12. Finnian O’Connell #2
“You don’t get it,” she mutters. “If I’m not perfect, things fall apart. The contract gets dropped. I don’t… I don’t have a backup plan, Cash.”
“You have me,” I say, the words slipping out before I can analyze them. “Even if you lose the contract, even if you put us in a ditch, I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”
She doesn’t move, but the shallow rhythm of her breathing slows down. She lets out a long, quiet sigh, her forehead resting lightly against the wooden paneling of the wall.
“Shut up, O’Connell,” she whispers. “Go to sleep.”
“Goodnight, Sharky.”
***
I’m awake before I’m even conscious.
It’s not loud, but it’s the most violent sound I’ve ever heard. It’s a ragged, desperate gasping, like someone is being strangled in their sleep.
I bolt upright, my heart jumping into my throat.
“Scottie?” I say, my voice thick with sleep. “Scottie, hey. Wake up.”
I reach out a hand, instinctively trying to hold her. The second my fingers touch her skin, she lets out a sound that I will never, ever forget. It’s a scream that isn’t a scream—a choked, guttural sob of pure terror.
She lunges away from me, hitting the headboard with a sickening crack and scrambling toward the corner of the bed. The crack of her skull against the wood is sharp enough that my stomach drops. She doesn’t even react to the pain—which is somehow worse.
She just folds in on herself like she’s trying to disappear into her own bones. She’s huddled in a ball, her knees pulled to her chest, her eyes wide and staring into the darkness.
“Scottie? Hey, I’ve got you—Scottie, wake up, it’s just a—”
“Don’t,” she hisses.
The sound is so raw it feels like it’s stripping the skin off my own chest.
“Don’t touch me. Get off. Get away from me.”
I freeze. My hands are up in the air, palms out, like I’m being held at gunpoint. My heart is hammering against my ribs so hard I’m actually dizzy.
“It’s Finn,” I say, my voice cracking. “It’s just Cash, Scottie-girl. You’re in Philadelphia. It’s just us. Nobody is touching you. Look at me.”
Her eyes are darting around the room, frantic and glassy. She’s clutching her own shoulders so hard her nails are probably drawing blood.
Her lips are moving around words that never make it out. A frantic shake of her head. No. No. No.
One hand claws at the collar of her shirt, fingers fumbling against the fabric like she can’t get enough air.
Slowly, painfully, the fog in her eyes begins to clear.
She blinks, and for a second, she looks right at me. And the shame I see in them—the absolute, crushing humiliation—hurts worse than a hundred-mile-an-hour puck to the throat.
“I’m…”
She swallows.
“I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t look at me anymore. She pulls the duvet up to her chin, clutching it like armor, making herself as small as humanly possible in the middle of the vast bed. She’s trying to disappear into the mattress.
“Don’t you dare,” I say firmly. My voice is thick, and I have to swallow hard to keep it from failing. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Scottie. Not a single fucking thing.”
I want to reach for her.
Every instinct I have—everything that makes me a man, a teammate, a person—is screaming at me to pull her into my arms and tell her I’ll kill anyone who ever made her feel like this.
But the way she’s flinching, the way she’s huddled there like I’m the monster under the bed… I can’t move.
“I’m going to sit in the chair,” I say quietly. I grab my pillow, moving slowly, making sure she can see every move I make. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving, but I’m going to sit over there. You have the bed. Okay?”
She doesn’t answer. She just stares at the wall, her breathing coming in those short, jagged hitches.
About ten minutes later, she gets up. She doesn’t look at me as she walks to the bathroom. The door clicks shut, and then I hear the water.
She spends over an hour in that shower.
I lie there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, feeling the crushing weight of the ghosts I can’t body-check into the boards for her.
My entire life is built around protection. Around being the wall. Around stopping the thing that’s coming for my people.
And I am sitting here in this stupid cabin, and I am utterly, completely useless.
When she emerges, the room fills with steam. She’s wearing a different shirt, her hair soaking wet and plastered to her neck. Her skin is scrubbed raw—an angry, mottled red on her arms and chest.
She won’t look at me.
She crawls back into bed on the furthest edge, her back to me.
I stay in the chair. I stay because I promised I would, but the distance between us feels like a canyon I don’t know how to cross without falling to my death.
I lie there listening to her shallow, haunted breathing.
Every time she shifts, I tense up, ready to move, ready to help, but I know the best thing I can do is stay exactly where I am.
The sun starts to creep through the blinds, casting long, dusty stripes across the floor.
“Scottie?” I say into the silence.
Nothing.
“You’re okay,” I whisper. “I’m right here.”
I hear a small, muffled sound—a sob she tries to hide in the pillow. Then silence. I sit there in the wooden chair, watching the light change, and wait for the girl I’m falling for to come back from wherever she’s been.