Page 59 of The Endless Want

Then: “Ailish!”

My heart lurches painfully.

Declan. Which would be why Mackenzie isn’t scared. Isn’t reacting.

He bursts into the bedroom like a storm, face flushed, eyes wild, chest heaving. Liam’s security didn’t even slow him down. There’s no coat on him, in November, which means he came straight out of wherever he was standing when someone told him. There’s a scrape across two knuckles that wasn’t there this morning. He crosses to me before he says anything at all, and his hands come up like he’s going to take my face, and then they stop six inches short and hang there, and he curls them into fists instead.

Something in his expression shatters. Then it seals over, and what comes out is rage.

“What the hell happened?” he demands. His voice is too loud, too sharp. “Why weren’t you being watched? Why weren’t you protected? Why⁠—”

“I’m fine,” I say, though I’m not.

He steps closer, anger trembling beneath his skin. “You nearly got killed. Again.”

His voice cracks on the second word. He hears it. I watch him hate himself for it.

“It wasn’t targeted,” I protest weakly. “I just got caught in the way⁠—”

“You shouldn’t have been anywhere they could reach you!”

The words hit harder than he means them to. I look away. “I did my job, Declan.”

“You were reckless,” he snaps. He isn’t looking at me when he says it. He’s looking at the bruise on my forearm, and he hasn’t looked anywhere else since he came through the door.

The accusation guts me. “I wasn’t reckless. I did everything right.”

“You shouldn’t have been there at all.” His voice rings through the room, and my heart breaks a little more under the weight of it. Something inside me curls inward, afraid he’ll say the next hurtful thing without meaning to.

I almost tell him. I almost say, I’m pregnant. Please don’t yell at me. Please don’t scare me like this. But instead, I lift my chin. “Get out,” I whisper.

He freezes. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Ailish—”

“No.” My voice trembles, but it holds. “If you can’t calm down, if you’re just here to blame me for things I can’t control—get out.”

He stares at me, stunned. And then he backs away, slowly, one hand dragging down his face, and at the doorway he stops with his back to me for the length of a breath, like a man deciding whether to try one more sentence. He doesn’t have one. He’s too full of rage and fear to speak without setting the whole room on fire.

The door shuts behind Declan so hard the frame rattles, and the moment the sound fades, something in me caves.

CHAPTER 17

Ailish

My knees loosen. My breath snags. The room tilts, and a thin crack splits through whatever fragile interior scaffolding I’ve been using to hold myself upright.

I sit on the edge of the mattress and fold forward until my elbows touch my thighs, my fingers tightening against my skull as if I’m trying to keep everything inside from spilling out. My chest rises and falls in useless, shallow presses, the kind that never pull in enough air.

Declan’s anger still hangs in the space he left behind, thick and electric, like cordite after a gunshot.

And I don’t know what hurts more—that he stormed in like some furious avenging force, or that the second he saw me shaken and pale, something in him softened… only for him to turn vicious again, scolding me like I’d gone out begging to be attacked.

I don’t even realize my breathing’s gone ragged until a cool hand touches my shoulder. “Ailish,” Mackenzie murmurs, lowering herself in front of me. “Hey. Look at me.”

I lift my eyes only when she gently pulls my hands away from my head, her expression softening as soon as she sees my face. “Oh, sweetheart,” she says quietly. “You’ve had enough for three lifetimes this month.”