Page 3

The romantic in me would swoon if this were a movie. The feminist in me would fight if this were a book. But the woman in me in my very real life feels more threatened than loved by that statement.

I pull back, pushing my shoulder blades into the hospital bed, and move as far away from the danger at my feet. Like hell I’m going to be railroaded.

Not today.

“Don’t you threaten me?—”

Before I have time to finish my thought or he has time to reply, the hospital door swings wide and my larger-than-life dad pushes his way in with my mom hot on his heels.

His frame fills the doorway. He’s a big man—tall with broad shoulders, and more than a bit of age settling around his softer middle.

Even his feet are large. He’s a terrifying teddy bear.

“Ayla.” His face pales, and he stops just inside the doorway as if he’s hit a glass wall.

“Ayla.” My mother rushes around him into the room and drops her handbag on the closest chair. She wraps me in a hug, apologizing for too-tight hugs and awkward angles but never lets up. Wetness hits the less bruised side of my head as her chest hiccups against mine.

“Mom, I’m fine.” I wrap my good arm around her. “Seriously, I’ll be fine. You can stop worrying now.”

“I’ll never not worry about you, sweetie. It’s a mother’s job.”

I look over my shoulder to see my dad standing stock still just inside the room. The fear and panic on his face is at odds with the relief in my mom’s body.

“Dad?”

Wordlessly, he lifts a thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose and rubs the tears that form there.

I can’t remember the last time he cried. My grandfather’s funeral, maybe, or my grandmother’s diagnosis—major things. But never over stuff like this.

“I’m okay, Dad. I’m sorry I scared you.”

He freezes in place. “You’re sorry. You’re sorry?” His eyes register disbelief and something else I can’t put my finger on. “My precious girl, you have no reason to apologize to me.”

He enters the room and is nearing the foot of the bed where my angry husband has stopped his pacing.

To say that the temperature in the room chills is an understatement.

I can’t say for sure, but when two bull moose see each other in a clearing and size up the other as a competitor before locking antlers in a duel to the death, this is probably the sentiment in that moment before one dies and the other limps away the weary victor.

“Seamus.” I don’t miss that Christian doesn’t extend a hand to my dad.

“Barone.” My dad bows up as if his waist circumference will push my husband out of the way by sheer volume.

Neither flinches. If it weren’t my dad, I’d say they could whip them out right now to compare. Instead, I shake my head and turn back to my mom. “Glad you’re here. Liam says Cian is on his way.”

“We talked to him on our way over.” She looks over her shoulder to my dad. “Seamus, enough. Come talk with your daughter. You claimed to be worried for days, and now, when she’s awake, you’re spending entirely too much time on the wrong side of the room.”

Wrong side of the room? Is that commentary or is she just giving him the sharp side of her tongue?

I’ll never understand how she gets away with speaking to him that way.

I learned early not to talk back or show him any sass.

Seamus Murphy did not tolerate his authority being questioned.

Or, more accurately, he does not… Which is why he’s still staring down the Italian god-man he’s trying to will out of the room.

I don’t know the man, but it’s apparent my husband has big dick energy.

Mom lets go, pulling back to stare at me from arm’s length. She cups both of my shoulders and looks into my eyes as if she can suss out my thoughts without words.

“Oh, sweetie. You gave us such a scare. I so wish you’d stop your early morning jaunts for this… job .” She emphasizes the word as if it’s the wrong one and she can’t find the one she wants to use.

“Seems the general consensus is that this”—I point at my head—“Was my job’s fault and not my own. It’s an easy scapegoat.”

I love my job. I need my job. Honestly, if it weren’t my job, but a hobby, I’d do it as much as I do now, as often as I can. Same schedule, same risks. Says the girl with the bump on her head and a husband I don’t know. I snort at my own musings, just to see all eyes turn and land on me.

“That’s new.” Cian’s voice joins the fray from the door.

“Ci!” I reach out my arms as my oldest brother easily slides into them.

Where Liam is rough and tumble, barreling through walls in his way, Cian might as well be the law, slipping past barriers with the flash of a badge and some kind of unknown clearance, though he has neither.

One is combat boots. The other is loafers.

They’re night and day different, and I love them both endlessly.

“Sis, so glad you’re back,” he whispers in my ear. “You gave us a hell of a scare.”

He pulls back to look at me and boops my nose. How that came to be is beyond me. I’m not a dog. But for as long as I can remember, that’s been our thing. He doesn’t do it with anyone else and no one else does it to me. It would be weird.

“I tell you what, we wouldn’t have made it without Christian’s updates. I was able to let work distract me. I don’t know how he didn’t burst out of his skin sitting here willing you to wake up.”

Cian turns and extends a hand to Christian before pulling him into a clapping man-hug. My husband’s eyes never leave mine. They’re black as night and serious as they’re leveled on me.

My dad’s huff of exasperation fills the room. No words accompanying it, but his annoyance is apparent and waiting to be acknowledged.

I drop my gaze from Christian’s probing one. I met him an hour ago and he’s acting like I owe him something or there’s a way I’m supposed to respond. Sorry, Charlie, that’s not how this works.

That’s not how I work.

“So apparently I have memory loss or something,” I announce.

Everyone in the room nods grimly, sad expressions on their understanding faces. Well, except Christian, who doesn’t look sad exactly.

“We’ll do whatever you need and work however the doctors advise to get you back to where you need to be, sweetie.” Mom, ever the optimist, tries to dial back the tension in the room.

Christian comes to my side and sits as my parents and brother surround the other side of the bed. He reaches for my hand and takes hold of it. It might as well be a stranger’s—hell, it is a stranger’s—for how it feels in my palm.

