33. Declan
Declan
Morning comes slowly, like it’s afraid to disturb the balance Ailish and I carved out of the night.
Light leaks through the blinds in thin silver stripes, cutting across the floorboards and the low table where two empty mugs from yesterday’s truce sit like evidence.
I’m awake before she is. I’ve been awake for a while, actually—lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, replaying everything she said to me, everything I let myself say back.
I keep thinking she’ll wake up and decide it was all a mistake—letting me stay, letting me touch her, letting me see the part of her that’s terrified and strong in the same breath.
But when I push myself up and stretch the stiffness out of my shoulders, I hear her shift in the bedroom.
Not startled. Not tense. Just turning over.
It does something to me, the quiet trust of that sound.
I wash my face in the kitchen sink, then towel off with the edge of my shirt.
I’m halfway through making coffee when she steps out into the doorway—hair messy from sleep, wrapped in one of my spare shirts she must’ve pulled from the basket near the closet.
It drowns her a little, the hem brushing against her thighs, and my heartbeat kicks up like it’s trying to escape.
She blinks at me, then down at the shirt, then back at me. “Morning.”
Her voice is soft, still scratched with dreams. I’ve heard her command men twice her size. I’ve heard her snap an order so sharp it could slice bone. But this—this tired honesty—is something else entirely.
“Morning,” I answer, keeping my tone steady, controlled. If I’m too gentle, she’ll tense. If I’m too hard, she’ll retreat.
Her eyes drift to the coffee pot. “You want some?” I ask, lifting the mug.
She hesitates, then nods. “Decaf.”
I raise a brow. “Right. I’ve got some.” I switch out the pods and let the machine hum. She sinks into the chair at the small table like her bones are made of warm sand, soft and loose for once.
While the machine brews, she watches me. Really watches me. She studies me the way a person studies a map—trying to learn the terrain so she can stop getting lost in it.
“You look tired,” she says quietly.
“I am.” I shrug. “Not in a bad way.”
A faint smile touches her lips. She wraps her hands around the mug when I set it down in front of her, then lifts her chin, gathering her courage. I recognize the shift. She’s ready to talk—really talk.
I sit across from her. I don’t try to touch her. I don’t reach for her hand. I just give her space for the words she’s been carrying.
“Declan,” she begins, voice steadying, “you deserve to know what actually happened. With Liam. With me.”
My jaw tenses, but I say nothing. She deserves my silence more than my reactions.
She takes a slow breath. “When Liam came back… when all of that was happening… I didn’t choose him over you. I need you to understand that. I never loved him. I never wanted him.”
My throat tightens. The simplest truths can be the hardest to absorb.
“But,” she continues, “he was doing what you weren’t willing to do.
And I don’t say that to hurt you. It’s just the truth.
” She sets her mug down. “You were angry. You were reckless. You wouldn’t listen to anyone.
You pushed everyone away, and Liam—he needed someone strategic beside him, someone willing to work with the Italians, someone who could be diplomatic when the rest of you were too proud. ”
I stare at her hands. They’re trembling slightly, but not from fear. From relief. From finally saying the thing she’s carried for months.
“So I stepped in,” she says. “I worked with Liam because it was the only way to keep the Irish from collapsing. And yes, that meant I had to keep things from you. It meant I had to act like I was on his side more than yours.”
I exhale slowly. “And it meant lying.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “But not because I wanted to betray you. Because I wanted to keep the entire house from burning down.”
I look up at her. Her eyes are wet but fierce. She’s not begging. She’s not apologizing. She’s telling the truth the way she does everything—with precision, with intent, with her spine straight.
For a moment, I can’t speak. Pride has a way of rotting the parts of a man that should stay soft. I’ve let it calcify too much.
“I made assumptions,” I finally say. My voice is rough, not from anger but from the pain of honesty. “About you. About Liam. About what the two of you were doing behind closed doors.”
She flinches. “I know.”
“I thought…” I clear my throat. “I thought you’d chosen him. And that made me mean. Careless. Cruel.”
She blinks hard. One tear escapes down her cheek, but she doesn’t wipe it away. She lets me see it. “Declan… you were hurt. I understand that logically. But emotionally it—” She swallows. “It broke something in me.”
