I? “Sometimes you just do what you’re told. It’s easier.”
Another hum. “That’s what I told myself.
” She goes quiet for a moment; it starts to feel like she might not give me anymore than that.
“Fear can make compliance feel like loyalty. If someone’s protection costs you everything…
it’s not protection. It’s ownership.” She gives me a sad smile. “Ask me how I know.”
So, I do. Over what feels like bottomless daiquiris and eventually a pizza, she tells me of her traumatic beginnings with Patrick and how he forced her to marry him after killing her entire family. It’s like something out of a TV show. By the time she’s finished, my chest is tight.
“We definitely had a journey from ownership to partnership, but it’s why this”—she waves her pizza slice at me—“is so familiar. I can spot a narcissistic arsehole from thirty feet away.”
She takes a bite and swallows. “You know what Patrick’s biggest fear was when we married?”
I shake my head.
“That I’d stay because I was scared of him.”
“Were you?”
“At first.” She shrugs. “But after some time, I stopped being afraid of him. You don’t have to answer, but are you still afraid of Brian even after all these years?”
My stomach falls. My first instinct is to defend him, to tell her he’s just doing his job, but something gives me pause.
Sorcha puts on another movie then falls asleep in the armchair, but her words keep me staring at the screen churning them over one by one.
She’s right: Liam didn’t lose his shit at me, he didn’t take my phone, he hasn’t kept me alone here—I have free rein of the house, I can hang out with Maeve and Sorcha, and although I swerve Patrick most times, I’ve chatted to Darragh, too.
It’s like I’ve been given a ready-made family.
The cage around my heart falls away. Maybe the man I gave my heart to all those years ago doesn’t hate me. Could he still care about me?
The thought sends flutters through my whole body on a wave of heat. It’s no surprise he’s gotten more and more handsome as he’s gotten older. And if he wasn’t intent on being such a prick, it’d be hard not to throw myself at him when he enters a room.
Maybe the dangerous man isn’t the one who makes me feel small. Brian makes me feel… contained. Liam makes me feel like that old Rebel who wanted to jump out of a plane with a man strapped to her back.
The question is, do I trust him enough to jump?