When we reached Lila and Tiernan’s place, she flung the passenger door open without even looking at me. In fact, she waited until her back was to me and she was in front of their door before she spoke.
“Don’t bother trying to contact me again. You’re dead to me.”
I floored the accelerator and was out of there before I had the chance to kidnap her back to the cabin.
Chapter Forty-Three
Tierney
“Tier!Have you seen the breast milk I thawed for Enni?” Lila burst into the kitchen in one of her ballroom dresses, readjusting her diamond earring. “I put it in a jug inside the fridge to defro?—”
With the spoon halfway into my mouth, I choked and spat out my Reese’s Puffs, gagging into my cereal bowl. “Lila! Oh myGod!”
“What?” Her mouth fell open, and she slanted her head, taking in the scene of me, innocently enjoying my cereal at her kitchen island. Well,I had been enjoying. I knew that milk tasted funny.
“This is hysterical!” She clutched her stomach, giggling like a schoolgirl. “How did you not see the colostrum?”
“I thought it was just full-fat milk crust! I don’t drink the reduced stuff because it upsets my stomach.”
“It was in a glass jug.”
“I thought it was one of those fancy glass bottles the milkman brings.” My tongue actually burned with the realization I’d drunk my sister-in-law’s breast milk.
“The milkman?” She looked alarmed. “What year are you living in?!”
I stood up and wobbled to the sink, flipping the faucet on and sticking my tongue under the stream of water. “Jesus Christ, I’m never eating anything from your fridge again. No one can know about this, Lila.”
“No one can know about what?” My brother breezed into the kitchen, snatching my sister-in-law’s waist from behind, planting a kiss on her head. He’d come straight from work and was going to take her to a charity ball.
Tiernan hated dancing. Hated people even more. But Lila loved dancing, and Tiernan loved Lila.
I was still a little shell-shocked to see my hell-raising twin all domesticated. It was bizarre. Like watching a hungry panther sniffing a catnip toy on its back, pawing it with its back legs.
“Tierney had Enni’s breast milk with her cereal.” Lila turned to lock her arms around Tiernan’s neck, giving him a slow kiss. “And now she’s pretending it doesn’t taste good.” She pushed her lower lip out in a pout.
“Don’t listen to her,Gealach,” he crooned, catching her lips in another kiss. He looked genuinely distressed by the prospect that Lila’s feelings were even mildly injured. “Your breast milk is delicious.”
Seriously, why did Tristan Hale miss? I thought he was supposed to be a good shot.
Jokes aside, I pondered that question every day. Something was amiss. Hale had shot me at point-blank range, hiding in the corridor in that Prague apartment. Even a terrible shot wouldn’t have missed. Yet he did. It didn’t make any sense, and it bothered me. I didn’t believe in flukes, and I knew for sure Lady Luck wasn’t with me.
“Enni doesn’t have any complaints,” Lila said. She was the only one who called my nephew that. Everyone else called him Nero.
“That’s because he recognizes greatness when he sees it.”
It had been two weeks since Achilles dropped me off at my brother’s place after bringing me back to life in that cabin. I was still unsettled by the fact he did that for me, but convinced myself it meant nothing. Fixing what he broke was the least he could do.
Now? Now I was feeling a different kind of suffocation.
I was grateful for everything Tiernan and Lila had done for me.
And at the same time, it was a lot.
All of it.
Sharing a roof with a loved-up couple whose love language was screwing on every surface in the house while their baby was napping (found that out the hard way). The way Lila was a busybody with good intentions, always on my ass about physical therapy, swimming as a form of occupational therapy, and eating clean. The way my brother barked at soldiers whose gaze lingered on me for a second too long. I didn’t like being treated like a child.
On top of that, Lila insisted I shouldn’t worry myself about Tyrone or Vello, so neither of them agreed to give me any information about the patriarchs.
