Page 18 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

“It’s almost sweet, the way you can’t help yourself.”

It was after nine. Rosie’s room was silent—maybe still asleep, maybe reading under the covers with a flashlight, but either way, she was the only one in this house whose shields were down.

Kieran ate a segment. “What’s the next move?”

I stared him down. “You tell me. I did everything you asked. I sold my last good option to Tristan. Now we just wait for him to take care of things, right? I’m powerless in all this…there is no next move.”

He looked genuinely pained. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re—?” I almost spat it. Then, softer, more tired than I wanted, “It’s not your fault. But if you get the urge to say that again, punch yourself first, just to make it interesting.”

He grinned, which was unfair, because it made his whole face light up, and my reflex was to want to touch him. Instead I kicked my chair back, closed the laptop, and went to the sink just to give my hands something to do.

Kieran finished the orange, tossed the peels, and stood behind me. No contact, not even a hand on my shoulder, but I felt the static as if he was already touching the bones of my back.

“When this is over,” he said, “are you still going to hate me?”

“Yes,” I said instantly, and I meant it, but some part of me hoped he’d push.

He didn’t. “That’s fair,” he said. He leaned in close enough that his chin grazed the top of my hair. “But I’d do it all again. You know that, right?”

I said nothing. The answer was already in the air, stitched into the day: our sprint through freezing woods, breakfast with Tristan, the seconds spent watching Rosie sleep.

He stepped away, braced both hands on the lip of the sink. Looked down for half a breath, then reached past me for a glass. The move was casual, automatic—so familiar it nearly gutted me.

How many lives could’ve spun out from gestures like that?

Not dreams, not hypotheticals. Just the life we almost had.

They all ran beside this one, stubborn and alive. Like Rosie. Like us.

He drank from the tap and let out an exhale. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he said. “Not now. Not ever.”

“You keep saying that,” I said, careful. “And then things just keep happening.”

“But you’re still alive.”

I didn’t offer anything. Just watched him fill the glass again, drink, and set it on the counter.

“How long do you think it will last?” I asked, not sure if I meant the truce with the Crew, the borrowed peace of co-parenting, or the relentless, low-grade ache of being tied to a Callahan.

He squinted, considering. “The Crew is just a job,” he said, voice clinical. “If Tristan says the contract is void, it’s void. But someone out there still wants your file closed, and that doesn’t just dissolve. So—long enough to buy us another pivot, maybe. Not forever.”

He turned the glass a quarter rotation, aligning it with the seam in the counter.

I wanted to press him, to start the cycle of questioning that had carried me through law school and up the chain to District Attorny.

But the thing about Kieran—the thing that made him both impossible and irresistible—was that he never gave in to intellectual sparring.

He’d let your best arguments pile up, then wait for you to defeat yourself.

Play stupid, as if he wasn’t playing us all with the act.

“You ever think about what it would’ve been like, if we’d done it right the first time?” I asked.

He blinked, caught off guard. I almost regretted asking, but the look on his face wasn’t pain or even longing. Just realization, a ghost of a smile. “Like, together?” he said. “You and me? With the kid and the job and the mortgage and all of it?”

“Yeah.”

He stepped closer, the back of his hand brushing my cheek. “It would’ve never worked,” he said quietly. “What did you call it? Untenable.”

He didn’t need to say more. I remembered those first few months—reckless and loud, every night a dare, every morning a mess we tried to fuck our way out of. It wasn’t sustainable. It wasn’t safe. But God, it was alive.

I let my head fall back against the cold tile, almost smiling. At least he didn’t pretend it had been some great love story that got away. “Yeah,” I said. “Untenable like setting fire to the house and hoping it keeps you warm.”

That made him laugh—real and sharp, teeth flashing like it might cut him on the way out. Then he caught my eyes in the reflection of the window, and for a second, I saw it all again—everything we’d tried to bury still sparking behind his stare.

“We try anyway?” he said—a question that was also a joke, the punchline of our entire shared disaster.

I shrugged. “You’re already on my couch. Try all you want.”

“Okay,” he said, and his hand moved to my chin, tilting it up so he could look at me. “God, I could stare at you for years.”

I shook my head. “Well, don’t. It’s creepy.”

“I’m going to. I don’t care what you think.”

“Then why ask?”

He sighed. “Ruby…do you want something from me?”

My stomach turned, slow and warning. How the hell could I answer that question when I wanted him to leave me the fuck alone but also wanted everything? “You know I do.”

“I mean more than this.” He gestured at the counter. “More than the fucking and the protection and the kitchen sink.”

“A real answer,” I said. “Not a Callahan answer. Not something you’d feed a cop or a crew boss or a brother.”

His lips curved like he was bracing for another joke.

But what he said wasn’t a joke at all.

“I’d have made you so fucking happy, but I also would’ve driven you mad,” he said.

“I’d have insisted on making sure you only worked when you wanted to…

on making extra sure you’d want for nothing.

And I’d have wanted to make more beautiful babies with you.

Once Rosie was born…I wouldn’t have wanted to stop. ”

My breath caught. Not in my throat—deeper than that. In my gut, my chest, the hollow place that had stayed raw since the day he left.

He wasn’t even touching me, but I felt it anyway: the weight of his want, the way it burned through the quiet like a fuse.

“Kieran—” I started, warning or plea, I didn’t know.

But he just looked at me, eyes dark and wide open. No lies, no performance. Just him, stripped to the bone.

“I think about it all the time,” he said. “You in my bed. You in my house. Our girl coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. You laughing in the kitchen. You carrying another one. All of it.”

My knees went soft.

He bent low, mouth near my ear, voice frayed with restraint. “Tell me to stop. Or tell me what you really want.”

I didn’t answer.

Because every cell in my body was already screaming it.