Page 94 of Cruel Lies

He moves slowly across the room, not talking. When he's at the side of the bed, he kneels down so his face is level with mine.

He takes my hand. His is warm. Mine is cold. Then he lifts two fingers and puts them under my chin, tipping my face up so I have to look at him.

I can't look away. He won't let me.

"When I have you,kotyonok," he intones, "you'll remember every second of it. I'm not interested in a version of you that can't recall my name in the morning."

I don't say anything. I don't think I could if I tried.

His eyes are on mine. The blue and the gray.

He means it. Every word. I can tell.

Even on our best days, Todd never once looked at me like this. I don't think he was capable of it.

Ronan looks at me like everything else in the world has ceased to exist.

"Okay," I whisper. It's all I've got.

He nods. He lets his fingers fall from my chin. Then he brings my hand up and presses his mouth to my knuckles, soft, and lets go.

Then he starts to rise.

"You're leaving?" I protest. "You don't want coffee, or?—"

"I want a great many things," he interrupts. "But you have children coming home in a few hours, and you need to shower off that whiskey, and I need to not be here when your mother's car pulls up." He bends down. "May I?"

I nod.

He kisses me. It's not the kiss from last night, the deep one that made me climb into his lap, though I really wouldn't mind if that's how he did kiss me, morning breath and all.

But this is a fluttering, barely-there kiss. It leaves me wanting so much more.

I watch as he retreats to the chair, grabs his jacket, and slings it over his shoulder with one finger. He walks to the door.

I can't let him go quite yet, though.

"Ronan."

He stops. Turns.

I don't know what I'm going to say until I say it.

"Thank you," I tell him.

He looks at me for a second. "You never have to thank me for that, Calista," he whispers. "Not for that. Never."

And then he's gone. I hear his feet on the stairs, and then the front door whooshing open and closed, and then nothing.

I lie there for a while refusing to let myself think about anything in particular. Sleep creeps up on me again for a few hours. When I wake back up, the sun is at its mid-morning point in the sky and my phone is vibrating with texts from my mother informing me that she's bringing the kids back at noon.

Time to reassemble all the broken pieces of myself and be SuperMom again.

I sit up and realize with a jolt that there's a glass of water and two ibuprofen on my bedside table. I can only laugh and shake my head—Ronan must have set them there. I down both gratefully, then rise to do everything that must be done.

The week that follows is a good one.

I keep waiting for it to turn on me. For the last year or year and a half of my life, I got so used to the floor dropping out that a part of me can't stop bracing for it. I'm too wary—I can't quite trust a good day to just be a good day.