Page 106 of Beautiful Scars

Kill leads me to a booth in the back of the room. It’s one of three other booths completely secluded from the rest of the bar. I guess it’s where gangsters like him go when they want to negotiate the price of a few bricks of smack without being overheard.

A candelabra beckons us with its flickering flames. There’s a bottle of wine on the table and two glasses, almost invisible against the dark backdrop.

When I sit, the soft crushed velvet upholstering the booth caresses the back of my thighs like silk.

Now I wish I hadn’t worn underwear.

Cillian slides in on the other side, sitting opposite me on the half-moon booth. He pours us a glass of red wine almost the exact same color as the booth. He’s studying me through his lashes as if gauging my reaction to this place.

So instead I school my face to make sure I’m not giving anything away. “Crowded,” I say, overemphasizing the word. “And a bit drafty.”

Kill lets out a throaty chuckle that makes my core clench like he just grabbed my pussy and squeezed. “Here,” he says, and shrugs off his suit jacket. “I’ll ask Lorenzo to turn up the heat when he brings our food.”

I sniff, and make a show of snuggling into his jacket as if we’re sitting at the North Pole and not the gastronomical equivalent of Shangri-la.

I won’t let him see how much this place impresses me, especially because I haven’t even seen all that much of it to begin with. Seated where I am, my view is centered on Cillian and a beautiful watercolor painting a few yards away. We’re almost completely isolated from the rest of the place.

Probably on purpose.

I take a sip from my wine glass and try to ignore Cillian’s smell wafting into my nose with every breath. The jacket is warm and soft and feels too much like home. Which makes no sense.

Why couldn’t he become home?Trish asks.Is it the man you’re rejecting, or his profession?

Daft quack. I take another sip of wine. Then another. Cillian watches me, his wine still untouched.

“So did you order already?” I ask, and probably a touch too brusquely judging from the way Cillian’s mouth twitches.

“Hungry?”

“Starved.”

Cillian points to his jacket pocket. “Check the time.”

I frown at him for a second, and then fish around in his jacket when I remember I’m wearing it. I pull out his phone and hand it to him, but he doesn’t take it. So I turn it to face me and press one of the buttons on the side. The screen lights up, showing the clock and a few cut off messages.

Derek

No news on...

“Just past five,” I say, forcing my eyes away from the screen.

Cillian sits back on the bench and stretches out. No wonder he likes this place—it looks like it was made for massive men like him. Here, the benches aren’t all low to the ground like they were at Asylum. As usual, my feet dangle inches from the black floor tiles.

“I could ask for breadsticks,” he says.

I’m hungry, but I’d rather carry on exploring the mind of Don Cillianos. What he told me in the car shocked me, but it connected a shit load of dots at the same time.

Maybe he thinks the same about me, because while he used to stare at me like I was the cage around a piece of cake and he was lusting after vanilla frosting, now it’s as if he finally found the lid of the puzzle he’s been working on for weeks.

And he’s just realized the bit he had for the sky was in fact a barn door painted blue.

But for the life of me, I don’t know where to take this conversation. And I guess Cillian realizes that because he sits forward and makes to slip out of the booth. “I’ll go tell Lorenzo to—”

“Is Cole going to marry Sarah?”

Well, that’s a conversation starter if I ever heard one.

“Sarah?” Kill asks, like he’s legit forgotten who the hell she is.