Page 82 of Wicked Ruin

“We'll talk about this tonight.” Her voice has gone very quiet and very cold.

I watch him and think, She has no idea what's just happened. She has no idea what's standing on this pavement.

“No,” he says simply. “We won't.” And he hangs up.

He stares at the phone for a moment. Then he powers it off, all the way off, screen going black, and slides it into his pocket. He turns to me.

I let out a breath.

“Declan—”

“Don't.” He says it gently. “If you’re going to tell me I made a mistake, don’t.”

“I was going to say she's going to be furious.” I look at him. “Did you mean to make it worse, or does that just come naturally?”

The corner of his mouth pulls up. “To be fair, it doesn't take much.”

“And you don't care.”

“I care about a great many things. Whether or not Valentina is annoyed with me is not currently one of them.”

My heart does something it has absolutely no business doing. I look away, out toward the street—the ordinary afternoon passing like none of this is happening, like we're not standing on the pavement, with a prenatal pamphlet on the ground between us.

“What happens tonight?” I ask. “When she wants to talk anyway.”

“You let me worry about that.”

“Declan, you can’t just break off an alliance and⁠—”

“It's not going to be tonight that this ends.” He says it carefully, as if choosing each word. “There's a right way to do this and a wrong way, and the wrong way causes damage I can't take back. I need to find the right way. I need to talk to Seamus.” He meets my eyes. “Not about the baby. Not yet. But about—” He exhales. “About the fact that I cannot marry her.”

Cannot. Not will not. I notice the difference. But it’s not so simple that he can just walk away, and we both know that. I’m not naive to how our world works.

“What are you thinking about?” I ask, because his eyes have gone somewhere distant, somewhere I can't follow.

He blinks. Comes back. “What am I thinking about?” He moves closer, dips his head, and kisses my temple—slow and deliberate, his lips warm against my skin. “I'm thinking about what I'm going to do when I finally have you to myself,” he says, his mouth still close.

His hand comes up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, the same way he did on that very first night in that private room, the gold band on his arm and my purple one in his hand. My throat goes tight with the memory of it. “I'm thinking about a lot of things.”

“Are you alright?” I whisper. I feel the sudden urge to protect him because I can’t shake the feeling that he’s going into the line of fire for me, and in our world, you don’t walk away unscathed.

“Aye, never been better. I’ll find a way, Bridget. The question is, are you?” His eyes find mine. Something in them is almost soft. “You used to be trouble, you know. Still are. Tell me honestly, love, are you alright?”

“I genuinely don't know,” I admit.

“That makes two of us.” He drops his hand. “I'm coming to your place tonight.”

“You don't have to⁠—”

He gives me a look. One eyebrow. The full weight of his patience, which is considerable and not unlimited.

“Okay,” I say. “Yes. Please.”

“Good girl.” He says it low, just for me, and kisses me once, quick and warm and entirely too certain of itself, before he takes my hand and walks me to the car. His fiancée's number is sitting in a powered-off phone in his pocket. The prenatal pamphlet is on the ground somewhere behind us.

But right now, his hand is warm around mine, and I want to keep it that way.

Chapter Twenty