Page 20 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

Ruby

I spent half the night staring at my phone, the blue glow fracturing my thoughts into splinters.

Kieran had managed to destroy my couch arrangement in under five minutes, then sent me a picture of himself with a mug of cocoa and the remote like it was some kind of victory.

I didn’t even answer. What could I say? I was tired, sore, and…

I was happy.

Or some approximation of it, anyway.

I tried reading, but the words blurred, lines melting into static.

So I started scrolling through old photos of Rosie—baby-faced, wild-haired, her smile ricocheting off the screen, reminding me of myself and not.

Julian was in some of them, too, sometimes holding a sippy cup, sometimes holding her, always with that careful, easy smile.

There was one picture I kept, even though the edges were warped from years of cheap phones.

Julian with the sun behind him, arms around Rosie, her curls a mess against his pressed shirt.

I tried to remember what it had felt like: the quiet of those early months, the illusion of safety.

He’d taught me to want that. I’d never known how to want it before him.

The urge to call him was like a fever, rising and falling in the dark.

I thought of the way Kieran watched me sleep when he thought I didn’t notice, the way he said my name like it hurt.

I thought of Julian’s steadiness, the way he’d check in, the way he’d taken Rosie’s hand when she first learned to walk—gentle, measured, always exactly enough.

But that was the thing about Julian. I loved him as Rosie’s father. I loved him because he was her father. There was nothing else about him I loved.

The rest was just keeping the peace: custody hand-offs, text threads about lost gloves and snack preferences, declining Parent Portal invites to “coffee nights” he’d always attend even when they felt like they were for show.

It was normal, or so I told myself, every time guilt tried to claw its way in: you could be grateful, even love someone in a triangulated way, and still never tell them the one true thing about your life. Not even once.

I flicked through old messages: Rosie at the aquarium, lit up by green jellyfish; Rosie in a Halloween cape, glaring at me for enforcing bedtime. Maybe a dozen pictures of all three of us together. That was it.

My phone buzzed. Kieran, of course. Or, more accurately, Kieran in the next room, too stubborn to just talk and too smart to risk a second fight in the same night.

Kieran

You awake?

I thought about ignoring him. Then:

Yes.

He took a while to answer.

Kieran

You really want me to sleep on the fucking couch? It sucks.

Better than fighting, I figured.

That’s the point. Couch is punishment, not hospitality.

A minute went by.

Kieran

If you really wanted to punish me, you’d have me sleep in the bed with you. I remember how much you hate snoring.

I remembered it, too—all the nights Kieran kept me up, sprawling and shifting, always sneaking a knee or elbow over to my side. That was the way Kieran loved…not curated, not even a little bit. I almost missed it.

Almost.

I told myself it was just nostalgia. Or exhaustion.

I rolled my eyes at the phone.

Eat shit. See you in the morning.

Kieran

Good night, Rubes.

I fell asleep watching the winter light flicker on the wall, listening to Rosie’s deep breathing and Kieran’s muffled grumbling from the living room.

I dreamed of being chased—through tunnels, through parking garages, through a courthouse that melted room by room until it was just the two of us and Rosie, older, perched on boxes marked “fragile.” In the dream, I was always searching for something I’d lost. I never found it.

I woke up to the smell of eggs and the soft blue of early morning.

Rosie wasn’t in bed. Panic hit—full-body, ribcage clamp—until I heard her giggle from the kitchen.

Kieran’s voice, low and unfamiliar, said, “That’s not how you do it…

wait, here, let me show you.” Like he actually cared about getting it right.

I let the panic ebb, then pulled on jeans and a shirt and padded down the hall.

“You’re not bad at this,” Rosie was saying. “You just need more practice.”

There he was: hunched over the stove, spatula in hand, hair sticking up like he’d lost a fight with the frying pan. He was wearing Julian’s “Marathon Dad” apron, which he must have fished out of the pantry. He didn’t look like he belonged in a kitchen, but he was trying.

Rosie sat on a stool, eating clementine slices from a pink china teacup I’d bought at the Museum of Fine Arts.

She watched Kieran with the skeptical look she usually reserved for cartoon villains or substitute teachers.

She was, I realized, the only one in the house unimpressed by a Callahan. It made me feel safer, somehow.

Kieran gave her a salute. “I’ll practice every day until I can make perfect eggs.”

Rosie, chewing, said, “You’d get more perfect if you stopped flipping them so much.”

He grinned. “You calling me out, kid?”

She shrugged, then sucked the juice from another segment. “Mami says the only way to get better is to keep messing up and pretend it doesn’t bother you.” She popped a piece into her mouth. “Are you going to practice with her, too?”

“God, I hope so,” Kieran said. He winked at me, and the hope in his face almost made me look away.

I couldn’t make myself eat—the jitter in my hands made it impossible—but I drank coffee and watched, silent, as the two of them navigated the morning. There was nothing to do, nowhere to be, nothing hanging over us except the suspicion that this was just a pause before the next disaster.

After Rosie finished her clementines, she asked, “Can we go to the library today? I want the new Pigeon book.”

“I don’t know about that,” I said, voice rough. I tried to smile. I wanted Rosie to have normalcy, but I didn’t think we should be seen anywhere with Kieran.

Kieran looked at me. “You want me to come, or…?”

I hesitated. “No,” I replied.

He grimaced. “I’m not going to let you go anywhere by yourself,” he said in a whisper.

The lawyer in me wanted to keep him out of Rosie’s normal, but the rest of me didn’t want him gone—not today. It was like craving a lost city, or a meal from childhood, even if you knew it was bad for you. “You can’t be seen with me,” I replied, just as quietly.

