Page 86 of The Dangerous Dance

"You said it like it was a thing that had been true for a while."

"It has been," he says. "I've been calling it something else."

"What have you been calling it."

"A security concern," he says. And the thing at the corner of his mouth is fully an almost-smile now.

I look at him. At the damaged face and the tired eyes and the man who fought his brother this morning and called it doing things for someone he's in love with and said it like it was the most ordinary fact in the world.

"You're so stupid," I say again, but the words have changed quality between the first time and this time, which he hears, and which produces the full version of the almost-smile.

"You slapped me," he says.

"You deserved it."

"Probably." He looks at me. "Are you going to tell me what you're calling it."

I hold his gaze. "I've been calling it a security concern too," I say.

"And now."

"And now I think we've both been using the wrong classification."

He looks at me for a moment. Then: "Stay tonight."

Not the safehouse. The compound. The distinction is not small.

"Declan's here," I say.

"Declan knows. He told me to handle it carefully."

"And this is carefully."

"This," he says, "is the only way I know how to do it, which is honestly and in front of the people who need to know." He holds my gaze. "Stay."

I look at him.

I think about Viktor and burner phones and the Antwerp shell and everything that is still unresolved and approaching on a timeline I can't fully see, and I think about all the reasons that staying in the compound of the head of the Irish family is an operational complication I don't need.

"All right," I say.

Dinner is loud in the specific way of a table that hasn't had all its people at it in too long.

Gianna cooks with the authority of someone who has decided that feeding people is a form of argument she intends to win, and she wins it — the food is extraordinary, which I say and which produces a look of satisfaction from her that is entirely earned. Finn sits beside her with the ease of a man who has accepted that his wife will always be the most capable person in any room and has made his peace with it. Mackenzie is across from me and talks about the Brennan secondary contacts with the focused energy of someone who has been doing operational work all day and hasn't fully shifted out of it. Conor sits at the end and says little and notices everything. Ailish is beside Declan, which I observe without commenting on.

Declan.

He looks at me twice during dinner. The first time is the assessment look, the one that everyone in Liam's orbit has given me at some point, but briefer than most and followed by something else — not warmth exactly, but the beginning of the calculation that precedes warmth, the moment when you decide someone is worth the investment of attention. The second time is at the end of the meal, when Liam says something to Finn across the table and laughs at something Finn says back, and Declan looks at me in the specific way of someone checking to see if the person beside him is seeing what he's seeing.

I am.

I look back at Declan.

He nods, once, and looks back at his food.

It is not absolution. It is not welcome exactly. But it is the beginning of something, which is more than I came in with.

The compound settles gradually. Finn and Gianna go first, Gianna hugging Mackenzie for longer than a goodbye strictly requires. Conor goes. Ailish, who says something to Declan in the hallway that I don't hear, and then comes to say good night to me with the specific expression of a woman who has decided something and is comfortable with the decision. Mackenzie last, who looks at me in the doorway of the study with the expression she has when she's pleased about something and is allowing herself to be pleased about it.