Chapter 34
Something was off with Cillian. It was more than his regular mood swings, when his desire to do anything at all waned to lifelessness the longer he stayed still.
Those days, I gently coaxed him out of his shell with tender care until he begrudgingly forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and trudged off to his office for a bit of work or took me out to fulfill an item on my list. That usually helped pull him out of his funk. Not this time, apparently.
At his first avoidance of a kiss, an edgy nervousness settled over me. The longer we spent the day together, the worse that feeling niggled at me. There were no affectionate, lingering touches, no conversation other than small talk.
Whenever I looked his way, he turned away from me.
When I suggested an Irish bakery for breakfast after he shared weeks ago that scones were his favorite pastries, he reacted with as much enthusiasm as he would to a spam caller.
When we boarded a helicopter, he sat as far away as possible and responded with clipped answers to any questions about the scenery and our destination.
I tried to convince myself his silence was an attempt to help preserve my voice and avoid irritating my throat.
Yet the more I tried to catch his attention, joke, or beguile him with my brand of charm, the more his jaw clenched and his cheeks twitched with strain.
Where were last night’s confessions? The sweet kisses?
The fuck-me looks? The care that made me feel precious?
He was pulling away, and it made no sense, definitely not after promising a mind-blowing romantic date.
If that wasn’t enough, the mix of evasive and somber looks our tagalong guards, Paulie and Devin, dealt out as they sat facing us in the helicopter made my shoulders prickle with pins and needles.
Half an hour in the air, I finally snapped.
“Are you ever going to talk to me?” I burst out through the headset over the muffled whoops of the helicopter blades. “Or explain to me why you got a personality transplant?”
“We’re not doing this now.”
“No, we should, because so far your idea of romantic needs improvement. Nothing about any of this screams love or passion.”
“Not. Now,” he bit out between his teeth, tapping an earcup of his headset. “We have company.”
The pilot on the intercom. Right.
My teeth ground, but I gave in and thumped back against the headrest. Our relationship drama did not need an extra spectator. Paulie and Devin were already too much.
We flew over orange wooded areas, cut off by the coast and scattered between towns, roads, and agricultural fields.
Then the ocean bays disappeared from view to the east and sheared through the land from the south like beastly talons, carving a range of wide rivers.
The helicopter chased a coastline with pocket beaches and rocky headlands that led inland to salt marshes and grasslands or coastal cities.
South, beyond the body of water, a sprawling city sparkled on the horizon under the beaming sun, as far as the eye could see, in what I recognized as Long Island.
The view was quite different from what I was used to along the French Mediterranean—thousands of homes and apartments colonizing the entirety of the crystal-blue shores against the hills leading to inland France.
It should have been mesmerizing and stolen my focus, but every time my gaze sought out Cillian, I found him still as a statue in the seat beside me, completely despondent in the way he studied the world below. The panoramic landscape became the last thing on my mind.
After his declaration of love last night, this was sending mixed signals.
Unless he changed his mind. Unless his love was nothing but a fleeting feeling he realized wasn’t that deep now that bruises marred my neck and reduced my allure.
My hand reached up to my throat, to the knotted silk square scarf and the discolored aching skin it hid, but Cillian gripped it.
He gave it a little squeeze and tugged it into his lap, clasping his own tight around mine.
“Don’t.”
That one word, muffled and compressed by our noise-cancelling headsets, offered more reassurance than I thought I needed. I took my first deep inhale since this feeling of wrongness hit this morning. Worry colored his face, and I leaned my head against his shoulder, careful to mind the headset.
“We can still turn back,” he said, his voice still too dead for my liking.
“Will it change whatever is wrong?”
Apparently, that was the wrong question to ask, because whatever concern I spied froze off him and chilled the entire cabin. My hand remained held in his, but the comfort it offered was as chilly as his demeanor.
“Is it this?” I gestured to my neck with my free hand. “Is this why you can’t stand to look at me today?”
The way he tracked the movement, then purposefully glared at me with the driest look known to man that clearly said, “You’re not that dense,” shut down my sudden lapse of insecurity. I wanted to slap myself. I should have known better.
After living with him for over a month, the veil of modesty had long ago been pried away.
He’d seen me at my lowest, sick as a dog with snot trickling down my nose.
He’d heard me at my worst, where even behind a closed bathroom door, certain sounds still made themselves known.
We woke up together, me bare-faced, hair a ball of tangles, groggy-eyed, and yawning, yet he told me several times I was most beautiful in those moments: relaxed and carefree.
He was probably the first person, other than Maeve, who put a stronger value on my presence than my appearance.
“Is it work?”
He gave me nothing but a roll of the eyes, then stared out the windshield. Not that, then.
“Is it Brody?”
His jaw ticced, but he gave no other hint of discomfort. Still, it had to bother him that the two of us were at odds, given how close the three brothers were.
“Don’t worry, I always give as good as I get. Next time, he won’t catch me by surprise, and I’ll return the favor. We’ll be even and move on from this.”
“He won’t touch you again. Ever.”
“Oh, I know. I won’t let him.” He gave me little more than a robotic bob of his head in response, and it toyed with my insecurities. “It’ll become an annal in our history together we’ll avoid telling our future kids about their uncle.”
