by Fox, Nicole
Even when I’m fully fucking awake.
“Where’d you go?” Cillian’s voice cuts through my thoughts.
“Sorry,” I whisper. “It’s been a long couple of days.”
“It’s been a long thirteen years,” he counters.
I nod. “Truer words have never been spoken.”
“You still look cold,” Cillian points out, moving a little closer to me.
I cringe away instinctively.
If he touches me… If I let him wind his way around my heart again…
How am I ever gonna survive when he leaves?
And mark my words—he will leave.
I may not keep up with every move the Kinahans make. But I know enough to realize that shit is going to hit the fan soon.
And when it does, the O’Sullivans will be caught right in the middle of it.
There’s no place for me in his world. And I’m pretty sure he won’t want a place in mine.
Not that I blame him for that.
My world is a horrible place to live.
“I’m fine,” I demur. “I’m okay.”
“You know, it’s okay to admit that you need help sometimes, Saoirse.”
I frown. “I’m not cold.”
“Then why are you shivering?” he asks. That fucking smile… His expression changes as he regards me with exaggerated understanding. “Ohhh. Oh, I get it.”
I wrinkle my nose in confusion. “Get what?”
“You’re shivering because of me,” he explains with an all-knowing nod. “I’m making you weak in the knees. Primal reaction, really. Totally understandable. Seeing a man like me building a fire in the wilderness… You never had a chance of resisting.”
I stare at him for a second before the laughter bubbles to my lips.
The heaviness in my chest opens up and for a moment, I feel better than I have in years. I can’t remember the last time I laughed. About anything.
“Shut up, idiot,” I snap, but he knows I’m smiling too hard to be serious.
He’s still keeping his face carefully solemn. “What can I say? I have this effect on women. It’s a curse, really.”
“Stop,” I say, pushing him gently with my hand.
My hand falls against hard muscle and I almost succumb to an honest-to-goodness swoon right there in front of him. He’s a lot bigger than he used to be.
I glance up and realize that he’s caught me staring directly at his biceps.
“Yeah, I know,” he says knowingly, wagging his eyebrows at me. “And I barely workout.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. You probably live at the gym.”
“Flattered you think so,” he replies. “But not true. I actually built up all this muscle working the land.”
“Excuse me?”
His grins gets wider, but I can sense a certain sentimentality streak past his eyes.
“Long story. True story, but a long one.”
I look around. “It’s just you and me and the squirrels tonight,” I point out. “And I could use a story. I need a distraction from the cold.”
“I fucking knew it.”
I smile as he shrugs out of his jacket and forces it onto my shoulders.
“But now you’ll be cold.”
“Well,” Cillian says slyly, moving a little closer to me, “guess you’ll have to keep me warm then.”
I can’t read him.
I don’t know if he’s being deliberately flirty to try and feel me out, or if he just doesn’t give a shit either way, and he’s simply having fun.
I decide to ignore him.
“I’ll keep you warm,” I bargain, “if I can hear your story.”
He raises his eyebrows. “I haven’t heard much of yours, though.”
“All in good time,” I reply, as though we have an abundance of it.
He smiles. “Fair enough. Let’s see then… I guess a lot of it starts and ends with Artem Kovalyov.”
“He sounds important.”
“He is. He was born the son of a don. Like me,” he says. “Except he was the only son. The only possible heir.”
Cillian starts telling me about his past, but it feels like he’s talking about his friend more than himself. He frames every single story about himself around Artem Kovalyov.
But I catch glimpses into the life he has led in Los Angeles.
Some of it terrifying.
Some of it exciting.
All of it dangerous.
“You changed countries, but you didn’t switch lives,” I chuckle, getting used to his consuming warmth.
He laughs along with me. “No, I guess not. This is all I’ve ever known. It’s all I was ever meant to be.”
“Not true,” I argue. “You can be anything you want.”
He considers that for a minute. “I know,” he says. “But this is what I want. Not to be don. I don’t think I ever dreamed that big. But everything else: right-hand man to my brother…”
He trails off. I remember the pain that engulfed his brother’s departure.
“Have you heard from Sean since he left?” I ask quietly. “Does he know that you left Dublin shortly after he did?”
He looks at me in surprise. “You remember his name.”
“I remember everything,” I mumble awkwardly.
Cillian tilts his head to the side and surveys me in a new way. Like he’s seeing a part of me he hadn’t known was still there.
When he refuses to stop staring, I glare at him and dig my elbow into his side. “Well?” I ask. “Are you going to answer my question or not?”
“I haven’t heard from Sean in over a decade,” he admits. “I tried to get in touch with him several times over the years. But…”
“But?”
Cillian sighs. “It’s like he disappeared into thin air.”
“Do you suspect something happened to him?” I ask cautiously.
“Life probably happened to him,” Cillian says with a sigh. “But if you’re asking if I think he’s still alive and out there—yes, I do. I believe I couldn’t ever find him because he didn’t want to be found.”
