“Oh, right.” I roll my eyes. “Cavin’s little dungeon.”
“Little dungeon!” Bridget giggles. “What are you talking about, Erin? You talk as if you know all about it.”
“That was the whole thing, wasn’t it? The McCarthys and The Craic. They own this little club. Everybody in Ballyhock worships the fucking ground they walk on because of the damn place.”
“Oh god,” Bridget says. “I forgot about that.” She grins. “We have to find a way in.”
“We?” I shake my head. “Oh no, little sister. There’s no fucking way I’m taking my baby sister into a kink club. That’d be the most irresponsible thing I could possibly do.”
“Oh, for once in your life, Erin!” Bridget says, shaking her head in exasperation. “Dosomethingirresponsible.”
I stare at her in surprise.
Her voice is passionate, raw. And there’s a tone in it that I haven’t heard in a while—something that arrests my attention immediately, making my chest tighten.
“I’m dying, Erin. Nobody wants to say it out loud. Nobody wants to admit it.” She points to herself, her hand trembling slightly. “But I’m dying. And I don’t want to die a virgin.”
I don’t want to tell her that I don’t understand what she’s talking about because I wouldhappilydie a virgin. Sex has never been the prize for me that it seems to be for everyone else.
And my little sister is not losing her virginity in aclub.
“First of all, you have a life-threatening disease,” I say pragmatically, falling back on logic because it’s safer than emotion. “You’re only dying if we don’t treat it. And we’re working on that. We’re going to find a way to treat it. I promise you. You know I don’t promise anything lightly, Bridget.”
“I know.” She says it so softly I almost don’t hear her. “But what if we don’t? What if I don’t?” Her voice cracks. “I want to… I want someone to hold me. I want to be excited around a man. I want to…” She sniffs, swiping at her eyes before the tears can fall. “I want to feel like a woman. Not a girl. I want to feel like awoman, Erin.”
She swipes at her eyes again, and even with tears threatening to spill, she’s beautiful. My god, she’s gorgeous.
I blow out a breath, defeated before I’ve even begun to fight. “You exasperating, beautiful woman.” I shake my head at her. “Are you seriously trying to convince me to bring you to a sex club?Me?”
She taps her chin thoughtfully, a mischievous glint returning to her eyes. “I might be able to get you one of those cards that gets us in…”
“Bridget!”
She’s laughing now, and god, it’s good to hear.
“Well, I can’t just take you in anyway, even if I did want to—which I definitely don’t.” I cross my arms. “You have to know how to get in. You need to know the code. There’s like a secret handshake or something.”
She rolls her eyes at me dramatically. “Well, that’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“Codes. Patterns. Pattern recognition. You’ve never met a password you couldn’t crack. You know that.”
She’s not wrong, but I blow out another breath. “We’re not dressed for it.”
She winks at me, victorious. “That’s easy. I know what you have on under that sweater. And I know what I do too. Anyway, don’t we have, like, bags of new clothes?”
We do. This is true.
“Oh, Bridget.” I groan, rubbing my face. “What am I going to do with you?”
“Take me in?” Her grin is absolutely wicked.
“Okay, calm down.” I sigh. “Great. So… we have outfits we can change into, but that doesn’t solve the actual problem of getting in.”
“Alright.” Bridget leans forward, and there’s a spark in her eye—that old fire I haven’t seen in so long—and it excites me and makes my heart kick against my ribs. I want to give her anything that she wants right now. Anything at all.
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
