Chapter 25 #2
A blur of strobe lights flashed across my phone screen.
Packed bodies swerved and bounced in time with the beat.
Then there she was, a shadowed figure of sensuality caught between one man at her back and another at her side.
She swayed, her hips gyrating from side to side.
She rolled her wrists above her head and tilted it back.
It put on display the long expanse of her neck and the V of her sleeveless jumpsuit, which somehow tantalized the senses despite the minimal display of skin.
The man behind her placed his hands on her hips, and a red haze filtered over my vision. A crack tolled through my jaw.
“Paulie, have Big Charlie teach that one a lesson.”
She slapped at the stranger’s hands and moved out of reach. Didn’t matter. He’d touched what didn’t belong to him.
“How serious a lesson we talkin’ ’bout?”
“Focus on the hands and a facelift.”
The other asshole tried to make her twirl. She evaded him. Lucky him, he got to keep mobility. Both bastards then trailed after her as she shuffled off the dance floor. Irritation curled her pouty lips and knitted her brow. Aye, sweetheart, that’s right. Only I got her smirks and bedroom eyes.
“Put her on the line.”
Liam whistled next to me, tossing me side looks. “You sure you should be doing that?”
“Stop questioning me.”
“Stop acting out of character.”
Twenty seconds later, Paulie tapped her shoulder, camera framing her portrait, and she jerked around, fist raised, her yelling smothered by the thrashing music.
“I told you I’m not interested. Get it—Oh, sorry.” Her hand lowered, confusion blinking across her face, and her eyes narrowed. “Wait, I know you.” She snapped her fingers. “Skipper, one of Cillian’s people, yes? What are you doing here?”
How the hell did she recognize Paulie so easily? He’d been nicknamed Skipper because of how often he chauffeured me.
“He wants to talk to you,” his muffled voice droned.
“Who?”
A bang brightened the sky in a flash in the distant rearview, there and gone. Liam whooped and hooted, and I rolled my eyes. I barely glanced at the mushroom of smoke puffing into the sky behind us and deflating under the weight of raindrops. Alice’s face took all of my focus.
“Cillian?”
Shadows swept over the curves and angles of her features with varying flashing colors.
Her confusion melted into a fiery anger that lit up her eyes.
Her mouth twisted. Her face bounced in and out of the screen as she stomped through the club, through a squeaky door, and down a few stairs, her heels clanking.
“What is this?” she hissed, still walking.
She slapped another door open. Wind whistled through the line, masking any leftover club music.
“I needed to make sure you were safe during the impromptu trip you never mentioned. Care to fecking explain why you’re there?”
“You had me followed?”
“Hitting the nail hard on the head, sweetheart. Was it Paulie who gave it away?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
“Why’d you go to a club, Alice?”
“I don’t see how that is any of your business.”
“Try picking up a guy and see if it’s not my business. He touches you, he’s dead.”
“You think that’s what I want?”
“You tell me. With two men pressed up against you only days after you left my bed, the wheels start turning. You follow them too? That your game?”
She tossed her head back and sneered a mocking cackle.
“You have some nerve. Might I remind you that you are the one who tried to cut me out of your life?”
“That’s not—”
“I don’t understand you. You block my number. You ignore my messages, but you have your men tag me to a different state. Yet you cannot be bothered to do it yourself. Make that make sense.”
“There are reasons—”
“I don’t care if there are reasons,” she yelled.
The breeze tossed her hair up, adding a blazing ferocity to her anger. She’d never been more beautiful than right then, her mask of control thrown over the railing.
“If you want me, Cillian, don’t hide me. Don’t push me away. But if you don’t want me to have space in your life, then let me go. Fully. Forever. Stop tying me to you if I’ll never mean anything to you. Why do you have to keep doing this?”
My forehead creased at the desperation in her voice and the moisture clinging to her long lashes.
“I deserve that respect from you. More than that, I demand it, and I’ll get it one way or another. Even if that means forgetting you and finding a man worth my time.”
“Alice,” I warned as the image on screen flipped to a black painted ceiling. “Alice! We’re not done here.”
“Tonight we are.”
The call clicked off. I tossed the phone against the dashboard, the sound buried beneath the harsh claps of heavy rain. It bounced back into my lap. I swept my hand down my face, then tugged at the bristles of my beard. The woman was so goddamn infuriating.
Liam sucked his teeth. “Now I see why you wanted me to drive. You have a way with women, you know that?”
I dropped my face into my hand and groaned. “I don’t want or need your commentary.”
“Too bad.” He muffled a chuckle. “Feels good to school you for once. You’re always too serious, too broody. Too bleeding perfect, even when you’re finding new ways to off yourself.”
“I’m not trying to off myself.”
“You sure about that? ’Cause I’m sure as hell not.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve seen more passion in you in the last three weeks than I have in the last five years.
” He switched the car fan to demister. The hot air whirred against the thin sheen of moisture clinging to the bottom third of the windshield.
“And now what I see is my brother self-sabotaging that. The moment someone gets close, you build a wall, and you’re doing it with her when all she’s doing is making you feel.
Always two steps back, a shield at the ready. ”
“Oh, feck off. It’s either that or send her straight into LK’s arms. I know which one I’d rather.”
He nodded. “True. But that’s no way to live. And face it, Killy. You stopped living a long time ago.”
I side-eyed him, not clear where this shitstorm of a conversation was headed.
“You think we don’t notice, Brody and me?
You’ve been pulling away more and more until you’ve become just a thrill-seeking shell, always out for your next high and unwilling to seek anything else.
The number of times I’ve caught you staring at nothing at all.
That blank, despondent look on your face, it scares the bejaysus out of me.
” He tapped his fingers along the steering wheel, then squeezed the wheel and adjusted his position in the driver’s seat.
“So, aye, if you’ve found someone who stirs something in you, I’m going to tell you to keep her close and never let her go. ”
“This coming from the forever playboy of the family.”
“This coming from someone who doesn’t want to turn into you but might be on the way there.”
That admission sucker-punched me in the gut and sucked anything I had to say right back down into my lungs.
For the first time in a long time, I looked at my baby brother, really looked at him.
His boyish looks had all but faded away, his face marked by sharp, heavy lines, his joyful mask cast off.
The truth stunned me. All the smiles and erratic behavior, all the jeers and larger-than-life disposition, it was just him clinging to how he thought he needed to be.
With it stripped away, he was other. Different.
Frail. What I saw reflected back at me was my own failure.
“Liam…” But I didn’t know what to say.
“You’re not the only one who’s hurting, Killy, and I’m tired.
I need you to fight. I need you to snap out of your shite and grab the world by the balls, because if you don’t, I feel like I’m going to lose you.
I can’t lose you. You hear me? I can’t. Anyone else but you and Brody.
Anyone else.” He wiped the corner of his eye against the shoulder farthest from me. “Nothing to see here.”