by Sienna Blake
We work alongside each other in silence for most of the morning. I feel her eyes on me constantly. Sure enough, when I glance over, our gazes lock. Her cheeks flush pink before she tears her eyes away.
During our break we sit next to each other. I open up a lunch box I packed earlier. At least one thing I’ve learned to make well is homemade bread.
She bites into the thick sourdough slathered with a local blackberry jam and butter that I’d churned from milk from our cows.
She lets out a low groan of pleasure. A sound that sends heat rushing into my lower body. I have to shift to hide my growing arousal, pretending to stare out across the fields beyond as I shove bread into my mouth, trying to think of anything other than the beautiful woman sitting beside me.
“Why don’t you talk?” Savannah asks after we’ve eaten in a silence for a few minutes.
I’m not offended. The way she asks doesn’t feel intrusive. She sounds curious. Interested. Concerned.
I want to tell her.
I want to share this secret with her.
I need her to see me.
I place down my bread and brush the crumbs off my hands before I sign. “You know, my brothers have never asked me that question.”
She gasps. “What? How?”
“That’s the way with us. Nobody wants to talk about anything, so we don’t.”
Just like none of us want to talk about what’s going on with Savannah. To each other, or her, or even ourselves.
“Killian throws himself into work. Fionn drinks and sleeps around. And I…I don’t speak. We all just bottle it all up inside and…” I trail off when I realize how agitated I’m getting. So agitated my signs are becoming all choppy. I’m probably not even making any sense to her.
I let out a frustrated huff before lifting my gaze to meet hers.
She gives me a soft smile. “You don’t have to talk about it if it upsets you.”
I shake my head. “I want to talk about it.”
She sits in silence until I begin.
“My parents were married almost twenty years and they were still so in love with each other. They made sure they had a date night every week. That night, they were out on a date. I was with some friends…one of them had gotten his hands on his parents’ bottle of whiskey…”
I take a moment to try to compose myself. To tamp down the rising bitterness. I fail. But I keep going regardless, tasting self-hate on my tongue.
“I got drunk and I couldn’t drive myself home. My parents had to pick me up on the way back from their dinner date. It was late. Dark. The other car was speeding.”
Flashes of that night crash through my mind. The sound of metal buckling. The shattering of glass. My mother screaming. Then silence.
Dead silence.
I rub my face, breathing deeply to try to erase the memories. But I can’t.
I never could.
“Oh my God,” is Savannah’s soft response, her voice hushed.
“I was such an idiot.” Anger makes my hands shake as I move them. “If I hadn’t drunk so much they wouldn’t have had to pick me up. They’d still be—”
She grabs my hands, stopping me from finishing. “Their deaths were not your fault,” she says, using my words against me.
I yank my hands out of hers. “I never told my brothers why I was in the car with my parents that night. They don’t know it’s my fault. They’d never forgive me if they knew.”
“So you don’t speak because you’re afraid of what you’d have to tell them if they asked,” she says, ripping the words right out of my soul. “Oh, Aiden…your brothers love you so much. They wouldn’t see this as your fault.”
I stare at this beautiful creature, her face soft with sadness. There’s no judgment, no disgust. No accusation towards me over what had happened.
Perhaps if she could accept this…my brothers could too?
“It’s not your fault. You hear me?” She places her hands on either side of my face, forcing me to look at her. Her eyes are filled with tears, starting to fall over the brim, making wet tracks down her soft cheeks. “This is not your fault. Just like my sister’s death…” she chokes on a sob, “wasn’t mine.”
Her words rip into me. I have this sudden strange sensation that something inside me shifts.
Her sister’s death wasn’t her fault.
So…
My parents’ death…might not be mine.
My hands tense as my insides war. I have so much I want to say to her but I need to hold her. I grab her and pull her over me so she’s seated on my lap and my arms slide around her. She leans into me and buries her face into my neck.
My fingers curl into her skin. I’ve fucking yearned for a touch like this for years and never knew how to ask for it.
Soothing. Accepting. Healing.
At the same time, my body heats up. A need I’ve long repressed surging through my blood.
I pull back. Fuck. I want to sign but I can’t while I’m holding her in my lap. I hold her securely with one arm and hold the other between us.
I can’t sign properly like this but I can spell out letters.
“I…” I’m so agitated I can barely sign.
“What is it?” she asks, her eyes darting from my hand to my gaze.
“I w-a-” I try again, but my hand, my fucking hand is shaking so hard it’s useless.
“What? What is it that you want?” she whispers.
I open my mouth. My voice comes out croaky. My voice box tight as I say my first word in almost a decade.
“You.”
Savannah’s eyes widen, the emotion in them causing them to grow wet. “Aiden…” she whispers, her fingers curling into my shirt. “You spoke.”
I want to speak again, to tell her how beautiful she is. How she makes me feel. How it’s okay for her to feel everything she’s feeling, too.
I want to tell her that I want to kiss her. That I want to peel every single layer of clothing off her beautiful body and worship her with my hands and my tongue.
