Page 24

Chapter Twenty-Three

Finn

C olor leaves her cheeks in a rush, making her washed out, too pale. My head and my heart war over whether to go to her. Before I do anything else tonight, I need the truth.

“I drank that night. Do you honestly think I would have been drinking if I was aware I was pregnant?”

I search her face, checking for any sign she might be lying. “You found out…”

“When I woke up from surgery.” Her gaze connects with mine across the divide before slipping away. “I never had the chance to tell you.”

“In the hallway, when I spoke to Charles, when he warned me off…”

“He knew, yeah. My father.” She secures a stray strand of hair into her braid. “He’s always had these misguided ideas about what’s best for me. I’m not sure he’s ever understood me.”

“Seems he still doesn’t,” I say as she brushes a few more tears from her cheeks.

I clench my hands and shove them into my pockets. My chest aches with longing, with the desire to go to her, comfort her. Touching her is a bad idea. Too much will spill out. The words are there, but they won’t help either of us.

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee are conspiring against you.”

Carys sighs and toys with the glass on the table beside her. “Yeah. I just don’t know why.”

“You understand what they’re up to?” I narrow my eyes.

She gives an unsteady laugh and points at me. “Okay. I don’t have that information either. They aren’t being honest with me.” She smooths both hands over her face. “What did you hear?”

“Some sort of PLA involvement. Eric knows something about Valeriya’s death. The conclusion of their plan comes down the pipe in a month.” I don’t tell her he’s sure he can get her back. That seed won’t be planted by me.

Carys frowns and rubs her forehead. “A month?” She massages as though she can conjure unknown details from her memory. “I can’t remember something the company is doing that’ll be concluded in a month.”

One side of my lips quirks up. “Hence the conspiracy.”

She’s stopped crying, thankfully. I’m not sure how much longer my willpower would have held out if those silent tears had continued. Each one shred the bit of heart still beating in my chest. Men have begged me for their lives, and I’ve felt nothing. But her sadness burns through me, leaves a scar.

I clench my hands.

“Neither of them would hurt me on purpose,” she says.

The sound of Eric’s grating laugh as he mentioned Carys’s first miscarriage—our miscarriage—echoes in my ears. He cheated, lied, shown her who he is, but she doesn’t want to see it. “Eric is a dick. You’re wrong about him. He doesn’t give a shit if you get hurt.”

“He can be misguided. So can my father.” She shrugs and doesn’t look at me. “They’re men.”

Her comment sets me off. “I don’t understand what that fucking means.” She’s constantly lumping me in with them, and I don’t deserve it. I leave my corner of the room and stride closer to her. “That’s the second or third time you’ve implied men can’t be trusted.”

“Sometimes men do stupid things. Then,” she says, her gaze connecting with mine, “I have to figure out a way to forgive those men for those things.”

Fucking hell. She’s got me there.

When we’re only a few feet apart, I pause. If I get close enough to touch her, to slide my hand around her waist, tug her flush against me, there won’t be any more talking. These events happening to her, between us, around us, are creating fires of need, of desire, of another emotion I’ve never admitted to anyone. I enjoy playing with fire. Who doesn’t? But she’s the last person I’d want to burn.

“How did you get here?” she says.

I smirk. “You won’t like it. Though I was pretty fucking pissed when I woke up and found you gone.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t still angry.”

“There are more pressing emotions aimed at other things.” Like that fucker Eric. My mind swirls around any and all solutions to make sure he never gets a second chance with Carys. It wouldn’t be a true second chance, anyway. He seems to have screwed her over at every turn. What he’s done makes me vibrate with suppressed anger.

“How?” she says.

“Demid. One hundred thousand dollars. A private plane. Thomas Byrne. A few other people I owe favors if I ever have any money or influence again.”

“I can help with Thomas, pay back Demid.” She turns away and her fingertips dance across the minibar bottles. “You shouldn’t have come. The risk…”

I stare at her back. She doesn’t know? Seems impossible she wouldn’t realize. The inferno threatening to consume us surges, forcing the words out. “Did you really think I’d want to be anywhere fucking else? Throw me in prison. Gun me down in the streets. I’d go to hell and have that shit happen on repeat it if meant you were safe and happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”

She goes still at the table. Her back tenses. When she turns toward me, she braces her hands on the table. Tears are trickling down her face. My gut twists in response. “Finn—I—”

“The whole time I was listening to those two dickheads spout off, I couldn’t stop thinking it’s my fucking fault. It’s my fucking fault her life is like this.”

“Finn.” She steps toward me, but I step back. “It’s not—”

I clear my throat and ask the second question that’s plagued me since Eric laid it out. “The other miscarriages—the fact that you haven’t been able to have a baby—is it because of that night?”

She shakes her head and closes the distance. Her fingers trail from my bicep down to my wrist, and she links our hands together. A simple touch, but it electrifies my body, makes me even more aware of her in this room, the bed behind us.

“The first miscarriage was trauma related.” She swallows. “The others? There was no reason. Every test money could buy said I should be able to get pregnant and sustain a pregnancy.” Her shoulders rise in the tiniest shrug. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

Another tear slips out unchecked, and I tug her toward me, locking her against my chest. Her cheek is over my heart, and I squeeze her tighter. “Do you ever—” I don’t have the guts to finish my question. Asking wouldn’t be fair. I can’t offer her what she wants, what she needs.

