She didn’t look at me the entire time.
“Autumn . . .”
“You’ll call if you need me?” She kissed my cheek, not meeting my eyes, and was out of the apartment within seconds.
Shit.
I gazed across the room at my cell.
There was nothing on this earth that could compel me to call Killian.
Except fear for his little sister’s safety.
What if I was wrong though? I bit my lip. What if my gut was wrong that some guy she’d dumped for manhandling her didn’t know how to back off? Killian had proven he was willing to get his hands dirty to protect someone, and I was sure whatever he dealt out on Autumn’s behalf would be a hundred times worse.
If I didn’t make him aware that there was possibly something to be worried about, and then this guy did turn out to be dangerous, I’d never forgive myself.
And honestly, I knew I was right.
Autumn was acting jumpy, the bruising, the persistent calling, the possibly threatening text . . .
Screw it. I crossed the room and grabbed my cell. My hands shook a little as I pressed speed dial and held the cell up to my ear.
It rang.
He was ignoring me?
I didn’t know why that surprised or hurt me, but it freaking did. Scrolling through my contacts, I dialed his office.
“Good morning, Skyscraper Records, Mr. O’Dea’s office, how may I help?” Eve answered on the second ring.
“Eve, it’s Skylar. I need to speak to O’Dea.”
“Oh, hi, Skylar,” her voice got a little high-pitched with excitement. “It’s great to hear from you.”
“Uh, thanks, you too.”
There was an awkward silence.
“So . . . Is O’Dea there?”
“Oh. Right. Oh . . . well . . . uh . . . Mr. O’Dea is busy. I’ll let him know you called.”
I was being Yasmined? He was actually Yasmining me!
Oh hell no. I said goodbye to Eve, shoved on my boots, grabbed my coat and scarf out of the closet, and locked the apartment on my way out. Indignation that he was being so immature fueled me and I got to the label in record time. No pun intended.
The big guy with the scar stopped me at the bank of elevators. “No ID, no entry.”
Sighing in irritation, I glanced back at the main reception to the woman sitting at the front desk. “Would you call up to Justin at Skyscraper Records to get him to confirm that Mr. O’Dea is expecting me?” I bluffed. “The name is Skylar.”
Luckily, Justin must have assumed he’d missed the memo because he confirmed and the big guy let me pass.
However, as soon as I stepped off that elevator, Justin gave me a strained smile. “Miss Finch, it turns out that Mr. O’Dea—hey!” he yelled after me as I veered to the left, heading down the corridor toward Killian’s office. I hurried my steps, hoping to get there before Justin stopped me.
Eve looked up from her desk as I barreled into view. “Oh, Skylar. You’re here . . . Oh, well, he doesn’t want to be disturbed!” She squeaked as I passed her and pushed open his office door so hard, it slammed open and back into the wall.
“What the—” Killian’s wide eyes shot to me. He had his phone pressed to his ear. “I’m sorry, Xander, I’m going to have to call you back.”
I stood staring at him, arms crossed in defiance as he glared at me while hanging up.
“I’m sorry, Mr. O’Dea, she slipped right by me,” Eve said breathlessly at my back.
“It’s fine, Eve.” He waved at her impatiently. “Close the door, please.”
I stepped out of the way so she could reach in and do as asked.
Killian raised an eyebrow in that pompous way that got on my nerves. “You call this professional? Always with the drama.”
I didn’t flinch at the insinuation. I was no longer going to let him get to me. And well, to be fair, it had been kind of a dramatic entrance. “Well, I couldn’t be sure if you were ignoring me and this can’t wait.”
“I wasn’t ignoring you.” He stood and rounded the desk. He sat casually on it, crossing his ankles. “I was on a conference call. So now that you have my attention, what is so important that it couldn’t wait?”
“Autumn.”
Killian stood up off the desk at the mention of his sister’s name. “What about her?” His concern for her made me not want to hate him.
“You know she broke up with that guy.”
