by M. O’Keefe
“Zilla,” I whispered. I’d forgotten about the pictures, and now that they were back in my hands, I couldn’t believe I would have let these go. The only thing in that house that meant anything to me. “Thank you.”
“And this.” She grabbed a bulging plastic grocery bag out of her purse and held it out to me.
“What in the world?” Inside the bag there was all my jewelry. The good costume stuff and the very good real stuff. A velvet box in the bottom with the black pearls from Jim’s mother. “You grabbed my jewelry?”
“If we were going on the run, I thought we could sell it.” Zilla sounded a little sad that we weren’t going on the run. I thought of Caroline telling me to leave. To drain my accounts and take Zilla and run. We could have a well-funded escape.
But there was a reason she wanted me to leave. And I wasn’t going anywhere until I found it out. I set the jewelry down on the floor with a thunk.
The senator had been fond of giving me jewelry as if it made up for what he did to me. The more of it I wore, the more smug he’d look because it added to the sense that we belonged among the Constantines. Like it was camouflage. He really was such a small man. It was ludicrous that I gave him as much power as I did.
“What did the house look like when you went?” Ronan asked from the doorway to the kitchen. He had his arms braced on the frame, his body tilted towards us.
“Like there’d been a fire, a flood, and a robbery.”
“A robbery?”
“Everything has been gone through,” Zilla said. “Every drawer, every cupboard. The place is trashed.” She looked at me with sympathy, like I cared about those dresses and dishes. The only thing I cared about were the people in this room. And the pictures my sister had brought back to me.
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” I whispered, grabbing her hand.
“Likewise. That trip to London was no fun. And hey.” Zilla turned around on the couch to face Ronan. “What’s the deal with the guy following me? Killer accountant? I thought after the senator died he’d vanish.”
“What guy?” I asked.
“Eden’s man,” Ronan said.
“The guy who broke into my room at Belhaven. We talked about it, remember? When I checked myself in.”
“That was months ago.”
I suddenly remembered Jacob’s face in that Red Hook bar when Zilla’s name was mentioned. That short, sharp look of worry and recognition. “Eden’s been having you followed for a while.”
“Well, someone tell him he can stop!”
“I don’t mind him keeping you safe,” Ronan said.
“I do!” Zilla cried, but her cheeks were all flushed with some emotion that wasn’t just anger.
Ronan and I shared a quick glance, and in that glance we had a whole silent conversation. This was a new trick of ours, born maybe in Ireland, when he’d been unable to keep up his walls. Of course, he’d been reading me like a book all along.
I’m worried.
I know. But I think he can be trusted. And I feel better if someone is watching her. I don’t trust the Morellis.
I don’t trust Caroline.
Zilla looked at us, her eyes bouncing from Ronan’s expressionless face to mine. “What’s going on between you two?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said too fast.
“Poppy. You just survived a relationship with a man who would have killed you if he could get away with it—”
“Zilla,” I snapped.
“And now you’re jumping in with a literal killer.”
“I won’t hurt her,” Ronan said.
“You won’t mean to,” Zilla said quietly. She turned to face me, and I saw our whole lives in her eyes. The way she seemed to learn so early that the only way to stay safe was to turn inward and I kept reaching for more. More love, more acceptance. More hope.
I went to Caroline time and time again, giving her more chances to hurt me. The same with our mother. It took the senator to cure me of such things. But my sister stood there reminding me that I only thought I was cured. I only thought I was smarter than those old instincts of mine.
That I was, in fact, doing it all again. Giving myself away for scraps. For hope. For fairy tales I wished were true.
“She only loves the things that don’t love her back,” Zilla whispered. “That’s how you’ll hurt her.”
The problem with having someone in my life who knew me so well was that she knew me so well. I couldn’t hide. And she was right. I was very good at loving people who didn’t love me back.
But this was different. Ronan was different. I knew it. This wasn’t hope. What I felt for him was real.
“Come back with me,” Zilla said. “To my apartment. The killer accountant can look after both of us. Or we’ll sell that bag of jewelry and buy an RV. Hit the road.”
I shook my head. “Maybe when it’s over. When we have the answers we need and…” I glanced up at Ronan. “When we’re all safe.”
My sister looked between us, her knowing jaded eyes seeing too much. “Fuck, Poppy,” she breathed. “You just never learn.” There was a sudden buzz from a phone and Ronan pulled his out of his pocket. He listened for a second.
“Does he have any weapons?” Ronan asked, sharpened once again into the killer king I knew. “Take them and let him up.” He put his phone in his pocket and pulled—from a drawer in the kitchen—a gun.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Zilla groaned.
“Go into the back room,” he said, walking towards the door just as there was a sudden pounding on it. I grabbed Zilla and we hustled into the back room, watching through a crack in the door as Ronan checked something on his phone. I imagined he was looking at the security feed, and whatever he saw out there did not make him happy.
