Page 79 of Wicked Ruin

Rosenberg's office sits just inside Dublin, on the edge of Ballyhock, flanked on either side by the kind of glass-and-steel high-rises that make the older parts of the city look like a different country entirely. When I reach the door, I wonder what Valentina would say. What Seamus would say. What my father would say if I sat down across from him and told him the truth of it.

Maybe that's the conversation I actually need to have.

Christ, I’m engaged to the wrong damn woman.

Then I open the door and see her, standing at the exit, only a few feet from her car.

She looks… she looks good. There’s color in her face, which is a nice fucking change after the time she’s had. She thanks the person in front of her for holding the door open, her voice warm and easy, the way it always is. “Thank you so much.”

She hasn’t seen me yet. “Bridget.”

She turns at the sound of my voice, and her mouth forms a perfect circle.

“Declan? What are you doing here?” It doesn't look like she's happy to see me—but why does she look guilty?

“You didn't answer my text,” I say, keeping my voice easy. “I heard you had an appointment today. Thought it was about time you told me what's actually going on with you.”

Something shifts in her expression as her eyes shutter, and she looks away. “You shouldn't be here,” she says.

“You keep saying that.”

“Because I keep meaning it.” She pulls the papers against her chest and looks at me with an expression I haven't seen from her before. It isn't really anger but something that's been building for longer. “This is my appointment, Declan. This is my body. You don't just get to turn up and micromanage me.”

“You weren't answering⁠—”

“I wasn't answering because I didn't have anything to say.” Her voice is very even. That's how I know I'm in trouble—Bridget going even is never a good sign. “I'm entitled, like anyone, to not answer.”

Why is she so fucking beautiful when her eyes flash at me like that? I want to pull her into my arms and kiss every word out of her until her eyes go soft and she's my good girl again.

But we have to get to the bottom of this, and I’m not walking away, not again. “That’s where you’re wrong, lass. You don’t get to hide from family.” She doesn’t meet my eyes. “Even Cavin's worried.”

“I know you're all worried.” She looks up. “But at the end of the day, who's responsible for me? Who is it, Declan?” A beat. “Me. I am. And that means it's none of your business.” Her voice wobbles at the very end, just slightly, and it tells me she wishes it were.

“I'm trying to be kind⁠—”

“You're not,” she cuts in, like she's correcting herself. “I mean, it's kind, what you're doing. I know that. But it's none of your fucking business.” She lifts her chin. “You're engaged.”

My lips press together. She isn’t wrong.

“To another woman. A woman you're going to marry.” She rubs at the corners of her eyes with the heel of her hand, like she's furious at herself for what they're about to do. “How many weeks away is it now? The wedding?” She shakes her head before I can answer. “I'm not asking to be cruel. I'm asking because I think you've forgotten, and I need you to remember it right now, standing here, in front of me.”

“Bridget—”

“I'm. Not. Yours.” She says it plainly, like a fact she's been rehearsing. “We're friends. That's it. That's all we are.” Her eyes are very wide and very bright. “You turned up to my doctor's appointment because you were worried about me, and I understand that, I do. But you don't have the right to be worried about me. Not like this. When you agreed to be married, you forfeited that. You gave it up.”

“That's not true.”

“It is.” Her voice is steady, but her chin is trembling as she points her finger at me. It’s the angriest I’ve ever seen her. “It is true. So tell me—what am I to you, then? What exactly?”

I stare at her. I don't have an answer she'd believe.

“You're Cavin's cousin,” she says when I don't speak. “You're someone I know through the family. That's what you get to be.” She swipes at her eyes quickly, like she's angry at them for the betrayal. “Every time you show up, every text, every hospital visit, every time you sit in that chair and bring me soup like you're—” She stops. Swallows. “It's not fair. Do you understand that? You're not being kind. You're rubbing salt in a wound that never gets to heal because you keep coming back and reopening it.”

And now she’s crying openly, and I hate myself.

“I know,” I say. Because I do. God help me, I do.

“Then stop.” Her voice cracks—just barely, just once—and she reins it back so fast I almost think I imagined it. “Go home, Declan. Go to your fitting. Go marry her. And stop showing up at my appointments like you have any right to know what happens in that room.”