But words aren’t enough.
In this moment, words aren’t important.
I trace her cheek with my palm. You are beautiful.
I brush her lips with my finger. I want to kiss you.
Then I place my hand on my heart. I’m falling in love with you.
I lean in, slowly, so she can pull away if she wants. But she doesn’t. My God, she doesn’t.
I sweep my mouth against her warm lips. Once. Twice.
She lets out a soft moan, parting her mouth, telling me to keep going. Telling me that she wants this too.
I press my lips against hers, the soft touch growing in pressure as a wave of need rolls through me. In one touch, she’s made me feel more than any other woman on this planet. Her fingers curl into my hair and she presses her full breasts against me as we deepen the kiss.
Now it’s my turn to groan, her thigh pressing right against my rock-hard dick.
She pulls away with a gasp. I feel the loss of her lips right through my body.
“Oh my God,” she breathes, “what am I doing?”
“It’s…okay,” I force out.
“No, it’s not,” she cries, her voice swollen with self-torment.
Before I can explain, before I can tell her I know about Fionn and Killian, she pushes her way out of my lap and runs. My arms are left feeling cold.
I had her.
Now I’ve lost her.
Fionn
I stare at the glass of whiskey in front of me on the wooden bar. I haven’t drunk a drop of it. I’ve just been staring at it for the last two hours.
In fact, since I fled from the farmhouse after the kiss with Savannah, I’ve not drunk a drop. For some strange reason I don’t want to. For once, I want to keep a clear head, to try to sort through all the shite that was running through it.
The memory of the kiss with Savannah echoes through my head like it has been the last few days, searing through my body. That kiss set my body on
fire. It had made everything in this whole world disappear, reduced down to the softness of her in my hands, the taste of her on my lips and the smell of her vanilla scent.
When she pulled away it’d felt like ripping skin off me. Then when I saw the horror on her face, my lungs almost collapsed.
She regretted the kiss.
I’d read the situation wrong.
I’d felt all these things and she… I didn’t know how she felt.
And that scared the shit out of me.
So I ran.
I asked my friend Jake if I could stay with him for a few days. He said yes without asking why. It hadn’t been the first time. I sometimes stayed with him when I’d had enough of Killian or when I was hiding from a girl who’d gone level five clinger on me.
Since then I’d avoided Savannah and tried to avoid everything that was going on inside of me.
Tried. And failed.
I don’t understand why I can’t get Savannah out of my head. Frankly, it’s scaring the shite out of me.
That kiss.
No one has ever made me feel that way from just a kiss.
Not any of the girls I’d been with. Not even Emer, the girl I always seem to go back to. The girl I thought I’d probably end up with once I got tired of playing the field.
“Hey, baby,” a familiar female voice says.
Speak of the devil.
I turn towards Emer standing way too close for comfort at my side, trying not to cringe as she slides her hand onto my arm.
Since when did Emer’s touch become something I wanted to brush off?
This close I can see the makeup caked onto her face, the obvious lip line she’d drawn around her lips. Savannah never wears this much makeup.
Emer’s perfume is thick and cloying, making me want to sneeze. I miss Savannah’s sweet, subtle scent.
“I’ve been calling you,” Emer says, a slight hint of annoyance in her voice.
“I’ve been…preoccupied,” I say.
“Aww,” she pouts, “is something wrong? I know how to make you feel better, baby.”
She leans in closer, her arms sliding around my neck. I can smell the sickly-sweet stink of cheap rum on her breath.
I gently push her away. “Not right now, Emer.”
Not ever.
Emer’s kisses feel like cobwebs compared to the memory of Savannah’s. How could I ever look at Emer—at any woman—the same again?
Emer’s cutesy pout turns hard, her lips pressing into a line, before she giggles.
“I see you’re in a mood. You know I have what cures ye.” She shoots me a wink. “You just need to relax. Here,” she pushes my whiskey glass at me, “have a drink.”
My blood turns cold. When was the last time that Emer and I hung out without drinking? Come to think of it, when was the last time I’d seen her sober?
“No, thanks.” I stand from my stool, ready to leave this bar and Emer behind.
All I want is to head home—my actual home, not Jake’s couch—and sink into my bed. With the scent of vanilla in my nose and Savannah’s warm body beside me.
Emer grabs my arm before I can push past her. “Why you being such a dick, Fionn?”
“Emer, just let me go.”
She bats her eyelashes at me. “Is this some sort of game? You wanna play hard to get? I’ll come chase you, baby.”
I have to end this. Once and for all.
I gently push her hand from my arm. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”
She freezes. Before her mouth twists into an ugly pout. “This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
She blinks at me. Once. Twice. “Why?”
“I’m… just not feelin’ it anymore.”
Did I ever? Or was the booze and habit the only thing tying Emer and I together.
Emer starts to claw at me, her hands getting desperate. “You don’t mean that. You don’t.”
I try and shake her off without hurting her. “I do. I’m sorry.”