“Then you can’t go to the library,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Mami?” Rosie pressed.

“Wait,” Kieran said. “Give me a couple of hours. I have an idea.”

“What is your idea?” I asked.

“She wants a library? I’ll build her one,” Kieran said. “You two go to your room, and watch a movie.”

I shook my head. “Wait, what?”

“You know that scene in Beauty and the Beast, Rosie? When the Beast shows Belle her own library?” Kieran asked. “If you keep your mom in her room for a couple of hours, I can make that happen for you.”

“Mami, can he?”

How could I say no to that when I could see the hope in her face? And what Kieran said made sense. We couldn’t just go anywhere. Not with a target on my back.

“Okay,” I said. “Just...don’t go too crazy.”

“You don’t use your she-shed anymore, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Perfect for this little menace,” Kieran said.

Rosie wrinkled her nose. “I’m more like a tornado.”

“Yeah,” I said, finishing my coffee. “She is.”

He wouldn’t let us look. For two hours, Rosie and I curled up under blankets in my bed, watching The Secret Garden while I tried not to obsess over the sound of drills, shuffling, and occasional swearing from outside. I texted and offered help once. He told me to mind my movie.

When he finally knocked, Rosie bolted past me.

The shed door had been propped open with a brick.

Inside, it was… transformed. Not perfect—nothing ever was with Kieran—but magical in that cobbled-together way kids love most. A rug had been dragged in from the hall closet.

Two mismatched lamps lit the corners. A bookshelf I didn’t recognize had been filled with Rosie’s favorite stories, plus some from my room, plus a stack I think he must’ve bought from somewhere, somehow.

There were beanbags. A folding chair. Her pink teacup on a crate labeled “Returns.”

And taped to the wall, in glitter marker:

THE ROSIE brANCH LIbrARY

OPEN DAILY

LATE FEES = 1 KISS

Rosie screamed. Not out of fear—pure joy. “It’s mine!” she yelled, spinning in a circle. “You made me a library!”

Kieran looked sheepish. “Still needs a stamp and a checkout system. But I figured it was a start.”

“You even put the Pigeon books first,” she said reverently.

“You went out to buy all the Pigeon books?” I asked, eyeing the bookshelf.

“What can I say? I’m a completionist,” Kieran replied with a shy smile.

I stepped inside. The air smelled faintly of cedar and cheap paperbacks. The string lights he'd stapled to the ceiling flickered. “Kieran,” I murmured. “This is…”

“I know it’s messy...”

Rosie threw her arms around Kieran’s waist. “Thank you, Key,” she said. “This is perfect.”

Rosie was already curled up with a book, legs swinging. She looked up just once. “This is way better than the real library. Mami says libraries don’t let you wear pajamas.”

Kieran held back laughter. “I didn’t know about that rule,” he said. He hooked his ankle over his knee and sat on the floor beside her. “Real libraries also don’t serve snacks. I made an exception.”

He opened a bakery bag—clementines, a gingerbread man, and a hot cross bun. Rosie squealed. I stared at him.

In the daylight, the tattoo on his arm—three blue helix bands—looked faded, almost gentle. I leaned against the counter, teabag string looped around my wrist, pretending to check emails but really just watching.

Kieran tore the gingerbread man in half and offered a piece to Rosie, who took it without looking up. Then he looked at me, unexpectedly formal, and said, “Do you want the head or the feet?”

“I never have the heart to eat either,” I said.

He grinned, then popped both in his mouth. “No mercy,” Rosie said, not even glancing up.

“No mercy,” Kieran agreed.

It was a weird kind of peace, like a hostage handoff in a public park.

But at least Rosie was happy, and for an hour she rebuilt a LEGO city at the table, elbows pinning the instructions, tongue poking out in concentration.

I could see traces of Kieran in her—the way she doubled down when something didn’t come easy, how she got tunnel vision with her whole body, jaw set like she’d rather break the thing than walk away from it.

I brought my computer to the shed and joined them.

I opened my laptop, stared at the inbox full of flagged cases, and closed it again.

The weight of it settled in my chest—names I’d promised justice, deadlines I was already blowing.

I drafted a text to Alek, then deleted it.

What was I going to say? That I’d be back soon?

That I was fine? I wasn’t. And I knew the job didn’t wait.

I just couldn’t make myself show up for it, not yet.

I missed my mother, suddenly and painfully.

I wondered what she’d say if she saw me now, tangled up with a Callahan again.

Would she tell me to run, or to fight for it?

Would she remember how much she’d wanted for me, before the chemo, before she left nothing but a handful of useless advice—protect Rosie, don’t sacrifice your happiness for a man.

Rosie’s Bugs and Badgers book ended up as a hat, balanced on her head as she marched into the living room. “I’m a library queen,” she announced, then started reordering the books on the lowest shelf, alphabetizing them for no reason but the need for order.

Kieran followed, crouched beside her, helping restack paperbacks by color. Watching them, you’d think this was a normal weekend—dad and daughter, stubborn and silent, soaking up each other’s company while the world spun outside.

It was so close to normal it felt cruel.

Eventually, Kieran caught me watching and just…watched back. It wasn’t a plea. It was steadier than that, a quiet ask: Can I stay?

I broke the stare, muttered something about laundry. Upstairs, I closed the linen closet door and just stood there, hands braced to the shelves, breathing in detergent and faint mildew, willing myself not to cry.

I didn’t want to want this.

But there it was: the shape of the life I could’ve had—messy, loud, unfinished. Kieran, who brought thunder and devotion in equal measure. Rosie, who carried the best of both of us.

And me, aching in a hallway, trying to forget that I already knew what it felt like to lose them.