32. Ailish
Ailish
I wake with the kind of start that feels as though someone pulled a string in the center of my chest. My eyes open on a rush of half-remembered dreams, all blurred edges and frantic shadows.
For a second, I don’t know where I am. The safehouse is too quiet, too still, and the empty stretch of blanket beside me hits like a cold shock as I remember asking Declan to stay.
Remember catching him on the couch and covering him with a blanket. And then the day together. Slow and calm. And he stayed again. Was still here after my appointment.
But a familiar worry and emptiness hits me. Is he gone? Of course he’s gone.
It shouldn’t hurt. I shouldn’t feel that sinking weight beneath my ribs, the kind that tugs everything else down with it.
Yesterday was… something undefined. A truce.
A pause in the war between us. A moment.
But Declan has always been an unpredictable tide—rushing in, retreating without warning, leaving everything warped in his wake.
I press my palms to my eyes, steadying my breath. I promised myself I wouldn’t rely on him for anything emotional. He has enough to carry without adding my panic or loneliness to the pile. And I have enough to carry—more than he knows.
Still… Still it would’ve been nice if he’d stayed.
I swing my feet over the side of the bed slowly, my posture shifting around the weight of my stomach.
Then I hear it. A low clink. A faint scrape. A soft exhale.
My pulse jerks. There’s someone in the apartment.
I rise carefully, quietly, staying close to the wall as I pad toward the living area. The hallway is dim, filled with soft morning light angling through the blinds. As I reach the end of it, I pause—brace—and lean just enough to see around the corner.
And I freeze.
Declan stands at the stove, shirtless, steam curling around his shoulders like smoke.
His hair is a tousled mess. His back is broad, scarred, familiar in ways I try not to admit.
He’s barefoot, moving with a slow patience I’ve never seen in him—never associated with him.
One hand balances a mug, the other stirs something in a pot.
He’s here. He stayed.
A rush of warmth gathers behind my sternum, fragile, tentative, as if it might shatter if I breathe too hard.
He looks… calm. Not the restless, vibrating tension that usually coils under his skin.
Not the edge-of-a-fight posture he wears around everyone.
This is a version of him I’ve only glimpsed in fragments—fleeting, accidental, usually when he thought no one was watching.
He senses me before I speak. Of course he does. His shoulders loosen on a long breath, and he turns his head just enough to glance back at me.
“You’re up,” he says. His voice is gentle in a way that makes my chest ache. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.” My voice comes out softer than intended. Somewhere between startled and relieved. “I… assumed you left.”
There’s a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth, almost a smile but not quite. “Didn’t want to.”
That shouldn’t mean as much as it does. I step further into the room, leaning on the back of one of the chairs to steady myself. “You’re making coffee?” I ask, because it’s safer than everything else I could say.
“Trying to.” He turns off the stove and pours the dark liquid into a mug before sliding it across the counter toward me. “You take it with sugar now, right?”
He noticed. He remembers. “Yes,” I say quietly. “Thank you.”
He watches me wrap my hands around the warm ceramic before he moves. He comes to stand beside me—not too close, not touching, but near enough that the air feels different around him. Warmer. Charged. And yet calm, unbelievably calm.
“Sleep okay?” he asks.
“No.” I let out a breath, honest. “But it wasn’t terrible.”
His nod is small, thoughtful. He studies my face in that way he always has, like he’s reading a map. The intensity is still there, but it’s gentled for once, smoothed around the edges.
He doesn’t ask permission when he steps closer. He just does. Slowly, giving me every chance to pull away. Then he lowers himself to one knee in front of me.
My breath stutters. His hand lifts—hesitates—and then rests on my stomach. The heat of his palm burns through the fabric of my shirt, and something in me threatens to unravel entirely.
He doesn’t speak. He just presses a kiss, soft and steady, to the small swell of my belly as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
My throat tightens so quickly I almost choke on it. “Declan…” I whisper.
He keeps his forehead against me for a moment longer, breathing out a long, quiet exhale that shakes just barely at the end. When he looks up, his eyes are unguarded. Raw. Almost vulnerable.
I have never seen him like this. And I don’t know what to do with the sight.
So I don’t do anything. I let the moment be what it is. A warm, impossible fragment of peace in a life that doesn’t allow much of it.
He rises slowly. Not brushing off his jeans or clearing his throat or acting like he didn’t just kneel in front of me. He stands there, close enough that the heat of his chest ghosts my skin. “Do you want breakfast?” he asks, voice still low, warm in a way I’m not used to. “I can make something.”
“You cook now?” I ask lightly.
He huffs a small laugh.
I take a sip of the coffee—it’s perfect—and something in the room shifts as if we both know this is the first morning in months that hasn’t ended in fighting or fear. “Declan,” I start, unsure where the sentence is going. “This is… different.”
His jaw flexes, but he doesn’t look away. “Different good or different bad?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say honestly. “But it feels honest.”
He nods, slowly, as if absorbing that. As if weighing it against everything we’ve been. “We can take the day,” he says. “You and me. No fights. No planning. Just… time.”
Time. As if that’s something either of us has been allowed. And yet the offer pulls something loose and tender inside me.
“I’d like that,” I say.
His shoulders ease—and the relief there is deeper than I expected. He reaches out, brushes his knuckles down my arm, barely touching, but the contact leaves a trail of warmth in its wake.
“Good,” he murmurs. “Then let’s start over. Just for today.”
I nod. Just us, and the quiet between us that, for once, doesn’t hurt.
Declan doesn’t rush me. That’s the first thing I notice as we begin moving through the morning.