He showed no reaction to the surprise mention of kids. Not a jolt of apprehension, nor a hint of excitement. The lack of both worried me more than if he had outright rejected the idea.
“You have to give me something. Is it us?”
His shoulders squared with a heavy inhale, chest swelling. Bingo.
To anyone else, he simply adjusted himself in his seat, but I knew better. Cillian O’Leary was preparing himself for battle. He automatically widened his stance with his brothers whenever they argued with him, same as he did before meetings and business dinners with politicians and mob associates.
“How is it us? I don’t understand.” We’d been in a good spot last night, a great spot, until Brody ruined it. “Something happened. Stop keeping it in and tell me.”
“Not. Now.” His voice rumbled dangerously low through the headset, and for the first time in what felt like hours, he met my gaze, but there was nothing loving about it.
It seared me to the core, but I kept eye contact, unwilling to be the first to break when he’d given me nothing to go on. Problem was, when his focus shifted back to the window, any satisfaction at a victory faded away as quickly as it had come.
The desperation for answers gnawed at me, but I held my tongue and bit it bloody to stop myself from airing any more of our dirty laundry before we got a moment of privacy. I didn’t know when, or even if, that would happen.
After more than an extra hour of tense silence, we landed at a small airstrip in the middle of a grassy field surrounded by woodlands on two sides. He shouldered a bag, grabbed my hand, and led us out of the plane, over to a hangar-style building as though I had no choice in the matter.
“Ready to talk now?” I seethed.
“Have you skydived before?” He tugged me along, the brass of his tone cutting and dismissive.
I grimaced. Was that what we were here for? “You know I have.”
“No, I don’t.”
“I told you I have.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s true, does it?”
I balked and yanked him to a stop.
“What does that mean?” I recoiled at the veracity of his glower. My palms clammed up, and I rubbed the moisture away. “Where is this coming from?”
He shut his eyes. His body reeked of tension, from the strain in the tendons of his hands as he resisted curling them into fists to the muscle spasms along his jaw, which looked tight enough to crack skulls.
“Talk to me.”
“Later. We’ll be late. Hurry up.”
He broke the connection between us with the swipe of his hand, like he hadn’t called me a liar in so many words. He strode forward into the small airplane hangar that had been transformed into a business space, with sofas and chairs on one side and an assembly of gear on the other.
“Are you serious?” I sprinted after him, ready to tackle him to the ground if necessary, only to stop short as three new people came up to meet us.
“Cillian, great seeing you again, and congrats on your certification.” A guy in his late twenties shook Cillian’s hand, a million-watt smile on his face. The other two stood behind him. “And you must be Ms. Marine. A pleasure. Welcome to New Jersey.”
I eyed Cillian, surprised we’d traveled over so many state lines.
“I’m Kevin. I’ll be accompanying you today, double-checking that everything is a go before your jump. You’ll be tandem skydiving with Mr. O’Leary here.”
“No,” Cillian said flatly. “Change of plans.”
I blinked up at him, struck by the coldness in his tone, and rubbed up and down my arm. My gaze wandered over the small group. They shuffled awkwardly in place, but none vibrated in fear. Whatever was going on with Cillian, it had to do with only us, just like I thought. But why?
The man chuckled uncomfortably and clapped his hands. “Right, well then, Ms. Marine, no worries. I’ll be your tandem instructor.”
I forced a smile and greeted him, the pilot, and the videographer. From a quick visual scan of the place, it looked like we were the only clients at the moment.
Any hope I had of a quick resolution to whatever caused this tension between Cillian and me died a slow death between the paperwork and the lengthy safety briefing, each moment filmed and most of it with Cillian’s attention anywhere but on me.
“Okay, let’s suit you guys up.” The instructor clapped. “Follow Molly over by the far wall for everything from jumpsuits to harnesses. If you guys want to change into something warmer first, the bathrooms and locker rooms are through the first door on the right. See you out there.”
Cillian dropped his duffel bag to the ground and rifled through it.
“Here. Catch.” He tossed me a set of thermal pants, shirt, and socks along with a neck gaiter and a pair of gloves. “Packed these for you. Don’t want you getting sick.”
My lips twitched, and I took the olive branch with both hands. I’d dealt with enough moody, powerful men to know that fighting fire with fire never worked, but I was quickly learning that avoiding conflict with a stubborn, hardheaded significant other was easier said than done.
“I didn’t realize you jumped enough to get accredited as a tandem instructor.”
“That’s because I didn’t tell you.”
He kicked off his shoes as harshly as he spoke. Then he fetched them back and rammed them against the bottom of a locker.
With a deep breath, I tried again, putting in the effort to dazzle him with sweetness, even though it left me feeling queasy. “It’s impressive. That’s a lot of years of jumps.”
“Thirteen years. Eleven hundred twenty-two skydives so far.”
He spat the words out with the force of a thermite reaction, an aggressive burn that destroyed everything in its path until it died out. I swallowed hard.
“We can work through this, whatever the issue. You just have to tell me what it is.”
He scoffed. “Guess, bhean chéile.”