She shook her head. “I’ll let you have it for two, and you need to renew it.”
Pouting at her did nothing. “I always forget!”
“It’s not like you pay fines,” she said in exasperation, then laughed.
“I know. But I might want to reread it.” After I was checked out and done talking with her about her five dogs and her husband and daughter and everything they’d all been up to since the last time we spoke, I took my book and got lost flipping through pages as I stood near the front doors. My thumb drifted to my mouth as I read, and I bit at my knuckle in between turning pages. Someone bumped me and giggled out a “sorry, Dr. Mifflin.” I glanced up from chapter three and almost died; it was getting dark outside.
My heart jumped. “Oh no. I told him I’d meet him in a half hour.”
I searched my pockets for my phone and it wasn’t there, which wasn’t abnormal. I frequently set it down and forgot where. But usually I had alarms set to keep me moving through my day. I checked my watch and my lecture had ended over an hour ago. Sighing, I closed my eyes.
Well, there was one attractive man I’d never see again. I walked to the door and banged my head lightly against the glass before I pushed it open and went outside. I’d learned to live with my proclivities for the most part, but when it came to my social life, I was my own greatest enemy. I would try Murphy’s anyway. Maybe if I hurried, they would still be there. People could drink for a while if they had friends with them. I rushed across campus.
When I exited the arched stone gate in the fence to the wide sidewalk on the west side of the grounds, I started in the direction of Murphy’s, which was only a ten-minute walk if I didn’t mess around. The difference between campus and the rest of Manhattan was always a shock to the system—the street was packed with cars, I had to dodge people on the sidewalk, and the buildings blocked too much of the sky and made me feel hemmed in. My book was heavy in my hand as I took off at a light jog. Just outside the front doors of the pub, which was on the ground floor of a redbrick building tall enough it made me dizzy if I looked toward the top—I stopped. I had an abrupt thought about what I’d been reading and thumbed through pages to the appendix.
“Hey, you. Yeah you, Professor Prick.”
“Actually, I’m a doctor.” Blinking, I glanced up in time to catch a glimpse of a face that was familiar, though I couldn’t place it, and a fist to the cheek that sent my reading glasses flying. My face exploded in pain. I fell backward onto my ass. Hard hands on my chest hurt as I was shoved down. The back of my head hit the pavement and I saw flashing lights for a second. Sharp agony ricocheted through my skull, and then my attacker landed a knee in my gut. “You think it’s funny to fuckin’ ignore people who take the time to come see you talk? You need to learn to shut your mouth.”
“Wait, do you want me to speak or not? You don’t make much sense.” Shaking my head, I clutched at his thigh and tried to catch a breath but coughed instead. He leaned in harder and landed another punch on my side. Groaning, I tried to curl that direction as I took another punch, but there was nothing I could do with the knee in my gut. I began to panic and gasp, and then, somehow, the man was yanked off me. I closed my eyes and drew my legs up to protect myself while I rolled to the side, coughing and hacking as I tried to suck in a deep breath.
2
CILLIAN SHAUGHNESSY
There weretimes when I wondered what Fallon was jabbering about. His voice alone gave me a headache. I glared at him from where we sat at a high table in a dingy, shite Irish pub named Murphy’s, each with a drink clasped in our hand. I had a whiskey because I wasn’t an Irishman without one, while Aspen and Fallon had a pint. Rowen, wanker that he was, had a Sprite with a twist of lemon, which still didn’t taste quite like red lemonade from home, but he insisted on drinking it. He’d never liked whiskey to begin with, but he’d said something about wanting to be professional for the professor.
I didn’t know why he was making a fuss. Mifflin was hot, in anI’d like to fuck him over that desk at the front of his lecture hallway, but he seemed to be away with the fairies most of the time. He skipped from one subject to another, then after a reminder from his wee assistant, he went back to a previous point he’d mentioned so he could finish it off.
“This guy is taking forever. Where is he?” Fallon asked.
Aspen said something to Fallon that was too quiet for me to hear, but it was probably along the lines of “knock off the whining.” Fallon whispered something back to Aspen that had him shaking his head.
Fallon was the youngest out of our group, barely twenty-four, but he was a Killough Company legacy. At least, that’s what the boss, Sloan Killough, called him. His father was in the Company, and his older brothers had earned important roles. Killough had given us the job of taking Fallon under our wing because he said he’d never learn right under the supervision of his brothers, but I didn’t know why he bothered pawning him off on us. Newbies either shite their pants when they took their first life, or they handled the act with a cool head. We hadn’t figured out which one Fallon would be yet.
“I’m telling the truth,” Fallon said, taking a big sip from his double pint. The tall glass was massive, and unlike the rest of us, Fallon was smaller. He looked his age, too, with big, innocent blue eyes and a handsome unscarred face. His hair hung loose in blond waves around his shoulders, and he was the spitting image of his eldest brother, Padraig.
Nevertheless he was a mean son of a bitch; we’d seen him in action. He had a few MMA championships under his belt, and he’d worked his way around the underground fighting circuit. Once I’d won ten grand on him. I’d learned to always bet on him when it came to a fight. Didn’t mean I had to like him, though. He was a motor mouth, never shut his gob. He’d been telling a story earlier about something a nobody said to him, as if we gave a shite. “He came up to me and said that. For real.”
My mouth twisted with the effort to hold in my irritation.
Rowen’s gaze landed on me and he winced. “Fallon,houl yer whisht,” he warned quietly, but that didn’t seem to stop him.
Fallon frowned and dropped his glass onto the small, round table, some of the Guinness sloshing over the edges. Waste of beer if you asked me. “What?”
“He said shut the feck up,” I snapped, pointing a finger at him. “Ye’re seven shades of shite, yebuck eejit. No one wants to hear yer rubbish.”
“I would’ve said it politer.” Rowen chuckled and took a sip of his drink, checking his watch after he swallowed.
“Ye already did and he didn’t listen.” I slapped my palm on the table and grabbed my whiskey, chugging the rest before slamming the glass down again. “If he wants to learn how to be a Killough man, he needs to shut the feck up and take notes, not open his fat mouth.”
“Charismatic as always.” Rowen chuckled, but then sighed, checking his watch again. I didn’t know many blokes who didn’t just use their phone for the time, but that watch had belonged to my great-grandfather.
Da had given the watch to Rowen before we left Dundalk to go to Dublin. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit how annoyed I was that it went to Rowen because it was afamilyheirloom—Rowen wasadopted—and I was the oldest. He wasn’t related to Da by anything but a piece of paper. But Rowen also hadn’t fought with Da about his sexuality like I had before I’d skipped town. Hell, he didn’t even know Rowen liked men’s arses. At least I enjoyed a bit of pussy, too, but Rowen only did blokes. If Da knew.... Well, that watch would’ve gone to my younger brother, Eamon. He liked pussy just fine, and even had a longtime girlfriend who’d followed him from Ireland to New York City after Killough offered us a job here.
“Ye’re the nice one,” I muttered, raising my hand for another whiskey. The woman behind the bar, a petite blonde with a great rack and tiny waist, gave me a flirty smile and nodded. I didn’t imagine the way she pouted her lips at me. She had the kind of mouth that would look grand around my cock. But I had to admit, so did that professor. He might be a bit funny in the head, but he had a fine body, with round arsecheeks I’d love to sink my cock between.
“Where is he? He should be here by now.” Rowen rose from the tall chair and walked toward the front of the pub, glancing out the floor-to-ceiling window that had the name of the establishment printed on it.