“I’m sorry, Cillian,” I say, my hand twitching towards his. I suppress the instinct at the last second. “I know how much you loved him.”
“I still do.” His voice is proud. Defiant.
“Right,” I say, shaking my head. “Of course. That was a silly thing to say.”
He smiles. It’s an open, sincere smile that pulls me in a little closer. “I know what you meant. But you know, Artem became a brother to me. I made my own family in L.A.”
His words have my heart sinking so fast that the fire in front of us seems to blur and blend with the stars above.
But I force my tone into calm when I speak.
“Oh. I didn’t realize you have a family.”
And I’m proud of how in control I sound when I speak.
“Do you have kids, too?” I inquire.
He’s quiet for a moment, and I feel my fear swell tenfold.
I have no right to be upset. No right to feel betrayed or disappointed. But then, my feelings for Cillian have never been rational.
“Would it upset you if I say yes?” he asks at last.
I don’t meet his eye. I can’t.
“I’d be happy for you,” I lie.
Another pause. The cold inches into the tips of my fingers.
And in the silence, I see his imagined family. It sure as hell doesn’t include me.
A beautiful woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed. Some L.A. beauty with an infallible sense of confidence and legs that stretch on for miles.
A child—no, two children. A boy who looks like Cillian. A girl who looks like a mix of both of them.
A shared life that holds a billion tiny little moments that I can’t touch.
“No, I don’t have children,” Cillian tells me eventually. “I don’t have a wife. When I said I made a family for myself, I was talking about Artem and the Bratva.”
The relief c
oursing through my body feels like a glass of water after days of thirst.
I know how selfish, how unreasonable I’m being.
But I can’t seem to rein in my feelings where Cillian is concerned.
He’s been a part of me for so long that it’s hard to come to terms with the inarguable presence of the real him, of seeing and speaking to him again.
It’s hard to let go of the dream and see the reality instead.
And the reality is: he’s not mine.
Maybe he never was.
“Oh,” I say quietly. “You never met anyone?”
“Not anyone who matters,” he says in a voice so low I barely hear it.
I want to ask him what he means by that, but I know I don’t have the right to.
So I go with another question instead. “Why’d you come back, Cillian?”
He gives a strange little laugh. The kind that says that life can be ironic and complicated and cruel, and sometimes it can catch you in between all three.
“As it turned out, Artem’s uncle was the one who killed his father.”
“No!” I breathe.
“It gets worse,” he says with a sigh.
The way he even tells me makes me realize just how dramatically our lives have diverged since he left.
My life has always ever been hideous. Pathetic. Depressing.
And on really good days… mundane.
But he’s been living a real-life thriller.
“Budimir tried to kill Artem, too. He tried to kill me. He very nearly succeeded on both counts,” he admits. “He left me lying in the muck and dirt. I was this close to death.”
“What saved you?” I ask, my heart in my throat.
“A little Mexican girl and her father,” Cillian explains. “They were my heroes that day. And every day since. They nursed me back to health. It took the better part of a year, but they did it.”
I can see the affection and the gratitude in his eyes when he talks about them.
“I spent a year of my life with them,” he tells me. “Leaving was harder than it should have been.”
“They made quite an impression.”
“Diego… He understood why I had to go,” Cillian says. “But Carlita… she took it hard.”
Another image floats to mind. This one more terrifying than the last.
A beautiful girl with caramel skin and the kind of smile that lights up a room. Sitting beside Cillian’s bedside, nursing him back to health.
Those bonds can be powerful, born out of mutual vulnerability.
“I’m assuming she’s Diego’s daughter?”
“She is,” he confirms. “I’ve thought about calling. But I don’t know what to say right now.”
“Tell her the truth,” I say. “Explain to her why you needed to leave.”
“She’s too young to understand.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Too… young?”
“Ten is a little early to wrap your head around duty and family and shit like that.”
Oh. Ten.
He chuckles under his breath and my eyes snap to him.
“What?”
“Nervous about something?” he asks innocently.
I glare at him. “What would I have to be nervous about?”
“Just got the feeling that you wanted me all to yourself.”
His tone is mildly teasing, but I can hear the seriousness behind the question.
Is he trying to figure out just how deep my feelings for him go?
“Your ego has definitely gotten bigger.”
“It’s an appropriate size,” he replies defensively. “To accommodate my many talents and skills.”
“You forgot about your looks.”
“Never.”
I shake my head at him. “You are unbelievable.”
“Why, thank you for noticing.”
I laugh again. How is he managing to wrench these sounds out of me? I thought I’d lost them forever.
I thought that, once you’d experienced certain levels of pain, there was no going back. No feeling anything remotely like joy.
And yet somehow, in the midst of this cold night, he’s making me feel warm.
Light.
Carefree.
“You haven’t answered my question, though,” I point out. “Why did you come back?”