“Finish it.”

“Carys.”

“I’m tired of lies and half-truths and bullshitting each other. Ask me.”

Silence lays between us for a beat. The question is dumb. But after listening to Eric and Charles talking, after realizing she hasn’t gotten the things I wanted for her, I can’t stop wondering. I’m plagued by a giant what if?

Regrets are for indecisive, weak people, aren’t they?

I bend my head, my lips close to her ear, as though my weakness is a secret. “Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if that night hadn’t happened?”

She presses her forehead into my chest. “I never used to. I thought I understood, realized what we’d meant to each other.”

The implication is that she’d meant nothing, we’d been nothing to each other. God, I was such a fool. Still am. This road with me does not lead to any happiness for her. I shouldn’t ask. “And now?”

“And now, I can’t stop thinking about how happy I used to be with you.” She still won’t meet my gaze, and her manicured fingertip traces figure eights across my chest. Her closeness muddles my thoughts, turns my focus to the way her body fits against mine, how good it is to be skin to skin, buried deep inside her.

The path we’d walk is impossible. Wrong, maybe. I have no right to hope, to ask. “For the rest of my life, I’ll be a wanted man.”

“I know.”

“With me, you’ll always be checking over your shoulder. The CIA, the FBI, other mob organizations, they’ll be searching for ways to draw me out.”

She raises her head and meets my gaze, her lips only inches from mine. “I understand the reasons I shouldn’t be with you, Finn. You think I haven’t had them on repeat since I rescued you?” Her amber eyes sear me with sincerity. “What do you want?”

“I want you to be safe and happy.”

“What if I can’t be both?”

I run my knuckles along her cheek. “Then I want you to be safe.”

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “And I’ve decided I’d rather be happy.”

“The things you used to want—”

“I gave up on those a long time ago. Years ago. I’ll never be a mom. I’m not telling you I’m not sad. But the other thing I wanted? It was a partner I could trust, who would be honest with me, who would love me.” Her eyes waver from mine, a hint of unease in their depths. “You tell me the truth, even when it’s not something I want to hear.”

I stare at the wall, contemplating her words. When we were younger, she told me if I ever wanted to stop sleeping with her, all I had to do was some human trafficking. It was a hard line for her. We were in bed, and I laughed. Told her it was weird to be okay with murder and not okay with trafficking. Then I promised her I’d never do it.

Easy to lie, to tell her I forgot our conversation when Zhang’s trafficking business landed in my lap in Boston. When Antonio asked what we would do with the human arm of Zhang’s business, I thought of Carys, of the promise I made, of how after we had sex in Boston she told me she was so drunk and horny I could have been anyone. I kept Zhang’s business because I was pissed I meant so little to her when she meant so fucking much to me.

She tries to back away, and I clutch her closer.

Her nervous laugh is muffled by my chest. “Clearly, I misread this. Forget I said anything.”

“I’m thinking.” I smooth her hair and kiss the top of her head. Agreeing to be with her makes me a selfish bastard. Normally, I’m quite happy with being a bright, shining example of what it means to be both selfish and a bastard. God knows I’ve had both thrown at me so many times I’ve lost count.

“You shouldn’t have to think this hard.” She tries to escape my grasp. “If you can’t—if you don’t believe you can love me—”

I chuckle, and she slaps my chest and struggles with more force, trying to break free. “It’s not fucking funny, Finn.”

Love her? I barely remember a time when I didn’t love her. My body may have belonged to others, but my soul, what’s left of it, is hers. My obsession started when I was thirteen, jacking off into a sock at the idea of her, and it’ll end with me whispering her name on my deathbed. I laugh again, and then I realize why she doesn’t find it funny. Swallowing down my amusement, I let her get away from me.

She strides halfway across the room and stops, her back facing me, as though she’s not sure what to do with herself.

Can I let her tie herself to me? Can I be that selfish?

“You think I don’t love you?” I say.

“You’ve never said it.”

I shrug and quirk my lips up, but it isn’t with amusement. “I’ve never said it to anyone.”

When she turns, her expression is pensive. “No one? Ever?”

“Maybe my mom.” I grimace. Remembering her is a sharp thorn in my side. “She was murdered when I was five, so I don’t recall saying it.” I dig my hands into my pockets. “Donagheys never say it. Not out loud. Never occurred to me you might need to hear it.”

She searches my face but doesn’t come back to me. Her hands are linked, and she stares at them. One of her rings goes around and around. “Sometimes I felt it or thought I felt it. Maybe you did.” A sad smile flits across her face. “You were hard to read.” Her smile vanishes. “You’re still hard to read.”

“Are you sure about this?” I shove my hands deeper into my pockets, trying to keep the rational distance until she’s decided.

Letting her go last time was almost impossible, but I did it because I was standing in the way of her getting the things she wanted. Once we fall back into each other, could I pull myself out? Walk away? I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.

“Yes.” She closes the space between us and places her hand on the side of my face. “I want to be happy. Being with you, around you, makes me happy.” She rises on her toes to mold herself to me. In my ear, she whispers, “I’ve loved no one else the way I love you.”

The heaviness in my chest eases. I draw her tighter to me. “I love you too.” Those words, from her, from me, crack me open, lay me bare. I’ll do anything to make her happy and, whether or not she wants it, to keep her safe.