Page 66 of Faithless Vows

Beside me, Finn shifts, his shoulder brushing mine. “Your grandda asked me to stay near the shed while you were in there,” he says quietly. “Wanted someone close by for when you came out. Just in case you needed anything.”

I turn my head to look at him and find him already watching me. “I’m glad you were there, Finn.”

“You all right?” he asks quietly.

No… yes… I don’t know.It seems to change by the second. I look down at my hands, clenched together in my lap, and give a slow shake of my head.

I feel Finn’s hand find mine, warm against the cold. “Did he hurt you?”

I let out a breath that trembles on the way out. “Yes.” I keep my eyes on his hand over mine. “He said he came all this way to see me. To make it right.” My mouth twists. “And for a second, I thought…”

“What?” Finn asks softly.

Heat rises in my face, and I look back out at the water. “Nothing worth having thought.”

The wind lifts my hair and blows it across my cheek. I lift my free hand and tuck it back with unsteady fingers. “He admitted it,” I say. “Not only that woman. Others. More than one.” The words scrape on the way out. “And then,” I say, my voice starting to shake again, “he noticed I wasn’t wearing my ring and accused me of already looking for my next husband.” The words hang there between us, and I wish I could snatch them back the second they leave my mouth. Shame burns through me at having said them out loud. “I hate that he can still do this to me,” I say, my voice breaking anyway.

Finn goes still beside me, his hand tightening over mine. “I know.”

“I thought I was stronger than this.”

“You are.”

I press my lips together. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

“No,” he says quietly. “Lannie, you’re—”

The rest is cut off by the sickening crack of something striking bone. Finn pitches sideways off the wall and hits the frozen ground hard.

I’m on my feet before I even know I’ve moved. “Finn—” The scream barely gets out before a hand clamps over my mouth from behind. I thrash hard, trying to wrench free, trying to get to him, but Ronin is there, one arm locking around me as he hauls me back against him.

My eyes fly to Finn. He lies crumpled on the frozen ground beside the wall, and even in the fading light I can see the blood at his temple. Panic tears through me. I fight harder, twisting against Ronin’s grip, trying to kick free. “Finn,” I try to say against his hand. It comes out broken and useless.

“Time to go, Alannah,” Ronin mutters against my ear, already dragging me backwards.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ronin

I throw my weight against the chair again, rocking it hard from side to side, trying to tip the damned thing over. When it finally goes, it cracks against the stone floor hard enough to knock the breath out of me and send pain shooting through every bruised and broken part of me.

I lie there on my side, dragging air back into my lungs, the ropes biting deeper the harder I struggle. My shoulders are on fire. My ribs feel split open all over again. Every part of me is screaming to stop. None of it matters. I can’t stop now.

She’s gone.

I can’t believe I did it again. I crossed an ocean for her, got her in front of me at last, and when it came time to say the things I came here to say, I ruined it. Same as always. Same as Boston. Same as the wedding. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I see her face again, the way it changed when I went at her like that, and my stomach turns. Malachy will be back soon. He’ll come through that door and end this before I can get near her again, and I can’t let that be it. Not like this. I have to get to her. I have to make her listen. I have to make this right.

I pull at the ropes again, teeth gritted, and the cracked chair arm under me finally gives enough to shift. Not much. Just enough. Enough to get one wrist half loose and tear skin doing it. I wrench it the rest of the way free, then go straight for the rope still binding the other one.

By the time I get to my feet, my head is pounding and my hands are slick with sweat and blood. I lurch across the room, shove the door open, and my first breath of fresh air in days isso cold it burns in my lungs. I stop dead just outside, my eyes darting over the yard, searching for any sign of her.

There’s nobody out here. Just open land with a handful of houses scattered across it, and for one wild second I think she could be in any one of them. I don’t have time to tear through every damned door looking for her. Then I hear it—the sea, somewhere beyond them. I take off toward the sound, boots slipping in the snow, my breath burning in my chest. She’s talked about this place enough times. The lane to the shore. The wall. The sea. If she went anywhere, she went there.

Before I even reach the end of the path, I see them sitting on the wall with their backs to me, facing the water. There’s no mistaking Alannah’s strawberry-blonde hair. Finn Walsh sits beside her, the big bastard shoulder to shoulder with my wife like he belongs there.

The sight of them together punches what little air I had left straight out of me, and I catch myself against the low stone wall, dragging in air that never feels like enough.