Chapter 19
Nineteen
She hadn’t expected him to follow her, but had hoped that he might. She gave him a soft smile and looped her arm through his, dragging him off the wall as she passed.
“Aren’t we going the wrong way?” He asked, as she led him away from the tables.
She just flashed him a smile, a corner of her lower lip curled between her teeth, as she started up the black treads of the floating staircase that led to the restaurant’s rooftop lounge. Ciaran’s fingers slid down her forearm and linked with hers as they climbed, him matching her step for step.
He pushed open the glass door at the top and was met with a cool breeze redolent with woodsmoke and green, growing things, a strange combination for being fifty stories up.
It blew back her hair and pressed her skirt to her legs as it rushed down the stairs.
Ciaran ushered her through ahead of him and followed close behind, the door swinging gently shut behind them.
Jal’s steps faltered as she took in the space before them.
There were pictures online, she’d found them when she’d researched the place, but those had been taken in the daytime, and still, they didn’t do it justice.
At night, the lounge was even more stunning.
It easily took up more than half of the roof and resembled the garden of some Mediterranean Hacienda.
The copper-colored ceramic tiles covering the floor formed paths between small clusters of sofas and tables, each surrounding a wood-burning chiminea that cast out light and heat to combat the evening chill, still palpable despite the glass walls that blocked the bulk of the wind.
Strands of small white lights twined with draping greenery overhead, winking in the breeze like the fireflies she used to chase as a child in Pennsylvania.
There was little shelter from unsettled weather, but, thankfully, the sky tonight was clear, or at least cloudless.
Even when the sun had fully set, it only got so dark in mid-town Manhattan with all the light pollution.
Here and there a few bright stars were visible above a skyline brilliant enough to take her breath away.
Even after living in New York for a decade, it never really got old.
“I believe that this is yours,” he said from her right. She looked down to find he held her clutch purse, left behind at the table when she’d fled in search of cold water.
Jal accepted it with a grateful smile. “How thoughtful,” she murmured and had to fight to keep her jaw from dropping when she noticed what looked like a flush of pink high on his cheekbones. Must be a trick of the light. Ciaran Gray didn’t blush.
Ciaran took a step closer and slid an arm around her.
She thought that he might draw her into the circle of his arms, but he only rested his hand on her lower back and exerted gentle pressure there to direct her across the roof to an empty seating area that faced east.
As they walked, the scalloped spire of the Chrysler Building came into view, glowing like burnished gold among a cluster of taller and far more modern buildings that cast a much harsher light.
They sat close together on a small, cushioned sofa set in the bubble of warmth created by a bronze-colored chiminea, the wood inside merrily crackling away. Though they barely touched, Jal could feel him along every inch of her skin.
“Is your hand all right?” Ciaran asked, his voice soft and a little rough. He gently unwrapped the towel and bent close to examine it in the dim lighting.
The redness had cleared some, though she knew the skin would be tender for a day or two. He ran his finger over the injury, his touch so feather-light she barely felt it, though he was close enough that his breath raised goosebumps on her arms.
Jal shrugged. “It’ll be fine.”
Ciaran nodded, and to her surprise, raised their joined hands so he could place a kiss to the middle of her palm.
He brought their hands down to rest on his thigh, his cradling hers from underneath, and settled back into the cushions.
He draped the other hand behind her shoulders, along the back of the sofa.
Jal found herself wanting to lean back so he had to touch her, needing that touch to ground her. But now that they were alone, her heart was racing and not in a good way, her mind spinning over what they had done, and what had to be going through his head.
Her chest was getting tight, too tight to get a good breath. She put a hand on her chest and curled around it.
Ciaran’s hand closed around her shoulder. “Whoa, steady on there, lass. What’s amiss?”
His melodic voice, smooth as the whisky his eyes reminded her of, was one thing she could hear. The strum of flamenco guitar was another. The distant honking of cars far below was a third.
Part of her wanted to dig in her purse for a pill that would help, but another part of her, one that had been dormant for a long time, recognized that it wasn’t his touch that had set her off.
In fact, the touch of his hand on her skin was like a tether, one she could use to pull her out of this downward spiral, if she only dared to take it.
She fought to draw in a deep breath, but it was choppy.
Try again, she ordered herself. In for five, hold for five, out for five. And again.
After she managed three breaths, she slowly raised her head and looked around, anywhere but at Ciaran. Not yet.
She took a deep breath. “Woodsmoke,” she murmured under her breath, putting names to the things she could smell. “Evergreen.”
“What else?”
Jal looked up at his face then, eyes wide.
He gave her a reassuring smile and nodded his head.
A trembling, tentative chuckle escaped her lips. “Your aftershave,” she replied. “Vanilla and cedar.”
He smiled. “And what can you feel?”
Her eyes locked with his. “The breeze,” she replied as it lifted a lock of hair from her cheek, gentle as a caress. Her heart ratcheted down a notch toward a normal rhythm. Inside, a hand grasped that tether between them and made the first pull.
“Go on.”
“These cushions are soft, but the fabric is surprisingly scratchy on my back.”
He chuckled, his thumb stroking once over the point of her bare shoulder. Another pull, another notch.
“And?”
“The warmth of your touch on my skin.”
His hand caressed slowly down her arm and back up, his eyes locked on hers. Down and up. The coiled spring in her chest released and her breathing finally eased. She continued counting her breaths, after the third, she realized that he was breathing with her, holding his breath when she did.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“That you were grounding?” He asked, and one corner of his lips lifted. “My youngest sister Nicola started getting panic attacks in secondary school. She used something similar. Three things you can see, three things you can touch, three things you can smell, right?”
Jal nodded.