“Darren? Aye, she told me yesterday.”
I let out a shaky breath. “This might sound crazy, but I know it’s not. Autumn came to see me today and I noticed bruising all around her forearm. It looked like finger grips. Like someone had grabbed her. Hard.”
Her brother’s face instantly darkened.
“I’m a pessimist. I think of worst-case scenarios all the time, right? So I ask her about the guy, trying to feel her out.”
“And?”
“She tells me they’ve broken up so I tried to put the bruising to the back of my head. But she’s closed off, and shifty, and we both know that’s not Autumn. Your sister is usually an open freaking book. I know every detail of how she lost her virginity, for God’s sake.”
He winced.
“Not the point, sorry. Point is, she was acting strange and not like herself. And then that guy, Darren, starts calling her cell. She told me to ignore it. But he calls two times more right at the back. Persistent fucker. And she got paler and paler each time he called. Then there was the text. I didn’t get to see it all but what I did see had a threatening air to it. And, O’Dea, she tried to hide it but she looked afraid.”
I’d heard the phrase “stormy expression” before, but I’d never really seen it in action until that moment. Killian looked ready to strike Darren down with lightning bolts from his eyes.
He paced the room in agitation.
“There is a chance I’m wrong, right? Of course, there is. But my gut is telling me something is going on and I thought if some guy is harassing Autumn, it needs to stop.”
“Oh, I’ll take care of it.” His voice rumbled with dark retribution.
And I didn’t care that if I was right and this guy was screwing around with Autumn that Killian would make him pay. A few years ago, I would’ve condemned vengeance. But something had happened to me when I realized my mother’s murderers were probably going to escape justice. I no longer saw the world quite so black and white. There was a darkness in me now.
Just as I’d felt protected knowing that Killian had Welsh threatened so he couldn’t hurt me anymore, I was okay with him doing the same to protect Autumn, Autumn who was better than the two of us combined. She deserved to be protected from the darker parts of human nature.
“I know you’ll take care of it. That’s why I came straight to you.”
Our gazes locked and for a moment, the anger mirrored in our expressions changed to something more complicated, deeper—something that drew us together even as we stood with the entire office between us.
Affinity.
He and I were so alike in so many ways.
I guess I hadn’t realized quite so much until that moment.
“Thank you,” his voice was hoarse, “for telling me.”
I had to clear my throat of the emotion bubbling up out of me. “Well,” I dropped my gaze as I turned to open the door, “I care about Autumn.”
THE NEXT MORNING I WAS pulled out of sleep by a loud banging noise.
It took me a minute to realize someone was banging on my apartment door. Groaning, stumbling out of bed, I pulled on the silk robe Autumn had bought me and yanked open my bedroom door, forgetting in my sleeplike state about the fragility of my wrist.
“Fuck,” I hissed, rubbing it gently.
The banging continued.
“Who is it?!” I yelled, beyond irritated.
“Skylar, open the door!” Autumn called.
Worry yanked me out of my fog and I hurried down the hall. Autumn had obviously opened the door with her k
ey but couldn’t get past the security chain.
As soon as I removed it, she shoved open the door and I had to skitter out of the way. She blew past me, thundering down the hall. I shut the apartment door and followed her into the living area.
“What’s up?” I asked tentatively, because I was beginning to think Killian had told her about my suspicions.
She whirled, her lovely auburn hair spiraling around her before settling flawlessly across her shoulders. Seriously, how did it do that?
“You told him,” she huffed, drawing me out of my sleepy thoughts.
“Huh?” I pretended ignorance.
“Skylar, this isn’t a game.”
I tensed. “What happened?”
“What you must have known would happen. He interrogated me, I can’t lie to him, and so he tracked down Darren and got into a bloody fight.”
Worry shot through me. “Is he okay?”
“No, Killian beat the shit out of him.”
“I’m not talking about Darren,” I cried. “I couldn’t care less if your manhandling, stalkery ex-boyfriend got what was coming to him. Is Killian okay?”
