Declan #2
I ignore him. The room is too warm, too full of laughter and card shuffling and the kind of decadence that reminds me life goes on even when your insides feel like a ruined battlefield.
Ailish’s voice won’t leave my head.
I don’t need you as a distraction.
Start acting like it.
Coward.
The words haunt me, echoing louder than the music vibrating through the floorboards. I stare into the whiskey, hoping for clarity or numbness or something that feels like control. The liquor offers nothing.
Conor watches me. “She got to you.”
I drag a hand through my hair. “She thinks she knows what she’s talking about.”
“She usually does.”
“That’s the fucking problem.”
Rory nods toward the bar, toward the women gathered there, toward the flirting and the laughter and the easy, uncomplicated heat in the air. “Go find someone who doesn’t talk back.”
I shoot him a dark look. “I don’t want someone else.”
Rory blinks once, then nods slowly. “Jesus. You’re gone.”
Conor smirks, trying to lighten the mood. “Imagine telling Liam you caught feelings for his right-hand strategist.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He’s right, and it pisses me off. The booth feels too small, the air too thick. I stand abruptly, the movement sharp enough to rattle the table. “I’m checking the back rooms.”
Rory frowns. “Everything’s already checked.”
“Then I’m checking them again.”
Conor lifts a brow but doesn’t stop me. “Don’t pick fights you don’t need, yeah?”
I don’t answer. The hallway behind the bar is narrow and shadowed, lined with storage rooms and the entrance to the private gambling den—invite only, Italians and Irish both vetted at the door. I walk past it, past the crates stacked against the wall, past the muffled laughter from the card tables.
My footsteps echo, too loud in the quiet. Ailish’s face flashes in my mind—eyes bright, jaw set, defiance and devastation braided together. It’s a wonder I ever thought I could keep her at arm’s length.
“Declan?” Conor’s voice follows me, heavy boots clicking against the floor. I don’t turn. “You need to calm down,” he says. “You’re pacing like you’re waiting on a bomb to go off.”
“Maybe I am.”
He blows out a breath. “You’re not doing her any favors thinking like this.”
I finally turn, the muscles in my jaw aching. “She called me a coward.”
“Because she wants you to pick her.”
“That’s not what she said.”
“That’s what she meant.” Conor folds his arms. “If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t be angry.”
I stare at him, feeling something in my chest twist sharply. “She pulled away. She said she didn’t need this. She doesn’t want me.”
Conor snorts. “Declan, you’re the dumbest smart man I’ve ever met. She pulled away from something. You don’t get that look off a conversation.”
I don’t answer him. That’s answer enough, and we both know it.
It should help. It doesn’t. I feel raw. Frayed. Like someone peeled away every protective layer and left nothing but nerve endings behind.
The boys drift back toward the bar when I say I want another drink.
I don’t join them. I lean against the wall near the rear exit, swallowing the burn of the whiskey and the burn of her words.
The room keeps spinning around me—music, laughter, cheers—but none of it registers through the static in my skull.
I think about the hallways she walks. The men stationed near her office. The way she tries to hide her exhaustion under sharp words. The way she keeps glancing at her phone like she’s waiting for something she’ll never admit she wants.
The way she pushed me away today because she doesn’t trust what she feels. The way I almost told her everything.
I finish another drink. Then another. Each one does nothing but sharpen the ache instead of dulling it.
Hours blur together. The speakeasy shifts from lively to raucous as the crowd grows wilder with drink.
The Italians start placing bets on stupid shit—who can throw a playing card the farthest, who can chug a pint fastest, who can charm the prettiest girl at the bar.
The music swells, then stutters, then swells again.
Someone starts dancing on a table. Someone else gets dragged into the hallway for starting a fight.
And through it all, I drink because it’s easier than thinking about what I should be doing. Who I should be with.
I glance toward the stairs leading up to the pub. If I left now, I could be at the compound in twenty minutes. Thirty, if I drove slow. Twenty-five, if I sped through the empty streets.
I imagine her still awake, poring over logistics, rubbing at the tension in her neck the way she does when she’s been staring at numbers too long. I imagine knocking on her door. I imagine her glaring at me first, then softening, then telling me to go away, then not wanting me to.
I imagine walking toward her and her not walking away.
A hand claps my shoulder, startling me out of the spiral. Rory grins too broadly. “Come on, man. We’re doing shots to celebrate profits.”
“Not interested.”
Conor joins him. “You’re drunk enough anyway.”
“I’m fine.”
They share a look. I hate when they share a look.
“Come upstairs,” Conor says. “Get some air. You look like you’re either about to break something or confess something.”
“Neither,” I mutter, though he’s not wrong about the first. But instead of going upstairs, I take another drink. And another. And another.
The night bleeds into a fog—voices, flashes of laughter, the clink of glasses, the hum of the music low in my bones. I don’t know how much time passes before Conor reappears at my side, expression tight.
“You need to go home,” he says.
I swallow another mouthful of whiskey. “Not home.”
He sighs. “Fine. Wherever. Just… stop sitting in corners looking like you want to kill the next man who mentions her name.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he says firmly. “And I get it. I do. But this? This is you spiraling.”
Rory appears behind him, using that same gentle-but-annoyed tone. “Come on. Let’s walk you out before you punch an Italian. You know how dramatic they get.”
I shove off the wall. The room sways, but I steady it with a hand. “I’m leaving,” I mumble. “Happy?”
Conor’s expression softens. “I just don’t want to see you burn everything down because of a woman you actually care about.”
The words hit harder than any punch. I shove past him, heading toward the stairs.
The music fades behind me, the sound of boots against wood echoing in my skull.
The corridor upstairs is quiet, empty except for a bartender sweeping broken glass into a dustpan.
The pub beyond is calmer now, the crowd thinning as midnight creeps closer.
Outside, the night air is cold enough to bite, sobering me in sharp bursts. I drag in a deep breath, but it doesn’t clear the heaviness in my chest.
Ailish’s voice rings again in my mind. The words twist like a knife, but beneath the sting there’s something else. Something like resolve.
She’s right.
She’s wrong.
She’s driving me mad.
She’s the only thing lately that feels real.
I climb into my car, gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles pale in the streetlight.
I should go home and sleep it off. Wait for the morning. Instead, I start the engine and pull into traffic with only one thought burning through the whiskey haze like a beacon:
I can’t keep doing this. I need to choose a side in this war—and she deserves to know which side I’m on.
Where that choice leads… I’m not sober enough to know. But I know exactly who I’ll be thinking about until the sun rises.