His fingers tilt my chin upward.
“I don’t want reconciliation,” he says. “I want you.”
Something in his tone shifts, deepens. I search his face for anger, for possessiveness that feels like a cage, and find something else entirely. Resolve. Protection. Love that has survived humiliation and betrayal and blood.
“You don’t get to send me away again either,” I tell him.
“I won’t.”
“You can’t promise that in this life.”
“I can promise you,” he replies.
The sea flashes brightly beyond the glass. The light catches in his eyes, and for a second the room feels suspended outside of everything violent and complicated waiting beyond these walls.
He leans down slowly, giving me time to pull away if I want to. I don’t.
His mouth brushes the edge of the bandage on my chest first, lips lingering just above the place where the bullet entered as if he’s sealing it shut with something more powerful than stitches.
“I should have been the one bleeding,” he murmurs against my skin.
“You would have,” I answer softly. “But I was there.”
He lifts his head, looks at me once more, and then his mouth comes to mine.
A week later, the doctor stands at the end of my bed with a chart in one hand and that dry expression he uses when he’s about to say something kind and pretend it’s only medical. The bandage on my chest is smaller now, the pain is sharper but lessfrightening, and I can sit up without the room sliding sideways if I move slowly.
He checks the wound, checks my breathing, checks the baby, and makes me promise not to confuse feeling better with being healed. “You’re improving,” he says, looking at me over his glasses. “That’s not the same thing as invincible.” Then he turns to Cillian, who’s been hovering close enough to catch me every time I shift, and adds, “Short walks. No strain. No heroics. And if she says stop, you stop.”
Cillian’s mouth goes flat. “I know how recovery works.”
The doctor gives him a look that says he doesn’t care. “I’m sure you do. I’m also sure you need to hear it anyway.” He closes the chart, nods once at the monitor, then at me. “Vitals are steady. Fetal heartbeat’s strong. You’ve both earned a quiet hour, so try not to make me regret my generosity.”
When he leaves, the room settles into soft light and sea sound and the steady pulse of the monitor. Cillian waits until the door clicks shut, then comes to the bed like he still isn’t certain I’m real enough to touch.
His mouth comes to mine with a reverence that is almost more devastating than his anger. It’s a slow, liquid heat that tastes of iron-willed relief and the salt of my own tears. He tastes me like he’s trying to memorize the texture of my survival.
I let out a broken sound, my hand tangling in his hair, trying to pull him closer even as the bandage across my chest pulls tight. I wince, a sharp hiss of air catching in my throat, and he freezes instantly.
He pulls back just an inch, his breath hot against my lips, his eyes dark with a sudden, frantic caution. "I'm hurting you," herasps, his hands hovering over my shoulders as if he’s afraid to touch me and afraid to let go.
"No," I breathe, my fingers tightening on his shirt. "You’re not. I don’t want anything less than this."
"Slow," he warns, though the tremor in his voice betrays the hunger I know is clawing at him. "We go slow, Saoirse. You’ve lost enough blood for ten lifetimes."
He shifts on the bed, moving with a focused grace that is entirely at odds with the gentleness of his touch. He leans down, his lips gentle against my skin. "I'm going to burn his world down for this," he murmurs against me, the promise vibrating through my bones.
"Cillian," I whisper, reaching up to frame his face. "Look at me."
He lifts his gaze, and the raw, unmasked devotion there makes my heart stumble. He moves his hand downward, his large palm sliding over my ribs with agonizing care until it rests, flat and heavy, over the swell of my stomach. He just stays there, shielding our daughter with the weight of his hand, his thumb tracing a slow, protective arc over the skin.
"Does she feel it?" he asks, his voice dropping to a gravelly, vulnerable depth.
"She feels you," I answer, my eyes blurring again.
He reaches up, his thumb tracing the line of my lower lip, his gaze dropping to the slight swell of my stomach where our daughter is tucked safe. He takes a breath, one that seems to cost him everything he’s ever built.
“No more borrowed rooms,” he whispers, his voice a dry rasp. “No more aliases. No more running.”