“My brother is fine. A neighbor called the police but Darren, surprise, surprise, refused to press charges.” She crossed her arms over her chest and studied me like she’d never seen me before. “You guessed correctly, okay. Darren became controlling. He slapped me during an argument and when I tried to leave, he wouldn’t let go of my arm. I screamed bloody murder and he let me go. He lives in a flat with thin walls apparently. He tried to apologize but obviously, I broke up with him. He was calling me constantly and he was saying things that were . . . unsettling.”
“Stalker-like things?”
“Yes. But . . . I knew if I told Killian, he’d do this and worse. That’s why I didn’t tell him and even though I knew you knew something was up, I never would’ve thought you’d team up with Killian, let alone be okay with him going after Darren.”
“You told me yourself that Killian has gone after anyone who has hurt you in the past.”
“Yes, usually by going after their career or giving them a stern, threatening, wordy warning by using his father’s connection to the criminal bloody underworld. But no one has ever physically hurt me before until now, and I knew he’d react physically in return. And that’s not okay. And I can’t believe you encouraged it! That’s not justice, Skylar. It’s revenge!”
I scowled at her in disbelief. “And all the other stuff he’s done to protect you isn’t an eye for an eye? Of course it is, Autumn. Just because he didn’t use his fists doesn’t mean it wasn’t revenge. There are no gray areas with revenge. And you know what, I don’t see him putting the fear of God into a guy who hit you and was set on harassing you as revenge. It was a threat, and it’s one that will save you from living in fear from some nutjob. So, yeah, I’m okay with that.”
She deflated a little but I winced at the look in her eye. At the pity. “Shelley at the label told me about the ‘police’ sketch. And I know that boy who attacked you ended up in hospital. I can only imagine that Killian’s dad had something to do with it. He hates his father but he wields the man like a bloody battle-ax whenever it suits him. How can you be okay with that?”
I flushed, knowing deep down that she was right to question me, but angry that she would. “Because that ‘boy’ followed me until he had me all alone, broke my wrist, and held me to the ground with every intention of raping me. I fought back but if that boy who was with him hadn’t stepped in, he would have raped me. I wouldn’t have been able to stop him on my own. The way Darren made you feel frightened and powerless . . . imagine that and then magnify it by a million.”
Tears gleamed in her eyes before she dropped her gaze.
“I left the States when they told me they’d run out of leads in my mother’s murder. The guys who did it weren’t a couple of idiots off the streets. They were organized, masked gunmen, after a painting I wish I’d never bought, and they left no trace of themselves. Like ghosts. The only lead we had was that painting, and it’s never shown up in the public art world. So I have to live with the fact that I’ll likely never get justice for my mom and Bryan. And that kind of anger does something to a person. What Jonathan Welsh did to me only compounded it. I don’t want that to ever happen to you.”
Her eyes flew up to mine and her tears slipped free.
“You befriended me, no questions asked. I wasn’t some project of your brother’s you needed to help with. You wanted to help me. And you have, Autumn. I spent eighteen months disappearing because it was easier to be invisible than to face all the shit that had happened. But you helped bring me back. And it’s hard and it’s every day, but I am healing.” I let out a shaky breath. “You’re important to me. I would do anything to help Killian make sure that life never changes you the way it has changed me and the way it has changed him. Anything. Even if that makes me a bad guy.”
She nodded, wiping the tears from her cheeks as she walked toward me. “You’re not a bad guy, Skylar. Neither is my brother. You’re both just . . .” Her lips trembled and more tears spilled down her face. “You’re both lost. And me too. But it’s a different kind of lost. I’ll find my way, I know I will. But I’m scared for you and Killian. I’m scared that what you both need is each other, and you’re going to mess up so badly, you’ll be worse off than ever.”
I listened to her heels clack on the floorboards as she walked away. I heard the front door close behind her.
