Page 193 of Carnal Wagers

My brothers slipped past us with quiet steps, and I almost missed their exit.

“Brody,” I called out. “Get it started.”

“Get what started?” Alizé asked.

The answer stuck to my tongue as the door clicked shut with a deafening toll. How did I approach this without hurting her?

“It’s Maeve, isn’t it? Oh no. Please, Cillian.”

The oppressiveness of this issue hung heavy between us. It showed in the tired lines of her face, in the emotion she kept at bay behind the shaky smiles and watery eyes, and in the way she averted her gaze from direct eye contact.

“Please what, love?”

She shimmied her head in quick, furtive movements.

“I don’t…” She faltered. “I don’t know.”

She twisted her fingers together in front of her, and her knuckles bleached of color. The sight of her anguish threatened to spear me to the wall. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t take away the hurt and confusion Maeve’s betrayal caused her, but I could be there to help soothe the pain.

With effort, I slowly got up and lugged my drained body around the bed, rolling the monitor after me. It beeped with urgency in protest, mirroring the increasing wobble in my legs with each lumbered step. I pried her fingers apart and set them over my good hand. Quickly, pink flushed back into her fingertips.

“Hold me instead. Squeeze me. Let me take your pain.”

“You’re already hurt.”

Like that mattered.

With slow movements, in case she refused, I crawled into bed with her. To my relief, her body immediately found mine. We curled into each other under the rustle of stiff sheets, like every point of contact meant one less vulnerability left exposed.

“Let it out, síbhean,” I whispered. “Rage, cry, scream. I’ll hold you through it all and piece you back together if that’s what you need. You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

Chapter 48

With my face buried in his chest, I breathed in the musky warmth of his skin. It wrapped me in a cocoon where our problems didn’t reach, where my pain only murmured instead of screamed, and where I pretended nothing had changed.

It had though.

As much as I tried to imagine us back in bed in his condo, like any other morning, the world conspired to burst the bubble. There were the sharp beeps of the heart monitor. The harsh rustle of unfamiliar sheets. The stiff achiness of my body. The pacing footsteps beyond the door. The foreign smells. Each one roused me back to reality and brought it all back in vivid colors.

From the poison that stopped the heart of the man I loved. To the friend I shot twice, and the serial killer who stabbed me and regretted it. There was her betrayal but also her devotion. My fear that she was dead. My worry that she wasn’t. My anger. My sympathy. All my hate and love. My hope and dread. It all swirled together into a melting pot of warring confusion.

I thumped my head against Cillian’s breastbone, but it did nothing to set my thoughts straight. I knew what I should be feeling after discovering the person closest to me hid a monster, but wasn’t I one too? Wasn’t Cillian? My brother? Erel?

Did the truth burn because of Maeve’s crimes? Or because she concealed it from me? Was I softening with a desire to forgive her because of what her mother put her through, or because of Maeve herself and everything we had been through together? A gritted groan scratched a path up my throat and burst out.

“You should know, she’s in surgery.” Cillian’s words shot through me, freezing me solid.

I tried to piece together his possible motives for revealing that detail unprompted.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Didn’t you want to know?”

I gripped the front of his hospital gown and pulled him closer. The wound at my back sparked to life and stabbed up through my gut. I winced, trying to catch my breath.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” he whispered.

He caressed my hair. The softness of his touch, in contrast to the violence he was capable of, nearly broke the dam of my self-control. While I knew he’d never do anything to me, Maeve was another story entirely. She might not have been innocent, but she was like a sister to me, and maybe I’d failed her by not looking more closely at her difficult relationship with her mother. Maybe if I hadn’t been so focused on my own meager problems, I would have seen she was suffering in silence.