“Time doesn’t matter. Not with us. Why would Rory have latched on to me the first day we met if it wasn’t meant to be? Why the fuck was Dean different for Tiernan from the start? Why did I know it was my job to take care of Ollie when he got hurt? Dean was his friend, but even if I didn’t admit it, I knew he was mine even back then. So yeah, Rory knows with you. What matters is if you’ll let all those social constructs get in the way.”
“No,” the answer rushes out. There’s no doubt in my mind about it. “I just…want to be good for him. I don’t want him to get hurt because of me. Last night…I didn’t know if I could reach him.”
Cillian sighs, glances my way, looks at the road again. “But you did. That’s what matters, and the fact that you reached him tells me everything I need to know. It should tell you too. Rory has chosen you, even if he doesn’t get the extent of it yet, even if he doesn’t understand what it means. It won’t always be easy.”
“I don’t give a shit about easy. I just want him.”
“Good,” Cillian says. “That’s good. Rory didn’t know what it felt like to be loved before us—I assume his mom loved him, but she didn’t know how to show it, couldn’t get out of her pain enough to love him the way he deserved—but now he does. From all of us…and you. It means indulging him when the time is right, but reeling him in when it isn’t, and the ability to figure out when that is. If you can handle that, then I’m glad he has you. If you can’t, walk away right now, before he gets in even deeper.”
Maybe this is where a normal person would run, but thenagain, I probably should have done that a long time ago. But I didn’t then, and I won’t now. Rory is it for me. Maybe I love him. I’m not sure it’s less confusing for me than it is for him. I just know there’s no walking away. “I can handle it. I want to handle it. He’s not too much. He’s just Rory. My Rory.” I take a deep breath. “Our Rory.”
I swear I feel Cillian relax, feel the tension in the air around us dissipate.
“Our Rory,” he replies, then asks, “Tell me about you. Who are you? Don’t leave anything out.”
“Before we do that, there’s something I have to tell you.” I can’t lie to him about this anymore. If we’re doing this, I want everything out in the open.
“What is it?”
“It was me…the night Rory got robbed. He knows. It’s not a secret between us. I hate that it was me, but if it hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have him now.”
Cillian is quiet for so long, I worry I did the wrong thing, that I should have kept it to myself.
“Why are you telling me?” he finally asks.
“Because I don’t want to keep secrets from you. I want…more than that between us. If we’re both going to have him, then I want nothing but the truth between us.”
He looks my way, then back to the road. “Thank you for telling me.”
“It got us both hard, if that helps.”
He laughs. “Fucking Rory. Fucking you too, I guess.”
I smile in a way I never expected to do, alone in a car with Cillian O’Shea.
And then I tell him everything about me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Rory
In the threeweeks since shit went down at Bruce’s place, things have calmed down. Shai stays at our house most nights, and when he doesn’t, when Kat needs him and he goes back to the trailer, I go with him.
I’m way too fucking obsessed with him to spend a night without him if I don’t have to. I would literally never let him out of my sight if I could, which Cil teases me about, but he’s chill about Shai now. The two of them get along well, and honestly, there’s nothing that feels better to me, nothing that fills me up the way it does to see Shai and Cillian spend time together, or hell, even Shai and Ollie. It makes me feel…how do I put it…settled, in this way I never have before. It’s confusing, but everything about me is, so I just go with it.
“Kat causing Shai any issues?” Cillian asks me as we drive home from school. While campus is close enough to walk, it’s too fucking cold this time of year.
“Fucking always. I feel bad for her. I know she loves him, but she’s shit at showing it, and half the time when I’m with her, I want to strangle her.”
Cillian chuckles. “It’s probably not a good idea to strangle your boyfriend’s mom.”
Which sucks. And probably makes me the world’s shittiestperson.
Conan used his contacts to ensure things were straight after Bruce’s disappearance and that cops didn’t come sniffing, but we haven’t told Kat what happened to him or that the trailer belongs to them now. Shai’s scared she’ll fuck it up somehow.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, changing the subject.
“Always,” Cil replies.