He glanced back at us and then opened the door, letting in a man whose chest was heaving, the back of his shirt soaked in sweat. He turned as Ronan shifted to shut the door, each of them careful to keep each other in sight. They looked like boxers in a ring.
“Holy shit,” Zilla breathed as she saw the man’s profile. “It’s Jacob.”
It took me a second to place him. The man had the kind of face you never looked twice at, but he was built like Ronan. Lean and wide through the shoulders. Long strong legs. A hard face that was flushed and covered in sweat.
Zilla, before I could stop her, darted into the hallway. “The fuck, man? Are you following me?”
He said nothing, his eyes walking all over Zilla as if he was making sure she wasn’t bleeding or hurt. “I followed the car,” he said.
“You ran after the car?” Zilla asked.
“Only part of the way.”
“You want some water or something?” Zilla asked.
“I’m fine.”
Zilla stomped off swearing under her breath into Ronan’s kitchen a little like she owned the place, which was Zilla’s natural state. I heard the water in the sink run and the slamming and opening of cupboards.
“Where’s Eden?” Ronan asked.
“Gone.”
“She didn’t tell you where?” I asked.
“She doesn’t owe me that. She paid me. I did a job.” Jacob took the water Zilla handed him. He didn’t drink it, just took it so she wasn’t holding it.
“How long have you been following my sister?” I asked.
“Since your engagement to the senator.”
Zilla and I both reeled. “Why?”
“Eden is interested in weak spots. In this case, Ronan’s,” Jacob said.
“And I’m a weak spot?” Zilla asked, looking slightly…dimmed at the thought.
“You are the weak spot,” Jacob pointed at me.
“So why’d you sneak into my room at Belhaven?” Zilla asked.
“Because I know what it’s like at night in that place,” he said, looking Zilla straight in her eyes, almost pinning her in place with his intensity. “And I never saw you as weak. You have more strength than anyone gives you credit for.”
Zill
a blinked, stunned for the first time in a very long time, into silence. And the killer accountant, who may or may not have run over the Brooklyn Bridge to get to her, blushed. He actually blushed, and this hallway was suddenly too small for the four of us.
“Who do you work for now?” Ronan asked.
“Eden, when she comes back. If she comes back.”
“You think she’s dead?”
“I think she’s scared enough to stay away for good. She’ll find another old rich man to marry and move on.”
“Will you work for me?” Ronan asked.
A look crossed over his face, something small and painful. “I don’t want to kill anyone anymore. I won’t do that job.”
“What if someone tries to hurt her?” Ronan asked, pointing at Zilla.
“Then they’re dead.”
“Excellent. You’re her bodyguard until all this is over. I was going to have her stay here so I could keep an eye on her, but this is better.” Ronan snapped into action, walking back into the living room with all my jewelry in a plastic bag and the bankers box of secrets, and I didn’t know how Ronan could just trust this man with my sister, much less everything else.
Ronan didn’t trust me.
But he and Jacob were the same, somehow, in some deep, stunted way. Trust was physical, never emotional, because they’d scoured what they could of emotion out of themselves.
Except Jacob ran across the Brooklyn Bridge to get to her. And Ronan…killed the senator.
It really was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked him, following him into the small room where he had a computer and another bed.
“We want him on our side rather than the Morellis’,” he said, grabbing what looked like a business card and another phone from the desk. “I called my contact at the FBI and had him checked out. He’s Special Forces, black ops. He’s been treated for PTSD and depression. Including a stint at Belhaven. He’s a killer who doesn’t want to kill anymore. And he’s in love with your sister.”
“How do you know that?”
“The man ran from Manhattan following my limousine.”
“And that says love?”
“It says something, doesn’t it?” I thought of him and his twenty men coming to Bishop’s Landing to save me from a situation I didn’t need saving from. I thought of how he married me in that church he hated. How he promised to worship me.
And now he spoke about love? Maybe he did know the word. And just needed practice.
He crossed the room and cupped my head in his hands. “Do you trust me?”
I nodded, the fine hair at the nape of my neck pulled taut by his fingers on my skin. I opened my mouth to say yes, but something else popped out entirely.
“Do you trust me?” I asked, and it was as if I sucked all the air out of the room.
“It’s not the same thing,” he said. But it was. It was as simple as learning a little German.
“I love you,” I said. There. It was out there, where it couldn’t be taken back. Where it was real. And had to be dealt with. “I love you so much, Ronan.”
In his silence I imagined twenty different outcomes. A dozen things he could say. Some that would break my heart. Most, really, that would break my heart. But a few that would give me hope. That would give us a foundation that we could build on. My heart pounded and tears burned in my eyes and I didn’t know how to keep breathing when he was breaking my heart into pieces.
Say something, Ronan. Say anything. But say you love me, too.
Silent, he turned and walked out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ronan
I love you.