“I know,” I whisper. “And I’m sorry.”
Her eyes widen—not because of the words, but because she believes I mean them.
“I’m sorry for all of it,” I continue. “For the assumptions, for the accusations, for losing my head when I should’ve been holding onto you. You were never the enemy. I made you into one because it was easier than admitting I’d failed.”
She exhales shakily. Not a sob—just a release.
I don’t reach across the table. I don’t ask for forgiveness. I just let the moment sit between us, warm and heavy.
After a long silence, she whispers, “Thank you.” That’s when I know we might survive this. Even if we don’t know how yet.
She takes a slow sip of her decaf and glances out the window, like she needs a moment to steady herself, and I let her have it.
The morning light crawls across her skin, catching in the strands of her hair, softening her cheeks in a way that makes her look almost untouched by the world.
It’s a lie. She’s been hardened and sharpened by every battle we’ve dragged her through… and somehow she’s still standing.
She pushes her mug away and folds her arms on the table, leaning forward slightly. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Why now?” She looks directly at me. “Why are you finally listening without blowing up? Why admit things you’ve refused to admit for months? Why are you suddenly willing to talk to me like I’m not the enemy?”
Her words aren’t accusatory. They’re searching. And she deserves the truth.
I inhale slowly, trying to find the right place to start.
“Because I was wrong,” I say. “And because watching you carry my child… watching you do it alone… made me realize I’d become the exact kind of man I swore I’d never be.
” Her eyes soften, and I shake my head. “Don’t look at me like that.
I’m not trying to manipulate you. I’m telling you the only honest explanation I have. ”
“And what’s that?” she whispers.
“That I was angry because I thought I’d already lost you. And I didn’t know how to lose you without destroying everything around me.”
“Declan,” she says quietly, “I never wanted to be lost to you.”
The table between us suddenly feels both too small and too vast. “Come with me,” I say after a long moment.
She blinks. “Where?”
“To dinner. Not now. Tonight. Somewhere quiet.”
Her brow furrows. “Declan, the Italians—”
“I don’t care about them.” I lean back, exhaling. “We’ve spent months shouting at each other, hating each other, circling each other like wounded animals. We’re finally talking like humans. I want more time like this. I need it.”
She studies me for an impossibly long moment before she says softly, “Okay.”
The word hits like a warm gust of air, unexpected and grounding.
I stand, bring our mugs to the sink, and she rises too.
For a moment we stand inches apart, close enough that I feel her breath.
Close enough to remember every bad decision we’ve ever made together and every good one we never let ourselves have.
She breaks the moment first, stepping back, brushing her hair behind her ear. “We should both shower and get ready for the day,” she says, but there’s something new in her voice. Lightness. Anticipation.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “We should.”
She disappears into the bathroom, and the sound of the shower starts a moment later. I stand in the kitchen, hands braced on the counter, letting the steam and her closeness settle into the cracks inside me.
We’re still at war, still drowning in danger, still carrying too much history between us. But for the first time, I think we might have a chance.
The day is the longest one I've had in months, and none of it is difficult.
I leave her at ten and don't get where I'm going until eleven, because I take the long route and catch myself doing it.
Two hours at the club with the Italians' accountant, who wants the door counts broken out by night and gets them.
A walkthrough of the new cameras with Conor, who looks at my face once, says nothing, and then can't help himself.
"You slept," he says. I tell him to check the alley angles.
Liam's men have the manifests reissued under a new code by two. Ryan calls at three with nothing on the trace and promises something by tomorrow, which is what he said yesterday. I don't chew him out for it, and he notices that too.
At four I stop in a shop I have walked past two hundred times and buy nothing, because everything in it is the kind of thing you buy a woman when you want her to know you spent money, and that isn't what I want her to know.
By evening, the city feels like it’s holding its breath.
Not storm-still, not quiet—just waiting.
Ailish meets me at the foot of the townhouse stairs wearing a simple charcoal dress that fits her gently, leaving space for her growing belly.
It’s understated but elegant, the kind of thing she would’ve worn long before any of this chaos.
Seeing her in it pulls something low in my stomach, steady and warm.
“You look…” I stop myself before I say the wrong thing. She isn’t looking for flattery. She’s looking for honesty. “You look like yourself.”