Sean’s eyes spark, but he says nothing. Just lets me keep talking, as if we have all the time in the world, as if hewantsto hear all of this.
"He's twice my age. And my father wanted to arrange the marriage before Siobhan was even cold in her grave." The bitterness in my voice surprises even me. "Desmond talked him out of it. Said I needed time to grieve. But I knew the truth—I didn't matter to them. Not really. I was just... an asset. Something to be managed or married off."
"Maeve—"
"And now they're all dead, and I'm alone, and I don't know what I'm supposed to feel." I look up at him. "Should I miss them? Should I grieve them? Because I do, but I'm also... angry. So angry at them for making me feel like I was nothing."
Sean pulls me close again, and I let myself sink into him. "You're not nothing," he says fiercely. "You're strong and capable and braver than you know. Your family did you a disservice, but that doesn't make you who you are."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's true." He pulls back to look at me. "You've survived things that would break most people. You're learning to fight, to protect yourself. You stood up to the Council today—do you know how few people have the courage to do that?"
"I was terrified."
"But you did it anyway. That was brave."
His words wrap around me like a blanket, warm and comforting. For the first time since I can remember, maybe in my whole life, someone sees me—really sees me. Not as a burden or an asset or something fragile to be protected, but as a person. As someone with worth.
He cups my face with both hands now, his green eyes intense. "You are so much more, Maeve. So much more than you know."
The air between us shifts, charged with electricity. We're close, so close, and I can see the moment he realizes it too. See the moment he starts to pull back.
"Maeve, we shouldn't?—"
"Why not?" I search his face. "Why do you keep pushing me away when we both want this?"
He closes his eyes, and I can see the war raging inside him. The want versus the guilt. The desire versus his conviction that he's not good enough for me.
"I'm trying to do the right thing here," he says, his voice strained.
"The right thing is being honest, isn’t it? About what you want. About what you feel." I lean closer. "I know you feel something for me, Sean. I know you do."
"Of course I do." The words burst out of him. "Christ, Maeve, I feel things for you I've never felt for anyone. It scares the hell out of me. You scare the hell out of me."
My heart races. I feel like I can’t breathe."Why?"
He doesn't answer, just looks at me with those tortured eyes, and I realize he genuinely believes he's poison.
That he'll ruin me just by being close to me.
19
SEAN
I'm still holding her when she finishes talking, her words hanging in the air between us. She's told me everything—about her family, about how they treated her, about the marriage her father tried to arrange. About feeling like she never mattered.
And something in my chest cracks wide open.
I've killed men. I've hurt people without remorse. I've done things that would make most people sick. But hearing the pain in Maeve's voice, seeing the vulnerability on her face, knowing that the people who should have protected her instead made her feel worthless—it touches something in me that I didn't know existed. Something that wants to hunt down every person who ever made her feel less than she is and make them pay for it.
Except most of them are already dead.
She’s got that look on her face again—the one that I know is the precursor to me doing something fucking stupid, like kissing her again. The look that makes me want to unravel her, to finish what we started on the balcony at that goddamned party, that makes me want to make herminein reality. And when she askswhyin that plaintive voice, with that sound of need that makes my chest ache and my cock throb, I can’t stop myself.
I should say something. Should tell her not to want me, that I'm not worth it, that she deserves better. But the words won't come because I'm looking at her—at this brave, broken, beautiful woman—and all I can think is that I want her.
I want her so badly, it's consuming me.