I’d never heard those words. Da certainly wasn’t going to say them. The priests were constantly talking about the Lord’s love, but those animals had no love in their hearts. There’d been lasses before, but when I got the sense they were thinking those words, I gave them the heave. The closest, I imagined, was Caroline. What I felt for her when she brought me here, had been a profound gratitude. A nearly painful urge to please her. And look where that got me. At best the emotion was useless, at worst it seemed manipulative. A burden.
I love you. I love you so much, Ronan.
I got Jacob and Zilla out of the apartment after a dozen last hugs between Zilla and Poppy.
Poppy’s hands were shaking and she looked worn thin. Worn all the way through. Zilla noticed and she gave me a good glaring as she walked out the door.
I locked up the door behind them. I could feel Poppy in the room, over by the windows, trying not to watch me with her heart in her eyes. She teemed with emotion. Vibrated with it. Being in the same room with her was uncomfortable, like one of the priests’ little tortures. The smack of rulers across our knuckles.
But I didn’t want her to stop. I craved this pain. Hungered for it.
“I’m sorry,” she said into our silence. “I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that.” You can’t take that back. You said it twice and you can’t take it back. “We can just pretend—”
I turned and she stepped back, away from me. Scared by whatever expression my face was wearing. “Pretend what?”
“That I didn’t say it.”
I wanted to be savage and clear it all up. Take this unbearable heat between us and make it cold. Make it all familiar, like. Comfortable. But I was tired of watching the light go out of her eyes. I was tired of being the thing that hurt her.
I was tired of the cold.
“Zilla said you only love things that can’t love you back,” I said, reminding her that she had no business loving me.
“Zilla is wrong.”
Her fucking will to believe was painful to witness. And I’d somehow caught it. I was infected with it. With this…hope. And I didn’t know what to do with it. Except try to pull it out by the roots, and somehow I couldn’t even do that.
“I’m going…” Poppy looked around, down at the box and then the very dark windows. “I’m going to get some sleep.”
“Aye,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
She walked past me to her bedroom and I clenched my hands in fists so I didn’t reach for her. I flinched at the snick of the bedroom door shutting.
More coffee, because I was exhausted too, and I sat down at the table with the bankers box. I started pulling out files, organizing them by subject. Houses. The campaign. His will.
In the back of my brain, I must have been ready for it. Her screaming.
At her first shouted, guttural no, I was on my way to her.
I found her on the bed caught in another nightmare. Tears on her face.
I touched her shoulders, trying to pull her from the dream but she fought me.
“Ronan!” she screamed.
“I’m here, lass,” I said and pulled her into my arms. She was cold and shivering and fighting me like I was holding her back from what she needed to get to. But the moment she woke from her dream, she quieted. Every muscle still. Tight.
In my gut I knew what she was doing. Bracing herself for pain.
“You were dreaming,” I said.
“Yeah, I… I don’t remember. It’s…gone now.”
Were you dreaming of me? I wanted to ask. Was I causing you pain?
She leaned back and I saw the flash of her brave smile in the dark room. “You can go,” she said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You’re not,” I said, settling back against the headboard, my arms still around her. She was stiff, but she didn’t move.
“Relax,” I said. “It’s all right.”
Slowly, carefully, she began to melt against me. And the pleasure it gave me was nearly obscene. I’d never been anyone’s comfort. I was the bringer of nightmares. Not what kept them away.
“I keep dreaming about the girl in the shop,” she finally whispered, her hand slowly stretching out to lie flat against my chest. Right over my heart.
“It’ll fade,” I told he
r.
“Do you have nightmares?” she asked and it was dark in the bedroom, so I didn’t think she could see me when I nodded. But she asked, “What about?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I can’t tell if you’re lying.”
“I really don’t remember. Sometimes I wake up with a taste in my mouth. Whiskey and sick. It’s how I know I’ve had a bad dream.”
“Is that why you don’t sleep?”
Of course, she’d notice. We’d spent ages together, the two of us. Just the two of us. I was aware of her down to my cells. Of course she’d be paying the same kind of attention.
“Aye.”
“You don’t have to stay,” she said.
“I know.”
And I stayed anyway.
“Poppy?”
She didn’t say anything, so I was sure she was asleep. It was the only reason I had for saying it.
“No one has ever loved me before.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ronan
She’d slept a few hours and woke up just before dawn like a fucking jackrabbit. Ready to go. Full of smiles and optimism.
We’d done an awkward dance this morning around the shower.
“You go.”
“No. You go.”
And we sat on the couch with damp hair and fresh scrubbed faces and I was tormented by a daydream of fucking her in the shower.
This is what you get spending the night holding her in your arms and listening to her breathe.
And if I’d said, lass, I want to fuck you in the shower, she’d go and turn on the water. And I didn’t know which one of us was worse: me for wanting what I had no business wanting.
Or her wanting me.
Either way, I was keeping my distance. I needed some distance.
She’d told me she loved me and I’d dried her eyes after a nightmare and I didn’t know who I was right now. I was losing my edge and my boundaries and none of it felt good.