AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ciara slumped forward, her forehead falling into the crook of my neck as she went completely limp in my arms.
“Mo ròs?” I gave her a little shake.
The woman groaned, sitting up to look at me with one eye open. “I think you may have been right about the hot water. I’ve completely melted.”
A chuckle rippled out of me as I lifted her in my arms gently and put one foot out of the tub, not putting my weight on it until I was sure I wasn’t going to slip and give us both concussions.
“Well, let’s get to the bed and I can melt you all over again without all of this heat,” I told her as I carried her through the suite and into the large bedroom.
Much, much later as we lay tangled amongst the sheets and Ciara was half-asleep on my chest, I couldn’t stop staring at her.
“Why are you still looking at me, pretty boy?” she mumbled sleepily, her hand flattening so she could look up at me groggily.
“No reason,” I murmured, brushing her curls to the side so I could cup her face. “It’s just… the last time we fell asleep together like this I woke up and you were gone.”
Try as I might, moving on from that day was harder than I thought it would be. I had Ciara back, she was a part of my pack, she’d even declared to the entire fucking world that I was hers and she was mine.
And yet?
There was still that tiny part of myself that was terrified that my bubble of happiness would burst if I relaxed even an inch.
Ciara put her head back down, her ear directly over where my heartbeat was the strongest.
“I’ll be here in the morning,” she said after a few beats of silence.
I cuddled her in close and inhaled her cinnamon scent deep into my lungs. “Promise?”
She nodded with a yawn. “I promise, now get some sleep. You earned it after that performance.”
Finally, all of the muscles in my body seemed to unbunch one by one until I finally dropped off into a comfortable, dreamless sleep.
Chapter thirty
“Leanbh, I need you to do this for me,” my mam’s voice filled my ears over the hammer of my heart.
Water rushed in through the hole in the windshield, pouring over the heads of Bridget and Bela who were slumped against the dash. Mam had called their names twice, but neither were responding as the car filled with water.
The car had landed nose down in the river and my body hung in the seatbelt as we sank.
“Leanbh,” my mam insisted, grabbing my face roughly and turning it to her.
Her beautiful face was bloody and her left eye was already swollen as we looked at each other.
“Once I get your seatbelt unbuckled I’m going to roll down the window and I need you to get out and swim for the column, do you see it?”
Mam pointed out of the window at the stone column of the bridge. It was maybe fifteen feet, but it may as well have been a mile away to my eyes.
“I don’t think I can do it,” I said, shaking my head as panic really began to set in. “I can’t swim well.”
Before she left, she’d signed me up for swim classes that I never ended up going to and now I wished more than anything I had.
“You can do it.” Mam spoke with such conviction that it made me pause. Her hands cupped my face, brushing blood away from my cheeks. “You need to be brave for me, leanbh.”
Her hands started to reach for the button of my seatbelt, but I stopped her. “W-wait! What about you?”
Mam’s expression turned sad as she glanced down at her legs which were a mangled mess from part of the car that had buckled in from going over the barriers of the bridge.
“I won’t be coming with you,” she said and cut me off before I could say anything.