“Well, that year I spent with Diego and Carla, my body was broken. My mind very nearly was, too. I spent a lot of time in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out what the fuck my purpose in life was.”
“And you had an epiphany?”
“All the shit I’d buried the day I left for Los Angeles… Well, let’s just say I couldn’t keep it buried any longer. I’d allowed myself to be chased off when I should have stayed and fought. Not just for my place in the family, but for my right to choose my own path.”
“You were eighteen,” I point out. “So young.”
“So?” he asks. “People use age like a fucking shield. Youth doesn’t rob you of your senses. It doesn’t rob you of your intellect. Sure, people make stupid choices sometimes, but that’s not restricted to teenagers.”
I smile. “You’re right about that.”
“I knew how I felt at eighteen. Those feelings were real. They were valid. They still are.”
His voice is fierce and undeniable. I shiver at everything it implies. Everything it means—for him. For me.
For us.
“It was time for me to come home,” he continues. “Time for me to stand up to the bastards who chased me off.”
“Does that include your father?” I ask.
He gives me a curious look.
I blush. “Sorry.”
“No,” he laughs. “Don’t be. My father is one of those bastards, probably… but I think he’s the bastard who taught me the most.”
“How’d the reunion go?”
He takes a deep breath. “Well, we made it an hour in without strangling each other. Then the Irish secret police stormed the mansion, took my parents hostage, broke my brother’s leg, and left. So… pretty well, all things considered, I suppose.”
I blanch as my stomach drops. “Jesus,” I breathe. “They broke your brother’s leg?”
“They thought he was me.”
“The Murtaghs don’t forget a grudge.”
“Yeah, it’s what keeps them young,” Cillian laughs bitterly.
“How can you joke about this?”
“Because if I don’t joke, I may as well bend over and let the world fuck me,” he fires back without hesitation. “And that is not my style.”
I shake my head at him. Even in the face of betrayal and tragedy, he doesn’t change.
He is who he is. True to himself.
The same soul he was when he was a teenager on a rooftop somewhere in Dublin, kissing me and making me promises he swore he would keep.
“Your parents are prisoners of the Kinahan mafia,” I point out. “It’s kind of a serious issue.”
“Not for long,” Cillian says with the kind of conviction that I wish I had. “I’m getting them back. I was actually in the process of doing just that when I stumbled across you in that holding cell.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I kind of derailed your plans, huh?”
He shrugs. “It was worth it.”
“You made things a whole lot more complicated for yourself by breaking me out of there, Cillian.”
“Oh, I’m aware.”
“Still worth it?”
“A hundred percent.”
“Why?”
He hesitates a moment. His eyes find mine and I can tell he’s measuring the weight of his response.
Then he says what he’s thinking.
Like he always has.
“It was the right thing to do,” he explains simply. “I’d do it all over again.”
35
Cillian
Somewhere In The Woods
I wake up the next morning with a raging hard-on…
And Saoirse now
here in sight.
I can still smell her on my clothes. She fell asleep tucked against my side, nestled perfectly against me like she was always meant to be there.
Took some convincing, though. I had to convince her that her fucking nipples would freeze off in the cold if she didn’t huddle close.
She’s every bit as stubborn as she was at eighteen.
And twice as beautiful.
Which made it doubly hard for me to keep my hands to myself. But that is exactly what I did.
Part of me thinks getting shot by Budimir was more torturous.
As we talked through most of the night, her smiles had come a little easier each time. But her walls sure as hell didn’t come down. And now, who knows where the fuck she’s gone?
I run my hands over my face in exasperation and get to my feet.
“Saoirse?” I call out.
With the sun sitting high in the sky, the entire landscape is illuminated. Beyond the trees, I can see the vast meadow of grass stretching out for miles around.
Off in the distance, I can see the gleaming husk of the Rolls Royce with its burned-out engine.
At my feet, the ashy remnants of the fire smolder. And next to it, scribbled in the dirt…
I frown.
Is that supposed to be… me?
I kneel next to it and scrutinize the doodle etched in the soft loam. It’s a sleeping man with a very familiar contour to his face. Given how crude the canvas is, I’m amazed and impressed by the lifelike beauty of the drawing.
“Maidin mhaith,” murmurs a voice in lilting Irish.
Good morning.
I turn around to find Saoirse standing a few feet away from me, peering down with an amused smile dancing on the edge of her lips.
“I thought you’d left me to the wolves,” I remark.
She smiles. “We don’t have wolves out here.”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
She’s still got my trench coat wrapped around her slight frame. It swallows up her body, making her look even smaller, even skinnier.
In the bright light of day, she looks even more breathtaking.
Her eyes are so hypnotically blue that I can’t help staring, even as I notice her start to squirm under the unyielding attention.
Her hair is still wild, a mess of curls and waves that cascades down her shoulders. She looks tired. Worn. Resigned.