He keeps a careful, steady pace beside me, as though he’s learning the rhythm of this new version of my body—one that tires faster, one that moves differently, one that he’s suddenly, profoundly aware of.
He cooks, if it can be called that—eggs, toast, fruit. Nothing fancy, but he does it with a concentrated seriousness that makes me want to smile and cry at the same time. He plates everything awkwardly and sets it in front of me like an offering.
“Don’t laugh,” he warns.
“I wouldn’t,” I say, though a small smile fights its way out anyway.
He catches it and shakes his head, but there’s no irritation in him. No sharpness. Just that calm, grounding gravity that feels new and impossibly old all at once.
We eat in a quiet that feels strangely full, a warmth simmering beneath the surface.
I keep waiting for the tension to snap, for one of us to say something wrong, but it doesn’t happen.
We talk lightly about nothing—how claustrophobic the safehouse feels, how Ronan’s training sessions are a little too intense, how the coffee here is better than the compound’s.
Normal things. Human things. Things that have nothing to do with blood or politics or danger.
After breakfast, he washes the dishes while I sit on the counter, legs dangling, hand instinctively resting on my stomach.
Sunlight filters in through the blinds, striping Declan’s bare shoulders with gold.
Every movement he makes feels gentler than his reputation should allow, like the morning smoothed him down into something more fragile.
“Do you want to go out?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder. “Just a walk. Somewhere quiet.”
I blink, startled by how much I want that. “Is it safe?”
“No,” he says plainly. “But safer than usual. I checked the perimeter twice. And I’d be with you.”
I nod. “Okay.”
We leave through the back, slipping out into the small, fenced garden behind the safehouse.
It’s nothing special—patchy grass, an old picnic table, half-dead flowers—but the morning air is crisp, and the quiet settles into my lungs like medicine.
Declan walks beside me without crowding me, but without drifting too far either.
We keep walking, slow and steady. Every so often he glances at my stomach as if checking it’s still there, still real. As if the reality of it hasn’t fully sunk in for him yet. I don’t blame him. I can hardly believe it myself. “When?” he asks hesitantly.
I wonder how long he’s been holding that question back. “The last week of June.”
He exhales, long and quiet. “June,” he repeats, like he’s putting it somewhere he won’t lose it.
He stops walking then, turning to face me. The wind ruffles his hair, and for once he doesn’t smooth it back. His eyes are dark and searching, fixed entirely on me.
“I’m trying,” he says. “I know I wasn’t before. I didn’t… know how to handle any of it. You. The baby. The past.” His jaw shifts, working through the weight of it. “But I’m trying now.”
I feel the words like warm pressure behind my sternum. “I can see that,” I say softly.
He steps closer—slow, deliberate. His hand lifts as if to touch my cheek, but he hesitates. The pause is so unlike him that it tugs something deep and old inside me.
“You can,” he murmurs, “stop me if you want.”
I don’t.
His fingers graze my cheekbone, feather-light.
The touch is soft enough that it shouldn’t make my breath catch, but it does.
Because it’s him. Because it’s Declan. Because everything between us has always been too sharp or too sudden or too dangerous, and now there’s this—this impossibly delicate moment that feels like the first note of a song we’ve never let ourselves hear.
“Ailish,” he says quietly. “I keep thinking about what you said before. About wanting respect.”
My throat tightens. “Declan—”
“No,” he interrupts gently. “Let me say this.”
He drops his hand, curling it into his fist at his side as if grounding himself. “I don’t know what I’m capable of when it comes to being a partner. Or a father. Or… anything real.” His voice is low but steady. “I’ve spent my whole life fighting. Not learning how to stay. Or talk. Or trust.”
The honesty hits like a slow, deep pulse under my skin.
“But I don’t want to fail you,” he continues. “Or the baby. I don’t want to keep hurting you. So if respect is what you need from me, you have it. You’ve always deserved it.”
“I’m asking for honesty,” I say. “For partnership. For… something that isn’t war.”
He nods slowly, the muscles in his jaw tightening like he’s fighting some emotion back. “I can try that,” he says. “If you’ll let me.”
The phrase if you’ll let me does something to me—something sudden and tender and frightening. It feels like being handed a fragile gift neither of us knows how to hold. I take a breath. “You asked about the baby… do you want to see a picture? I had an ultrasound again. It’s bigger now.”
Something in him softens so sharply it’s almost painful to witness. “Yes.”
I pull out my wallet, sliding a small ultrasound photo from the pocket. It’s slightly bent, worn from how many times I’ve held it. I place it in his hand carefully.
He stares at it like he’s never seen anything more precious. Like it might burn him. Like it might save him.
“She’s small,” he murmurs.
“She,” I echo, smiling faintly. “That’s what I’ve been thinking. Ut I don’t want to know. I want everyone surprised.”
His thumb brushes the image with impossible care. “She looks… strong.”
I laugh, quiet and shaky. “She looks like a blob, Declan.”
“Yeah,” he says softly. “But she’s our blob.”
He hands the photo back, fingers lingering on mine just long enough to feel like a question. I answer it. “Declan,” I murmur, stepping closer, “come inside.”
Inside the safehouse, the air is dim and warm. I close the door behind us slowly. Declan stands in the center of the room, looking at me with a mixture of hunger and hesitation.
I reach for him.
He meets me halfway.
When his mouth finds mine, the world tilts—gentle and overwhelming and fiercely familiar. Relief breaks through me like a wave. His hands slide to my waist, careful, reverent, and I press my forehead to his.
For today—We let ourselves be a family. And maybe that’s what we’ll eventually be.