“Stop fighting me, baby. You know you can’t stay away from me.”
“Dammit, Emer.” I finally push her off me with more force than I intend. “I’m in love with someone else.”
I freeze as she does, too. Only realizing what I said after I heard the words coming out of my mouth.
Holy shit.
Am I in love with Savannah? After only knowing her for days.
My da’s voice echoes back to me.
“I fell in love with your mother the moment I met her. I knew it the moment I took her into my arms. When you meet the right woman, Fionn, you’ll know. You’ll just know.”
Oh, shit.
I’m in love with Savannah.
While I’m losing myself in my own my shocking realization, Emer is going into her own version of shock, too.
“What?” she shrieks, cutting through my thoughts and causing every single head in this pub to turn towards us. “With who?”
I shush at her, glancing around at the other patrons. “Keep your voice down, god dammit.”
I know every face in here, most of them regulars. And they know mine. This is a small town after all. News of the scene Emer is causing will spread across the county before the night is out and so will my business.
“Who is she?” Emer hisses.
“You don’t know her. Now let it go.”
“No,” she shakes her head, clawing at me, her voice shaking with panic. “No no no. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ll always come back to me Fionn. It’s always been you and I.”
“You’ve had other boyfriends.”
“To try and make you jealous,” she wails.
Jesus Christ.
I spot two of Emer’s girlfriends walking into the bar, dressed up like it’s a Friday night even though it’s a weeknight. Thank God. I wave them over and gently push an upset Emer into their hands. “She’s drunk. And emotional. You need to take care of her.”
“I’m not being fucking emotional you’re being a dick,” Emer yells.
I ignore her and speak again to her two friends who are staring at me with wide eyes, clinging onto either side of Emer to hold her up. The three of them wobbling in their ridiculous platform heels.
“Take her home,” I say. “I can’t deal with her right now.”
I turn on my heel and bolt for the exit, vowing never to come back here again. I’m done with mindless drinking and meaningless sex.
I’m going to find Savannah and convince her to take a chance on me.
“This isn’t over, Fionn,” Emer shrieks after me.
I ignore her, even as a thread of apprehension weaves through me.
This isn’t over.
Savannah
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
I suck in a breath when I recognize Fionn’s voice. I thought I could slip into the house after spending the afternoon hidden in the solitude of the wooded grove out past the back garden. But it appears not.
I turn slowly to face him. His usually smiling face is drawn into a mask of hurt in the evening light. Guilt stabs me in the guts.
“You’ve been avoiding me, too,” I say. “You’ve not been to dinner in days. Since…” Since we kissed.
“I needed time to think.”
“Oh.”
“I want to take you to dinner. Movies. Whatever you like.”
“What?” That was not what I was expecting to hear.
He steps forward towards me, hesitant. I am frozen to the spot.
“I want to date you properly. I want to court you. Woo you. All that shite.” His face softens. “I’m sorry I avoided you. I got scared. That kiss, Savannah.” He let out a long breath. “That was special to me. More than you know.”
I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe as he continued.
“For the first time in my life, I understand how my father felt about my mother. How she was the only woman worth anything
in his eyes. I’ve not felt this way for a woman…ever.”
His words fill me with such a surge of love that my heart feels swollen. At the same time, guilt rips its claws across me, making me bleed.
“We can’t,” I say, almost in a whisper.
It’s his turn to flinch. “Why not?”
Because I kissed your brother, Killian. I want to kiss Aiden.
How could I say these things out loud? Fionn will hate me. I couldn’t stand if he hated me. He’ll call me a slut. They all would. I’d be thrown off this farm.
Selfishly, I need to stay. I feel like I am healing here. That I am finding who I really am here.
And the thought of being torn away from Killian, Aiden or Fionn feels like it’s tearing my soul into pieces.
I don’t want to leave. Even though I don’t know how I can stay.
“You…don’t feel the same way?” he asks, his voice suddenly like a little boy’s. Fionn’s shields crack and he’s suddenly maskless. I see the pain I’m causing him.
I want to soothe his hurt. To kiss away his pain. To tell him that I am falling for him, too.
But how can I? When I’d have to admit why I can’t do anything about it? Better that he just thinks that I don’t feel the same way.
“I’m sorry.” And I mean it.
Before the tears break through, I turn on my heel and run for the farmhouse and the safety of my bedroom. Fionn doesn’t do a thing to stop me.
After I lay out the dinner on the table I excuse myself, feigning a headache, and lock myself in my bedroom in the dark.
I get three knocks at separate times. Fionn and Killian announce themselves after they knock, each wanting to know if I’m okay. I know the third knock is Aiden because he is silent. Each one makes my heart twist up further into knots.
Because I’m falling for all of them. For all different reasons.
I want all of them. In the same way.
Killian and I share the same understanding, the same weight of what it’s like to be the eldest. I love his steady nature, his fierce loyalty to his family, his bearish protectiveness of those he loves. He’s a sturdy, strong man that any woman would want to be her rock.