Page 159 of Twisting Beauty

He’d done none of those things.

He’d let it run.

He’d let Dervla rot. He’d let Maeve be killed. He’d let every girl in the ward suffer.

No. I was reading this wrong. I had to be reading this wrong.

But the seed had been planted, the doubt sitting low and ugly in my chest, not big enough to be belief and not small enough to be nothing.

My knees finally gave out. Deargán caught me by the waist before I could fall.

“I am sorry you had to know this,” he said softly.

He was right in front of me, close enough that the cello in my head flared, his scent of clove and pepper rolling over me. An old, ugly pull clenched low in my belly.

He leaned in, his mouth covering mine in a soft press.

His kiss tasted like cognac and it woke up every nerve he’d ever conditioned. My mouth softened against his.

He pulled me closer, flush against him, his cock hardening between us.

Oblivion was right there. He was offering it. My body knew the route by heart.

I’d wanted it. I’d wanted it the way a drowning thing wants air.

But then I thought of Lorcan, holding me together while I broke, without taking a single piece of me as payment.

I might still want Deargán. But I didn’t need him anymore. I didn’t need to disappear into him to survive.

My hand came up and I shoved him in the chest.

He stepped back, his face crumpling before he composed it.

Everything crashed together at once. What Lorcan had told me. What Deargán had just confessed. Every version of the truth tearing against the next until I couldn’t tell which one was real anymore.

My chest felt too tight, my head too loud.

I didn’t know who to believe. I didn’t know what was true. I only knew I needed space. Air. Room to breathe without either of them closing in on me.

I turned and ran for the door.

I pulled it open and tumbled out into the wet grass and the cold air, the taste of cognac still on my tongue, the cello fading as the distance opened up between us.

I barely made it three steps before I halted.

Someone was standing in the lines of the trees.

Lorcan.

Leaning against the trunk of an old oak with his arms folded and his shoulders set, his light-gray coat stark against the dark of the bark, his pale eyes already on me.

Fuck. He’d followed me. He’d been there the whole time.

Lorcan had seen me with Deargán in the carriage house.

Lorcan had seen the kiss.

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