Page 20

I’m not sure why I’m being honest with Roisin.

Well, actually, I do know why. I’m generally honest. I don’t tell lies to people.

But sometimes, I hold the truth very close to my chest.

The fact that I’m not doing that now, that I’m being open with her about why I’m being so damn nice to her, is unusual.

But it feels right.

Maybe it’s the fact that drinking champagne at high altitude hits me a little faster than it should. Maybe it’s the heat of the spring, or the way Roisin’s body looks, slick and glistening, in the water.

Maybe it’s the fact that I think I might be losing a grasp on everything that I thought was important to me.

But I literally drove hours to this spring, just to make Roisin smile. I’ll be damned if I don’t accomplish that .

She studies me, her green eyes darker, reflecting the gathering dusk and the heaviness of the clouds overhead.

God damn it. All I want is to kiss her.

Somehow, I can’t stay away from this woman. I want to touch her constantly. I want to make her smile. The little wrinkle between her eyebrows when she’s sad makes me feel like I want to fight someone. She’s been lying in her room, alone, for days.

If I thought it would help, I’d kill her father all over again.

I toyed with the thought of kidnapping her mother and bringing her, just to tell her to fix it, to fix my Roisin, but ultimately I’m not sure that it would be effective. Roisin doesn’t seem to want to talk to her mother, not after all the information she dropped, anyway.

So instead, I looked up a hot spring. And I planned a fucking picnic. And we’re staying at a little cabin tonight that’s nearby, and I packed her a goddamn bag full of clothes that aren’t even remotely sexy, but they’re comfortable and soft.

And every second of that process, I couldn’t fucking believe myself.

Because every time I did something to take care of Roisin, the chaos inside me settled slightly.

Watching her in her room, I felt completely powerless. Feeling powerless makes me…

It makes me feel like I have some kind of buzzing under my skin. Like I can’t settle down until I figure out whatever’s bothering her.

I don’t like to feel powerless.

After Dino was born, my mother didn’t leave her room for almost half a year. I was the one who stepped in to hold my crying brother. Who tried to get my mom to pay attention to us.

I was four.

Four, holding my infant brother, who screamed like a motherfucker.

So seeing Roisin, day after day, refuse to get up, it fucking hurt.

That’s why. The childhood trauma. No other reason.

The water in the spring sloshes slightly, bringing me back to reality. Roisin nods. “Well, I guess I can accept that.”

“You don’t have an option,” I growl. “I wanted you to feel better. So feel better.”

“You do know that you don’t have the ability to control my feelings, right?”

I snort. “I can’t control them, but I can be the reason they change.”

“That sounds manipulative, Marco.”

I pause. “What?”

Roisin sighs. She sips the champagne. “Do you want my feelings to change because you’re worried about me, or because me having feelings makes you feel uncomfortable?”

I genuinely do not know how to answer that question.

Roisin nods. “That’s what I thought. Because if you care about me, and you are trying to cheer me up because you do, it’s sweet.

But if you’re trying to make me feel better because you can’t handle someone else’s feelings, and it makes you feel out of control, that’s enmeshment and you should probably see someone for it. ”

“Enmeshment?”

She nods. “Poor emotional boundaries. Someone who was brought up to take care of theirs, their parents, might be enmeshed. Families that lacked distinctions between parents and children. That kind of thing.”

“How do you know this, Dr. Phil?”

She laughs. “I went to therapy, dummy. For years. Because I lived with Kieran MacAntyre, and I fucking needed therapy to get past that.”

I don’t have a response to that.

She sighs. “You know, Kieran told me that he knew where my mom was. And that he’d kill her if I tried to leave to find her.”

The water makes a slight noise as I shuffle around. “What?”

“My dad didn’t know where my mom was. Probably because he didn’t think that far in the future. I think it bothered him. He’d made this bargain with her, she dropped me off with him, collected her payday, and was gone. Kieran told me that if I left to try and find her, he’d kill her.”

“Do you think he knew?”

She barks out a laugh. “No. I think Kieran was just cruel. I think he liked holding his new little sister in some kind of hold. I think he wanted to torture me.”

I growl, thinking of how terrible Kieran was to her. I’d kill that fucker again, if I could .

Then, I tilt my head and study her. “How did you come to live with your father and Kieran?”