Only then did I let my own tears fall.
* * *
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN a car with someone and the silence between you is so excruciatingly awkward, an image of opening the door and throwing yourself out of the moving vehicle plays over and over in your head?
If so, you’ll know exactly how I was feeling as Killian drove us through Glasgow to a place unknown. He’d called and asked me to have lunch with him. He said, “We need to talk.”
That could’ve meant anything, so I was feeling a little nervous as I got into his car. We shared a hello and then I saw the bruising on his knuckles as he drove away.
“That must’ve been a helluva punch,” I observed.
“Believe me, I wanted to do worse.” His bruised hand clenched around the steering wheel.
“Autumn actually didn’t tell me what the extent of the damage was.”
“Swollen eye, broken nose. Nothing he won’t recover from.”
“Your sister said someone called the cops. How did you get Darren to drop charges against you?”
He shrugged. “I’m persuasive. And anyway . . . he’s a coward who thought he’d found someone he could manipulate in my sister. When she proved him wrong by breaking up with him, he tried to scare her into doing what he wanted. As soon as he realized he’d messed with the wrong sister, he practically pissed his trousers.” He shook his head. “Autumn knows how to fucking pick them.”
Feeling indignant on my friend’s behalf, I snapped, “It’s not her fault guys have been assholes to her.”
Killian threw me an impatient look. “I didn’t say it was. She’s openhearted and too trusting for her own good. Unfortunately, she’s had the bad luck of meeting only men who want to take advantage of that.”
“Well, hopefully, next time will be different.”
“It needs to be,” he replied. “I’m afraid meeting another arsehole might change her.”
“You won’t let that happen.”
This time his lips parted in surprise when he looked at me. Killian O’Dea was many things, including imperfect, but I believed in his love for his sister. That belief seemed to unsettle him and it was the last thing said between us until ten minutes later (it felt like ten hours!) when my curiosity prompted me to ask where we were going.
“Jaconelli’s. It’s a favorite of Autumn’s. She thought you might like it. It’s kind of a fifties American diner throwback.”
“Okay.”
And there was that damn silence again. When were we going t
o “talk”?
Killian cleared his throat. “It was in the film Trainspotting.”
“Huh?”
“Jaconelli’s. It was in Trainspotting.” He gave me a brief, questioning look before returning his attention to the road. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen Trainspotting?”
“Nope, I have not.”
“Please tell me you’ve at least heard of it?”
I chuckled at his disbelief. “I’ve heard of it. Ewan McGregor, right?”
“Oh, well, if it’s got Ewan McGregor in it, of course you’ve heard of it.”
I sniffed haughtily at his sarcasm. “I know it’s based on an Irvine Welsh novel.”
His lips twitched. “That’s something at least. Maybe I’ll forgive you for having not seen the film.”
“I thought it was set in Edinburgh?”
“It is. Little known fact: most of the scenes were shot in Glasgow.”
I smiled. I liked him like this. Chatting about nonsense. This was how he was when we were songwriting. My smile disappeared as I remembered his unkindness at the label. It was like he became a completely different person as soon as we walked into that place.
Just like that, silence fell between us again.
Five minutes later Killian parked off the main road in Maryhill but walked us back toward it. It was a typical fall day here, the rain falling hard and fast and slickening the sidewalks. It would all have been a mass of gray if not for the many vehicles passing by, the typical red sandstone architecture, cigarette stubs, and the multicolored blobs of chewing gum and trash that had cemented itself to the sidewalk over the years.
I’d never been to this part of Glasgow before and tried to take in as much as I could from beneath my umbrella. It seemed to be a busy thoroughfare for the city, with lots of traffic passing through. Businesses stood arm and arm below red sandstone apartments and offices. We strolled past stores on the street and stopped beneath a white sign that said Café D’Jaconelli. It was still early for lunch, so when we walked in, lowering our dripping umbrellas—or “brollies,” as Autumn called them—there were a couple of booths open.
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