But I feel it. God help me, I feel it. I love my wife.
I lift my head from my hands when I hear the soft pad of bare feet outside in the hallway.
Saoirse stands in the doorway, her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders. She's so beautiful.
Her eyes move over the desk—the papers, my phone face-down, my hands still flat against the wood—and she crosses to me.
I reach up and pull her down onto my lap.
I can tell her everything right now—the Sullivans, the docks, the threat, the plan—all the things weighing so heavily on my mind. I’ll tell her that sending her away is the only way to ensure her safety and that I'd rather tear myself apart than let harm touch her.
Her free hand comes up and her fingers trace my jaw—hesitant, then firmer. "Come to bed," she says.
I don't answer with words. I stand cradling her in my arms with her head tucked under my jaw. Her body fits effortlessly against mine.
She wraps her arms around my neck as I carry her out of the office, down the hall, up the stairs.
She'll be safe. That's what matters. I'll be here working to annihilate the enemy while she's a hundred miles away in a house I've secured, surrounded by people I trust.
I press my mouth to her temple.
I have to tell her. I know I have to tell her.
But right now, in the dark of our bedroom, the truth can wait one more day.
Chapter 13
Saoirse
I don't want it to be true. I don't want any of what I overheard tonight to be true. I want there to be some other explanation. But Declan’s miles away. His head, his heart—neither are with me anymore.
Still, I try to pull him back to me.
I turn toward him in the dark and press my mouth to the hinge of his jaw as I slide my palm down the ridged terrain of his abdomen and lower—a deliberate offering, an attempt to call him back into his body, and intome.
He responds.
His hands find my hips, my waist, the hem of my shirt. He pulls it over my head, cups my breasts, runs his thumbs across my nipples until they peak and my breath fractures. His mouth follows—from my throat, down to the tender spot between my neck and shoulder, and on to the curve of my breast. His mechanics are flawless.
That's the word my mind selects, and I wish it hadn't. Flawless. Not urgent, not desperate, not the raw, starving collision of the kitchen counter or the shaking tenderness of ourfirst time. Flawless the way a machine is flawless—executing without error, producing the correct output, delivering exactly the right pressure on my clit and the right angle inside me to tip me over the edge. I come with his name on my lips, my walls clenching around him, nails scoring his shoulders.
When I open my eyes, his gaze is fixed on a point past my shoulder. A thousand-yard stare. His body is buried inside mine while his mind runs calculations I'm not cleared for.
He finishes shortly after—a controlled, quiet climax muffled against my neck. Even the sound of it is wrong. Rationed. He pulls out and rolls onto his back. His hand rests on my hip—a perfunctory gesture.
I lie beside him. Naked, still damp, the thrill of my orgasm fading fast. I have never felt more alone. Not on the street. Not on the thin, hard mattress of a shelter. Not in the back seat of an unlocked car at three in the morning. Those were the loneliness of absence—no one there, no one coming. This is the loneliness of presence. Six inches of mattress between his hip and mine, and he is already gone.
I put my hand on his sternum, over his heart.I'm here—are you?
He covers my hand without a glance my way. Pats it once. Absentminded. The way you acknowledge a dog nudging your knee while you're reading.
I pull my hand back.
My body knows this feeling before my mind finds the language. The feeling of someone going through the motions of keeping you while already making arrangements to let you go. I've lived it fourteen times. Different kitchens, different bedrooms, different adults who tucked me in and made the call in the morning.
I know this language.
Temporary placement. For your own safety. Until we find something more permanent.
