Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
I nod, then swallow.
“Meet you there in one minute. I'll go first. You count to sixty, then follow.”
My heart is beating so fast I'm dizzy.
I know what I'm doing. I want to be very clear with myself, in this moment, that I know exactly what I'm doing. This is not something that's happening to me. This is a choice.
I am an adult. I am in remission. I have rebuilt my entire life from the ground up, and I am choosing this with both hands open.
One night. I'm allowed one night.
I watch him go. I press my thumb to the rose quartz at my throat, just once. It feels warm against my skin.
I take it as a sign.
Then I count to sixty… stand, and leave.
Chapter Seven
DECLAN
I should not have come. I knew I shouldn't have, and I came anyway. Now she's walking toward the car in those jeans, with her hair loose like that and her eyes lighting up when she sees me, and I haven't the first idea what I thought I’d be able to manage here.
Mine, some treacherous part of me thinks as she walks toward the car. I get out and open the door for her, which makes her smile almost bashfully. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” She won’t open her own damn door, not when I’m here.
Then we're off, like two thieves into the night, away from the criticism and judgment of anyone who'd give us a hard time about any of it.
“I'm so nervous,” she says, and I'm surprised at how steadily she's talking after five drinks. But at least I know now—if she's had five drinks, this isn't going anywhere. With that many drinks, consent lines blur, and she has to consent.
So if I've taken her out drunk, this is only ever going to be a conversation. A fun night. A safeguard for me not doing exactly what I want to do to her.
One stolen evening in a stretch of thousands of other evenings, none of which I'll be able to steal quite like this one. Just us. Just the two of us, the way it should be.
“Surprised at how well you've held your liquor,” I say, giving her a sidelong glance. “Five drinks, and you’re acting sober as a monk.”
“My liquor?” she says, with that curious little shrug of hers. “I haven't been drinking, Declan.”
Oh fuck.
“What do you mean?” I say, my pulse jumping.
“Probably enough sugar and caffeine to keep me going till Sunday, but no alcohol.”
No. The one thing keeping me from the edge—gone. Just like that.
Christ.
Bridget leans back in the seat, tipping her head against the headrest, and looks at me in that way she does that cuts right through me.
“Why is it always like this with us?”
“Like what?” I ask her, and then I can't help it. I'm reaching over, my fingers threading through hers, holding her hand, and it feels right. Natural. Stolen. Like something I was never supposed to have, but something I’ve been taking anyway, one small piece at a time.
“Normal,” she says. “Uncomplicated. Like—”
She tilts her head and doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't have to because I know exactly what she means. And some part of me, there under the gilt edge of a full moon over Dublin, understands that I have been doing this wrong for a very long time.
Does she feel the same?
“Because we're friends,” she murmurs, answering a question I didn't ask. Her thumb traces the side of my hand.
“Friends.”
She hits the radio station and starts streaming some shite pop that hurts my ears.
“No,” I say, turning it back.
“It's my car ride.”
“It's my car.”
She changes it back. I change it again. She makes a sound of pure indignation and changes it back again.
“This is not music,” I tell her.
“This is excellent music. You have the taste of a man twice your age.”
“Well, I’m older than you.”
She snorts. “What does that have to do with anything?”
We go three more rounds. She lands on something neither of us hates and leaves her hand resting on the dial.
“Touch it,” she says pleasantly, “and I'll throw your charger cord out the window.”
“And I’ll pull over, find it, and make you wish you hadn’t.”
But I don't touch it.
“What happens next, Declan?” she says after a time. Her voice is quiet. Careful. “You came back from America. And I know you can't tell me everything—but whatever you found there, can it affect anything that happens here?”
I clear my throat and decide right then, I’m giving her the truth… as much as I can.
“Our family is in jeopardy. Our safety. So what happens next,” I say carefully, “is that my cousin arranges for me to marry someone to secure our allegiances and fortify us for what’s coming.”
She goes very, very still. I feel the exact moment when she decides not to react, like I’m wedded to the small internal click of her decision. I feel the way her fingers go still before she slides her hand out from under mine.