Chapter eight
Green-Veined Promises
Cillian
Thecouchisstiff.Unforgiving. A punishment I chose. I stare at the ceiling, counting the hand-cut beams like prayer beads, each one stained with sleepless nights and the ghost of her laughter. It used to echo through here in my dreams. Now she’s just down the hall, wrapped in blankets and silence, and I still can’t sleep.
This house was never mine. Not really. It was hers.Ours.
The old stone stable we used to sneak into, years ago, back when love was easier and the future was a whispered dare. She’d climb up onto the hay bales and hum whatever piece she was rehearsing, fingers dancing in the air like phantom keys. I used to think she looked like a painting—wild curls, flushed cheeks, all light and sound.
She told me once, lying on my chest and staring at the cracked rafters,“One day, I’ll live in a place like this. Books on every wall. Candles lit like prayers. A green quilt, like moss after rain.”
I remembered every word. So I saved it. Rebuilt it from the bones. Stone by stone, floor to rafter. I made her dream real—even when I knew she might never come back. And now she’s here.
I push up slowly, bare feet whispering over the old pine floor. The hallway feels sacred—like walking through memory. My hand rests against the doorframe. She’s curled on her side, sound asleep in my bed, the one I dreamed we would share. The green quilt is pulled to her chin. Her arm is stretched across the mattress like she’s still reaching for me.
I swallow the ache. She doesn’t know what this place means. That I carved our initials into the back of a beam, like I was still seventeen and stupid in love. That I sanded the piano bench by hand, hoping her fingers would one day touch the keys again. That I’ve spent every damn year wishing the door would open and she’d be standing there with nothing but her music and a suitcase and that smile.
I built her a dream. And now she’s sleeping in it like it never belonged to us both. I step back before I ruin it. I’m furious. Furious that I still want her. Furious that I ever stopped pretending I didn’t. Because I never really did. Not truly.
Not the night she left, not the first time I saw her name in a playbill in New York, not when I tried to forget her in someone else’s arms. No one ever looked at me like she did. Like I was a symphony in motion. Like she could hear something beneath the silence.
She still does. Even now. Even after everything. Even after her silence. Her absence. Her choice to walk away. But she came back. That’s what haunts me.
Not a phone call or a letter over the years. She didn’t even go up the manor drive. No, she camehere.Tothisplace. To the old stable turned home, the one I rebuilt from childhood whispers and adolescent dreams. She stole my goddamn car,mycar, parked at my goddamn hotel, where she’s staying on my goddamn dime—and drove straight here like sheknew.
Like some part of her still remembered what this place was to us. And that’s what twists the knife deeper. She didn’t accept my father’s invitation just to escape some married prick who broke her heart in the city.I’ll handle him later, tear him apart slowly, methodically. But this? This was more than heartbreak and bad decisions.
She’s here for something. Something she hasn’t told me yet. BecauseSiobhán Kelleherdoesn’t do anything without a purpose. No, Dublin’s Darling Daughter is much more clever and conniving than that.
What is she running from? And why come home to a man she left behind?
I clench my jaw as I stand in the hallway, eyes on the bedroom door like it might give me answers. The silence on the other side is soft. Peaceful. It makes me want to tear it open and demand she give me the truth—all of it—every secret she’s still keeping behind that guarded smile and the piano-stitched grace she wears like armor.
Instead, I pace. Because if I open that door again tonight, I won’t stop at questions. And I can’t afford to touch her like I used to. Not until I know why she came back. Not until I know if she’s staying.
Thekettleclicksoffwith a soft hiss. It’s early. The kind of golden quiet that hums low through the walls, the scent of toast and chamomile steeping in the air. I set the mug down gently on the counter, next to a plate of buttered brown bread and eggs I barely managed not to burn.
I didn’t sleep. Not really. Not with her in the next room. Inthatroom. Inthatbed. The one I built for her. I tell myself it’s just muscle memory—the way my hands know her favorite tea without thinking, the way I toast the bread the exact right amount, the way I move through the kitchen like I’ve been rehearsing this morning for years.
But the truth is simpler.It’s love.
And when she walks into the room, it hits me like a blow to the chest.That green robe clings to her hips like it was made for my hands to unwrap. Hair down, lashes still heavy from sleep, and lips pink from where she’s bitten them too many times in silence.
Siobhán fucking Kelleher.
“Is that tea I smell, or are you just happy to see me?” she teases, stretching like a goddamn cat before sliding onto one of the stools.
I smirk, barely. “Both.”
She lifts the mug I’ve already set out for her, memory’s a sharp thing. Earl Grey. Touch of honey. Splash of oat milk. And her expression softens for a breath before she shields it with that quick tongue of hers.
“You always did make a mean cuppa,” she says, sipping. “Still trying to seduce women with tea and thoughtful breakfast spreads, O’Dwyer?”
“Just the one,” I say, low and deliberate. “Always just the one.”
Her eyes flick to mine, and there it is — that crack in her armor. The one I’ve always known how to find. But she recovers fast.
