Page 131 of Unlocked

Her eyes were doing several things at once, and all of them were familiar to him. The sharp intelligence as she worked through what she was seeing. The emotion running underneath it that she was managing with the particular discipline of a woman who had been managing things her entire life. And beneath both of those things, something else, something that he recognized because he felt it himself every time he thought about her, which was constantly, which was every quiet moment and most of the loud ones too.

She stood.

She picked up one of her bags. He picked up the other without asking, and she let him, which told him something. He led her through the back of the pub and out the door into the gray Irish afternoon and around the side of the building to the cottage.

It was small and stone and had been there as long as the pub had, which was long enough ago that it had stopped apologizing for its size and simply gotten on with being itself. Window boxes. A blue door. A view from the back window of the field and beyond it the edge of the Atlantic, which on a day like this was the color of pewter and entirely magnificent.

He unlocked the door and stood back, and she went in ahead of him. She set her bag down and stood in the middle of the small sitting room, and looked around. He set her other bag down and closed the door, and that was as long as he could manage it.

He crossed the room and put his arms around her.

He pulled her in and held her and pressed his face into her hair and just breathed for a moment, just that, just the fact of her being here and being alive and being in this room, which was a fact that he had not been entirely certain he would ever get to experience and had thought about in the dark of more nights than he could count.

For a moment, she just held on, her hands in his shirt, her face against his chest, and he felt the tension of two months of everything she'd been carrying run through her and begin, very slowly, to ease.

Then she stepped back.

She put her hands on his chest and pushed, gently but with intention, and he let her go because she needed to and he had promised himself he would always let her do what she needed to do, even when every instinct he had was pointing in the opposite direction.

She looked at his face.

He looked back at her and let her look, let her take whatever time she needed, and tried to be patient about it even, though patience had never been his strongest quality and was currently being tested more severely than usual.

"You're alive," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"I thought—" She stopped. Her jaw tightened. "Two months, Archer."

"Declan," he said quietly.

Some emotion moved across her face. "Declan," she said, and the word sounded strange from her mouth, familiar and foreign at the same time.

"My name," he began. "My actual name is Declan O'Sullivan." He watched her process that. "Archer Gray was an identity I built a long time ago. A way out of something I needed to get out of." He paused, choosing what to say and what to leave for later. "I grew up not far from here. Difficult circumstances. The kind you don't talk about until you're ready, and I was never ready." He met her eyes. "I needed to become someone else for a while, so I did. I became Archer Gray. And I was Archer Gray for a very long time, and I don't regret any of it." He paused again. "But this is who I actually am. This is where I'm actually from. I've owned this pub for years. I'd come back now and again to make sure it was running properly and then go back to being Archer. Now I've come back properly."

She was watching him with those sharp hazel eyes that had always seen more than he was comfortable with.

"You've been here," she said. "This whole time. While I was—" She stopped. "While I thought you were dead."

"Yes," he said. "I'm sorry for that. I am genuinely sorry for that, and I know sorry isn't enough. I promise I'm going to spend considerable time making it up to you."

"You're sorry," she said.

"Very," he said.

"Why Ireland," she said. "Why here specifically?"

"Because it's home," he said simply. "Because Archer Gray could die in the East River and Declan O'Sullivan could come home to his pub in Clare, and nobody would ever connect the two. Because I needed to disappear properly and this was the only place in the world where I knew how to do that." He looked at her. "And because Armand knew where to send you."

She was quiet for a moment. He watched her work through it, the layers of it, the way her legal mind assembled and assessed and reached conclusions with the speed and precision that had always made him slightly breathless if he was being honest with himself.

"You planned this," she said.

"Parts of it," he said. "The exit strategy. The pub. The identity. Those I planned." He paused. "I did not plan on you. You were not part of any plan I made, and you got past every defense I had. I have been completely unable to do anything about it since the first time I really looked at you, and I stopped trying a long time ago."

She looked at him.

"You'll love it here," he said. "I want you to know that. The village is small, but the people are good and the light in the evenings is extraordinary, and there's a beach twenty minutes down the road that will take your breath away. Will you let me show you all of it? I want to show you everything." He took a breath.