“Let me go get you some water.”
His arm slid away from her shoulder, and he was halfway to the bar before she could tell him that she was fine. She braced her elbows on her knees and scrubbed her face with her hands, then linked her fingers under her chin.
She stared into the fire, studying the way the light flickered inside the chiminea, the flames dancing along the wood they slowly consumed.
She kept breathing, hoping it would keep away the memories that had started the panic attack in the first place, but they floated back anyway. The oh so good, but also the bad.
Your truth is your own. Wasn’t that what he’d murmured into her ear as she’d fallen asleep in his arms? Hadn't he also said that her truth was safe with him?
What he hadn't done was run. Just the opposite, he’d held her, and then put her to bed. And the first time that she’d reached out to him? He’d come.
Ciaran returned with a glass of water in each hand and held one out to her. “Here, this should help,” he said. “It always helped Nic.”
Jal drank half of it in a few long gulps and leaned back on the sofa, her eyes closed. “Tell me about her. Is she still in Scotland?”
“Aye, she is,” Ciaran replied. “She’s five years younger than me. Married, with seven-year-old twin boys. She’s a teacher at the local primary school.”
Jal opened her eyes and looked at him. “Twins?”
Ciaran nodded and patted his pockets for his phone and came up empty. “My phone is downstairs, but I have a picture of them as my background from when they were three. Back before they became the source of the gray hairs Nic likes to complain of.”
Jal chuckled. Five years younger would make Ciaran’s sister a year or two younger than Jal herself, but so far her black hair was gray-free. She sat up a little straighter. “Do you have any kids, then?”
Ciaran shook his head. “No,” he replied. “And I’ve seen enough of your apartment to know that you don’t either.”
Jal smiled and nodded and finished the water before leaning back, this time finding Ciaran’s arm there to rest her head on. She closed her eyes and just breathed in the fragrant air, dominated by Ciaran’s aftershave and a woodsy undertone that was just him.
After a while, she felt a feather-soft touch brushing the hair back from one temple. She opened her eyes to find he had turned as much as he could to face her while leaving his forearm under her head. He gave her a patient, soft smile that nearly broke her heart with its sweetness. “Better?”
Her lips twitched, forming what she hoped was a smile. She sat up and turned toward him. “A little,” she replied. “Listen, Ciaran—“
He started to speak at the same time. “Lass. I—“
They stopped speaking when their voices overlapped, both laughing. Jal’s cheeks heated but she forced herself to not look away from him and the amusement dancing in his eyes.
She chuckled. “You go.”
He shook his head. “No, you.”
She sighed again. “Okay,” she replied and took a deep breath before continuing. “I just wanted to say that I don’t regret what happened, though I do feel like I need to apologize for how it ended.” When she’d gotten lost inside her own head and done the unthinkable: mistaken Ciaran for Andy.
“What is there to apologize for?”
Jal looked around self-consciously, but there wasn’t anyone within earshot, especially with the gentle strains of a guitar playing from somewhere. At first, she thought there might be speakers hidden in the greenery, but her eyes fell on a small stage beside the rooftop bar.
A young couple were perched there on folding chairs.
The man, dressed in a white shirt and colorful vest, bent over a polished acoustic guitar as he tuned it.
Satisfied, he brushed a lock of straight black hair behind one ear and his fingers began to dance along the strings, plucking out a Flamenco melody that was stirring and soothing at the same time.
The woman provided the percussion by clapping her hands in time with the music.
Gentle at first, then steadily stronger as the music built and built.
The music swelled in her as it reached a pinnacle, furious as lovemaking, and then descended the other side until it drew to a soft conclusion.
Jal closed her eyes for a brief moment as the last note faded, then she opened them to find Ciaran studying her.
The expression on his face was curious, fascinated even. His lips were parted just slightly, though his mouth closed when he caught her looking his way.
She reached up and brushed away that lock of hair that always seemed to fall across his forehead.
A tremor went through him, palpable even from that glancing touch, but he didn’t otherwise move, just watched to see what she would do.
“Maybe I don’t need to apologize, but I want to. We did what we did, and then I—”
“If I pushed you, please tell me.”
“No, no, you didn’t push me to do anything I didn’t want to do.” She shook her head so hard in defiance that one of the combs started to come loose in her hair.
She reached up to fix it, but he gently brushed her hand aside and reseated it among her curls.
Releasing it, his thumb trailed along the shell of her ear and down her cheek.
She wrapped it up in both of her hands and held his hand in her lap.
She studied his callused fingers, the scars across his knuckles, souvenirs of his rough upbringing, and marveled at how his hand seemed to almost dwarf both of hers.
Jal considered her next words carefully, and when she spoke, her voice was quiet enough that Ciaran leaned closer. “It was me who did things that I shouldn’t have.”
His hand twitched in hers. “Jal, you don’t need to explain.”
She shook her head. “I do, but I don’t think I’m ready yet.“ She squared her shoulders and finally looked up at him. “There are many things about my past that I’m not quite ready to talk about. But what I will promise, is that when I am ready to share ‘my truth’ as you call it, I will.”
He curled his fingers, tangling them with whatever parts of her hands they touched.
“And I promise that when you do, I’ll be there.
” He leaned even closer until he was almost breathing his words onto her lips.
“Whatever you have to tell me, lass, it will not scare me away. And whatever you may need from me, you need only ask, and it is yours. If time is what you need, then that is what you shall have.”
Jal slid a hand free and cupped his cheek. His eyes remained open and watchful as her thumb stroked his cheekbone, the stubble from a day’s growth of beard rasped pleasantly against the skin of her palm. “Kiss me, then.”
His lips curled. “As you wish,” he replied and did just that.