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I look down, surprised at the feeling of a tear slipping out of my eyes. I scrub my hand against my face, trying to stem the rest of them.
There’s nothing to cry about, Ro. You’ll figure it out. They won’t arrest you. Marco will help…
And then he’ll leave.
Again.
A soft knock on my door makes me suck in a breath quickly, tugging the sheets up to wipe away the rest of the tears. “Yes?” I call, annoyed at the thickness in my voice as I try to clear the last of the sadness from it.
“It’s me,” Marco rumbles.
Fuck.
I went to bed in the guest room last night alone, thinking that it would be less suspicious to try and find Marco and get him settled, but now I realize that I might have made a mistake. Liam is never going to buy that Marco and I sleep in separate rooms.
I just thought that since Marco wasn’t with me when I went to bed, it wouldn’t make sense for me to send someone to gather him. Normal couples would just wait until one of them wanted to go to bed.
Right?
“Roisin, open the door.”
God. Damn. It.
I hate how I respond almost immediately to his commanding voice. My muscles lurch forward, like a puppy, eager to follow his every command.
I’m on my feet before I even know what’s happening, and I approach the door so quickly, I pause for a second because I don’t want to make it seem like I’m hopping to his every command.
“Roisin—”
I pull the door open. “What?” I hiss.
Marco steps inside, the movement bringing him overwhelmingly close to me. The heat rolling off of his chest, the smell of his skin, momentarily overwhelms me. I step back, just trying to put space between us.
The door clicks softly behind him, closing on hinges that are absolutely new, because when I lived in this house every singlehinge squeaked bloody fucking murder when you closed the door.
Which my father liked to punish me for. With his fucking fist.
The reminder of the darkness that haunts this house brings the crushing sorrow back.
Full force.
I spin, so that Marco can’t see the tears in the corners of my eyes. “Where were you last night?”
“Garden.”
I blink. “All night?”
Marco studies me. “I was talking to Elio,” he says after a moment.
Oh.
“Do you… usually talk to Elio all night?” I ask. I know that he doesn’t. or at least, he didn’t when we were… living together.
It’s not being together. It was when I held him in custody in witness protection.
But I don’t know how else to describe the relationship we had. We were living together, I was holding him in custody.
But there was more. There was absolutely so much more.