Page 83 of Release Me

It’s absurd how cherished I feel for simply existing next to him. He’s so thoughtful, braking early for corners so I don’t lurch. He adjusts the music or temperature if I even flinch.

We trade stolen looks like contraband. He catches me again and laughs, low and quiet, that boyish curve of his mouth making me melt in the seat.

‘I can’t actually believe you’re here,’ he says, voice roughened by honesty. ‘In my car. In my day.’

‘Ditto,’ I whisper.

The road dips, curves, then opens onto a long, sweeping driveway flanked by granite pillars. Perfectly clipped lawns slope away to terraces, and a broad, glass-fronted façade catches the pale winter sun—the Ritz-Carlton at Powerscourt.

Rian pulls up and kills the engine. ‘Lunch?’ he says.

‘Sure.’ All the sexercise has given me an appetite.

He gets out of the car and rounds the bonnet in three long strides, opening my door before the valet can blink. He offers his huge hand, and I slip mine into it, that ever present electricity pulsing between us.

Inside, we’re greeted with warmth and marble and that faint, delicious hotel smell—white lilies, beeswax, and crisp linen pressed within an inch of its life. He rests his palm at the small of my back as we cross the lobby.

‘What if someone recognises us?’ I hiss into his ear.

‘We’re old friends, out for lunch.’ He flashes me a smile that would comfortably assure anyone in a ten-mile radius that we’re so much more than old friends out for lunch. ‘I’ll ask them to seat us somewhere private.’

The hostess greets us with a smile that lingers on Rian. If she recognises Dublin’s playboy bar owner, she hides it well.He pulls out a hundred euro note from the back pocket of his jeans and presses it into her hand discreetly. ‘If you could seat us somewhere private, we’d appreciate it.’

‘Of course, sir.’ She pockets the note and beams at us, guiding us to a table all on its own, tucked into the corner of the room by the window. The mountains are laid out like a painting. Rian helps me out of my coat, drapes it over the chair with absurd care, then settles opposite and immediately reaches across the linen to claim my hand again like he can’t bear the distance.

‘Hungry?’ he asks, eyes glinting.

‘Always.’ The back of my throat tightens with something I refuse to name in a dining room.

‘If you keep looking at me with those fuck-me eyes, I’ll have no choice but to put you up on the table and eat you like dessert,’ he warns.

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Try me.’ He arches a single eyebrow, then glances down at the menu open on the table in front of us.

When the waitress returns, he orders champagne without consulting me, then immediately checks—‘Is that alright?’

‘It’s more than alright.’ This is the best Sunday I’ve had in years.

‘You’ll have to drink most of it,’ he shrugs as the waitress returns with a bottle of Beckett’s Black Label. If the waitress had any idea she was serving a Beckett herself, she’d probably collapse. She pours two glasses, and Rian hands me one the second she leaves.

He lifts his glass. ‘To us.’

Damn,ussounds so fucking good on his lips.

‘To not worrying, and seeing how things unfold,’ I remind him, tipping my flute against his.

He watches me like it’s his new favourite hobby, thumb brushing my knuckles under the tablecloth, gaze flicking tomy mouth, then back to my eyes. He reaches across the table to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear like it’s his job. His hand lingers at my jaw. The look we share says everything we’re still too careful to say out loud.

‘What?’ I ask, because I need him to speak, need the sound of it.

‘Just… this,’ he says softly. ‘You. Us. It feels… right.’

For the first time in three years, four months, and three weeks, I feel at peace.

And then my phone rings.

Chapter Thirty-Seven