The air outside is cooler now, the sky stretched wide and bruised with early evening light. Cillian walks beside me without touching me at first, then his hand finds the small of my back in a quiet claim as we reach the car.
“You survived,” he says lightly as he opens the door for me.
“I wasn’t under attack.”
He smirks. “They can be ruthless.”
I slide into the passenger seat, and he sets the containers carefully in the back before taking his place behind the wheel. The engine turns over smoothly, and we pull away from the house without hurry.
We don’t head back toward the city.
I notice it a few minutes in when the houses thin and the road begins to curve upward, winding along hills that open toward the sea. The harbor falls behind us, replaced by open water that catches the last of the light and throws it back in long silver lines.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Somewhere quiet,” he answers.
The drive climbs higher, and the city becomes a distant suggestion behind us. The hills are green and rolling, broken by stone walls and narrow lanes that look older than the roads they border. The sea stretches wide on our left, restless but calm from this height, and for a moment I forget everything else.
It’s beautiful.
The kind of beauty that doesn’t need spectacle. Just space.
He pulls off onto a narrow stretch of gravel that overlooks the water, the car settling with a soft crunch as he kills the engine. The wind carries faint salt through the cracked window, and the world feels stripped down to us and the horizon.
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
“You liked it,” he says finally, glancing at me.
“Yes,” I admit. “More than I expected.”
“My mother liked you,” he replies.
That lands somewhere deeper than it should.
I turn toward him in the dim light. “You didn’t warn them.”
“No,” he says simply.
“Why?”
He studies me for a second, then shrugs slightly. “I don’t introduce women to my family unless I’m serious about something.”
My pulse shifts.
“And what are you serious about?” I ask.
He leans back in his seat, one arm draped loosely over the wheel. “I’m serious about seeing where this goes.”
My father’s voice flickers faintly at the edge of my mind.Don’t get distracted. Don’t forget the objective. Don’t mistake proximity for loyalty.
But the image of that table, of Siobhán pressing bread into my hands, of Cillian wiping mashed potato from his nephew’s cheek, pushes back harder.
“I shouldn’t want this,” I say quietly.
He tilts his head. “Want what?”
“This.” I gesture vaguely between us, then toward the hills and the sea. “The normal parts.”