Not anymore. Not like when I was younger.
Back then, the overload would’ve had me curled up in a corner, rocking, crying, lost—praying my mother wouldn’t lose her temper at me again for being “difficult.”
A man at the counter leans back, loud enough for half the bakery to hear. His Dublin accent is rough as gravel.
“Aye, but theMcCarthys—word is, they might not be untouchable anymore. Somebody’s making them bleed.”
My spine goes rigid.
I don’t want to hear it. Don’t want to care.
I don’t go to St. Albert’s anymore. The McCarthys are dead to me.
A ripple of noise rises—some curious, some pitying, some just plain nosy.
Good. Let the McCarthys fucking bleed.
I can’t think about Cavin McCarthy without my pulse kicking up like a traitor.
His hand around my waist. The heat of him pressed against me, every hard plane of his body against my softness. His voice in my ear rough, commanding. The way I wanted to lean into him. Let him carry me. Let him?—
Christ, what’s wrong with me?
My thighs clench. Unbidden. Unwanted.
He made me cry in the school toilets more times than I can count. He called me “Little Miss Perfect,” among other things. He made me feel like something broken and wrong.
One moment of forced chivalry doesn’t change that.
Doesn’t change how small he made me feel. Or how I apparently also shivered when he touched me.
My body doesn’t seem to care that he’s the enemy. Doesn’t care that he hurt me. It just remembers his hands. His heat. The way my body fit against his like?—
Christ, what iswrongwith me?
He’snota hero. He’snotsafe. And I need to remember that.
I fix my eyes on the glass case of pastries, pretending indifference.
I can feel Darragh’s unreadable stare.
“Do they know who did it yet?”
“Not that I know of. You were there.” His voice is flat, knowing.
My throat tightens. “So?”
“So you’re shaking.”
I am. Dammit. I press my hands flat against my thighs.
“The McCarthys are no friends of yours,” he says, quieter now.
“No.” My voice sounds hollow. “They’re not. But the residents of Ballyhock adore them, don’t they?”
“Aye.”
The golden ones. The untouchables.
