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“Yeah, you can. Who says you can’t?”
“Uh…” I tried to find the right words. “Society?”
“Fuck society,” Christian said, getting up from the couch. I turned around to look at him, but I could see that he had his mind set on this, much like Cillian, and they weren’t going to let me go.
“At least let me go and get some of my things. I need my car, my clothes, my books,” I started adding more and more things. “I can go to work from here if you don’t want me to live in that apartment, but—”
“My brother is trying to kill me,” Cillian blurted out, making me look at him again. “And I’m afraid, kitten. I’m afraid he would try to kill you to get to me.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Talk about a dysfunctional family.
He didn’t want to look at me as he started speaking, but I needed him to know that no matter what he said, no matter what he revealed, I still wouldn’t run in the opposite direction.
“Kill,” I murmured, dragging my thumb over his sternum. “You can tell me. Hell, you should tell me.”
Seconds ticked as he braced himself to open up, to tell me what was plaguing him, and I sat there, waiting for the words I wasn’t ready for.
“There were four of us,” he said, trembling as I rubbed my hand over his chest. “Three brothers and one sister, and we used to get along so well. I mean, my family wasn’t okay, but the four of us were close. Closer than most other siblings you might know. But life happened, and our sister died. Or at least we thought she'd died.”
Words tumbled out as if he'd waited for a long fucking time to say them out loud. But I kept my mouth shut, letting him speak.
“Tristan is the youngest brother, and I had no idea how much he'd struggled with Ava’s death.” I assumed that was their sister. “But three years ago, a friend of ours, Ophelia Aster, was in danger, and it turned out that Ava was behind it all. Ava who was supposed to be dead. Ava, whose death we all mourned, blaming Ophelia for what happened when it wasn’t her fault. But Ava wasn’t the same, and I had no idea how she turned into such a vicious monster, but Ophelia’s sister killed her for what she tried to do to Ophelia.”
“And Tristan didn’t take it well,” Christian finished for him, while Cillian closed his eyes, as if he was trying to forget it all.
It all clicked then. The secrecy, the body in the hotel, Cillian being there. “Tristan was the one that killed that man, wasn’t he?”
The two of them looked at each other, but the tiny nod from Christian was confirmation enough.
How could he do that? How could he hurt his own brother like that?
I didn’t have any siblings, but I always wanted to have somebody that could understand me better than my parents, and to think that his own brother was trying to destroy his life.
“All those bodies all over the city,” I continued talking, “is it him as well?”
Cillian looked at me, years of pent up pain, sadness and misery reflecting back at me, and with a small nod of his head, he confirmed it all.
“He’s trying to destroy me, to take everything away from me. And I don’t want him to take you away, kitten. I don’t want him to hurt you, but Tristan isn’t okay. Hell, I’m afraid he will take one look at you and he will know.”
“He will know what?”
A shuddering breath rocked through him as his hands tightened at my hips. He pressed his face into the crook of my neck, hiding himself from me.
“He will know I won’t be able to live without you.”
My heart felt as if it was split open, bleeding out, giving him direct access to the center of my soul. And somewhere there, deep inside where I never went, he burrowed himself, hiding in the left chamber of my heart, and I wasn’t going to try to remove him.
* * *
Cillian
Vulnerability wasn’tsomething I often welcomed with open arms, but sitting here with her and Christian gave me the clarity I needed. The words poured out of me, uncaring of the consequences or that she could look at me as if I was just another loser, mourning the loss of the family I once had.
I couldn’t care less about my father or my mother, but my brothers were everything to me. And knowing that one of them didn’t even want to talk to me, while the other one tried to destroy everything I have worked for, didn’t sit well with me. It was bound to push me over the edge, into the dark pit I once managed to crawl out of.
But even when I said what Tristan was doing, even as I remembered how it all played out, I didn’t feel the usual panic that came along with the thoughts of my brother. But the mere notion that he could harm her was what made my pulse increase, while the need to lock her up and protect her in the only way I knew how started rising to the surface of my skin.