I tug to release it from his only to find it held tighter. He squeezes it in his once before returning his grip to its previous hold. Oh, hell no. Who does he think he is?

I know the answer to that…

… and I don’t like it one bit.

“Are you sure you can’t stay?” I ask Liam who’s the last to leave.

“Positive. Not all of us get this kind of spa day.”

“Shut up.” I mime throwing something at him.

“Love you, Ayla-girl. So glad you’re back. Never again. Understand?”

I nod as my brother walks out the door without a backward glance.

I stare around the room. That is, I stare everywhere but at the man who has a ring on his finger that I apparently put there more than a year ago.

“Princess?”

I hesitate, turning slowly as if committing to my death.

“Christian.”

“You haven’t looked at me all day.”

“And you haven’t stopped staring.”

He scrubs a hand down his face. This combative dance is doing neither of us any good. We can’t fight about every little thing.

But I don’t know him. And that somehow offends him. As if I chose to knock the sense out of myself—enough they had to open up my skull to drain the pressure building there—just to avoid the man. I’d snort again, but I don’t want any more looks I can avoid. Lesson learned.

He reaches into his trousers pocket and lifts something glittery. It takes only a second to recognize the brilliance of high-quality diamonds.

He presents it to me, extending it between his thumb and forefinger and watches me as I study it .

It’s a wide, delicate band. Diamonds are cut and clustered to make intricate patterns.

Hidden in the design are Celtic crosses and the crown of a Claddagh.

Even with that, it’s in no way an Irish-looking ring.

It is, however, full of Irish symbolism, woven through with the shape of olive leaves.

Platinum and diamonds scream money but whisper heritage—mine and what is evidently Christian’s.

I study it, twisting it around and around, turning it to see the light. I’m in awe.

It is bold but delicate. It’s nothing less than stunning.

“I— I don’t know what to say. It’s… stunning. I can’t imagine anything more beautiful in the world.”

“I can.” His voice comes out on a whisper, and my face whips to his. He holds my gaze a long time before I break the eye contact to look at the ring again. “You designed the basics. I embellished a bit.”

“I made this?”

“You sketched out some pieces that you loved. You told me what you couldn’t live without.” His voice drops. “I told you I couldn’t live without you and that I’d find a way to make all your dreams become reality.”

“You sound too good to be true.”

“We’ll find our way back to each other, baby. But that”—he nods at the ring I play with. “That needs to be back on your finger.”

“I can’t do that, Chris— Do I call you Chris or is it always Christian?”

His jaw clenches and that notch below his ear bulges as if taking the burden of his frustration. “If you can’t today, then how about here?” He taps the ring finger on my right hand. “And you’ve never called me Chris. Always Christian or Honey.”

I shrug. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know what to say or how to feel right now. There’s been so much thrown at me and this situation is nothing I ever dreamed I’d have to figure out.

He reaches for the band, his eyes holding mine, and slides it onto my finger, kissing my knuckle as if it’s a practiced gesture. The metal is cold and the burden of what it means is heavy on my hand.

It’s even heavier on my mind.

“Honey sounds weird to me. You don’t seem soft like a Honey from what I see.”

“What do I seem like to you?”

I shake my head. I was a fool to walk into that trap. But not so much a fool as to stay there.

“To be fair, sometimes you call me God, but that’s usually when my cock or my tongue is inside you.”

I feel the blush rise, creeping from just above my breasts to my hairline.

He strokes a finger down my cheek and whispers, “My beautiful Ayla.”

I want to say it’s comforting.

I wish I could call it intimate.

I’d kill to call it sweet.

What it is is eerie. It’s icky and wrong, and I pull away.

His phone buzzes somewhere, breaking the moment; I’d be lying to say I’m not relieved.

I look around the room from surface to surface. Plastic water pitchers and plastic cups rest in the entryway. Flowers are on another. The nightstand next to me is bare and empty.

Where are my things? My cell or the chargers that seem to live everywhere except when the battery is running low. Lip stuff or keys. My purse or even my metal water bottle. The things that I carry with me.

“Do you know where my phone is?” And then a worse thought assails me. “What about my camera equipment? Is it? Shit. I don’t know what I took—hell, I don’t know what I own for that matter. Is it still at the ridge? Did someone grab my stuff? I guess my car’s still there too? How long has it been?”

Panic begins bubbling again and I wish he wouldn’t, but Christian sets a hand atop our joined ones.

“Fitz went when we heard. He knew you’d be devastated to leave without your equipment as meticulous as you are with each piece. Let me ask him. ”

“Fitz?”

“Fitzgerald Young works for us. He manages our house and handles things as we need. He needed to busy himself when everything happened and took it upon himself to go.”

“Someone manages our house?” I can’t stop the snort this time.

“You stay busy, Mrs. Barone, and I do too. Fitz helps with that. You know, that’s the second time today you’ve snorted. Actually, it’s the second time since I’ve known you. It’s cute and so unlike the Ayla I know.”

My body tenses.

“Hey, Ayla, look at me.”

I do as he requests but only because I want this conversation over with. He doesn’t look at me with trust or love or lust. It’s not disdain, but it’s definitely not openness either.

“This may be all new to you, but it is to me too. And, baby, I can’t walk on eggshells thinking that anything I say might set you off.

I’m Team Ayla, but you’ve got to trust that and not assume the worst of me.

You doing that assumes the worst of you too.

You chose me. You married me. You’re making a life with me.

And you weren’t wrong in making those decisions.

And I’m not wrong in holding you to them. ”

Nothing says I’m stuck like that kind of comment.

Fuck my life.