She sighs. “When I was about ten, my mum told me it was time to finally meet my dad. I was thrilled. We lived in Dublin, so heading out to the manor house was basically the longest trip I’d ever taken.

When we got there, my dad just… nodded. Like I was acceptable.

He and my mum went to talk, and Kieran appeared.

He was nice, I guess, at first. He’s so much older than me, he seemed like a god.

He gave me candy and kept me in the kitchen.

My mum and I slept in what would become my room.

When I woke up, she was gone. And I stayed there. ”

Jesus. “That’s awful, Roisin.”

She shakes her head. Little drops of water cascade out from her hair, and I watch them splatter into the water around us.

“I mean it makes a whole lot of sense now. I really thought that when my mum left, she’d run away.

That somehow she’d escaped, or she was just going to come back for me later.

When I got older, I wondered if Kieran or my dad had killed her that night.

But this was the whole reason I became an Interpol officer.

I thought that maybe she’d made it to safety.

That she was trying to find me too, and she was just in hiding somewhere.

Biding her time until it was time for her to find me.

So I thought I’d make it easier, and join the police, so that I could find her first,” Roisin murmurs.

“No wonder you’re so fucked up over this.”

She nods. “This isn’t just some news, Marco.

It’s not something that’s like… disappointing, but not a big deal, to learn.

I built my entire life around the assumption that my mum was out there, in hiding.

That my father, or Kieran, had done something awful to her to separate us.

I became a police of ficer, I sold information to Liam, all so that I could find her,” she says.

Her voice is desperate. It cracks, like something inside of her is fracturing.

I didn’t, however, miss that she said I sold information to Liam.

“She wasn’t forced away from me. She wasn’t hurt, or captured, or anything like that. She chose to walk away. Because she sold me. I wasn’t some kind of… product of love or anything like that. My mother made a deal with my father, and she sold me as part of it,” she spits out bitterly.

I shake my head. “It’s all fucked up.”

“That’s it?”

Looking at Roisin, I shrug. ‘What else do you want?”

Her mouth opens, then closes. “I don’t know. Maybe for you to be mad? Or just… I don’t know,” she admits.

“There are times when things happen to us and we can’t do anything about them.

You were a kid. You had absolutely no influence in your mother’s decision.

You didn’t choose to be conceived under a contract, you didn’t choose to be brought up the way you were.

There’s nothing you can do about that. There never was,” I rumble.

Roisin rolls her eyes. “Look who’s doing therapy now.”

“All I’m saying is that life is fucking short and you only have so much time and energy.

Don’t spend it looking at everything that could have happened.

Don’t waste it on people who did what they did, if you don’t want to.

You’re a grown-ass adult. If you want to keep talking to your mother, and feel that same shame or anger or whatever it is you’re feeling, do it.

If you want to cut her out, do it. Either way, you get to choose. ”

“Is that what you’d do?” she retorts. Her cheeks are flushed, and I can see her lips pressed together in anger.

Roisin narrows her eyes at me. “You’d just cut someone out?”

“Yes,” I nod.

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I’ve seen the lengths you’ll go to for your family.”

“As would you,” I snap.

Roisin freezes, the cup halfway to her lips. “What?”

“You, apparently, would do things for family too. You just said that you sold information to Liam. What information, Roisin?” I rasp.

My own anger is building. If she sold me out, if that was the reason for that day in the cottage…

“Oh shut the fuck up,” she barks at me. “I was feeding Liam information from my job so that he would help me keep looking for my mum. God damn it Marco, not everything is about you!” she shouts.

She punctuates her shout with a champagne glass, tossed directly at my head. I duck, and it descends into the spring. Roisin makes an angry little noise, then turns on her heel, stomping up and out of the stone steps, toward the Range Rover.

I watch her go, noting how the water slides down off of her perfect ass.

Fuck, she didn’t even stop to get a towel or the sandals I’d brought to cover her feet. With the near inch of snow on the ground, she’s going to freeze.

Goddamn it.

“Don’t run away from me like that, Roisin!” I bellow. I slosh up and out of the spring, grabbing the bag of towels as I go. “You don’t get to run away from me!”

“I do whatever I want!” she tosses over her shoulder. “You’re not my keeper, Marco DeLuca!”

“Like hell I’m not!” I growl.

Roisin might be athletic, but she’s short. Without breaking into a somewhat undignified run, she’ll never escape my longer legs.