“Everyone? Who’s everyone?”
“Your brothers think I’m a distraction. Your mother thinks I’m a stray. Aoife Sullivan thinks I’m an inconvenience. And…and…” I look at him directly. “Twenty million dollars is not nothing, Cillian.”
“No. It’s not nothing.” He doesn’t pretend it is, and I’m grateful for that. “But it’s also not everything. Money is replaceable. Deals can be remade.”
“What happens when you realize the costs are too much?”
He processes that. I watch the slight tightening around his eyes, the way his hands go still on his thighs.
“You’re asking when I’m going to throw in the towel,” he says. “When I’m going to say that this marriage isn’t worth the trouble. That’s what you’re actually asking.”
My throat closes. I don’t answer, which is its own answer.
“It’s not going to happen.” Flat. Absolute. “Not for twenty million. Not for a hundred million. Not for my mother’s approval or my brothers’ respect or any deal in this city.”
It’s the right thing to say. I know it’s the right thing to say. But there’s something sitting in the middle of my chest that his words can’t reach, some cold and certain part of me that has been tallying the evidence, and it won’t be reasoned away.
I look at his face. He means it. I can see he means it.
“I’m tired,” I whisper. The word doesn’t cover it. I’m tired of trying so hard. Tired of calculating my worth. Tired of the math never adding up.
“Then let’s go to bed.” He stands, drawing me up with him.
He leads me to the bedroom, finds one of his t-shirts and hands it over, then pulls back the covers and waits until I’m settled before climbing in beside me.
He pulls me against him, his arm heavy across my waist, and I lie there in the dark while his breathing evens out.
I lay there in the quiet listening to all the voices: Declan’s voice. Ronan’s voice. Aoife’s voice. Kathleen’s voice. My own little, nagging voice in the back of my head.
I have a feeling that this is how relationships crumble. With little cracks that progressively widen. You care for someone—love them, because I’m sure that’s what I feel for Cillian. I love him. But you hurt them, and you keep hurting them until the love isn’t enough to cover the damage anymore.
Maybe the kindest thing I could do—the only genuinely unselfish thing I’ve done since I walked through his door—would be to stop making him pay for me.
Chapter 15
Cillian
We have a meeting with the Romano’s at nine.
I arrive to find Declan and Ronan already seated, the Romano representatives across from them. The deal is good—better than the Sullivan arrangement, cleaner, fewer political strings.
I should be focused. I attempt to run the numbers in my head while the lawyers talk, but my mind keeps wandering to the image of Nora wearing that hollow smile.
I check my phone during a break. Nothing from her.
Declan pulls me aside near the window. “You’re distracted.”
“I’m fine.” I lie.
I’m not fine. I can’t figure out how to get through to my wife. She wears so much armor. There are so many walls surrounding her. How do I even start chipping away at them? I don’t suppose being away from her from dusk till dawn is helping. I need to spend more time with her.
“You keep checking your phone.”
“Drop it.”
He crosses his arms. “Domestic bliss not all it’s cracked up to be?”
“I said drop it.”
