Page 31 of Obsession
For a moment, the clubhouse blurs under memory. My mother in the kitchen, flour on her hands, rain against the windows, her voice turning my name into something beautiful.Oisín, she’d say, correcting Canon when he shortened it wrong, smiling like the correction was love and not defiance. After she died, my name became something men stumbled over, mocked, shortened, or avoided. Sín was easier in dark rooms because Sín didn’t have a dead mother attached to it. Oisín belonged to a home that stopped existing when Maeve Ward did.
“It’s from the old stories,” I mumble, keeping my eyes on the bar. “Oisín was a warrior and a poet. His father was Fionn mac Cumhaill, leader of the Fianna. Oisín fell in love with Niamh from Tír na nÓg, the land of eternal youth, and went with her across the sea. He stayed there for what felt like three years.”
Tally hums in response.
“When he came back to Ireland, hundreds of years had passed. Everyone he loved was gone. The Fianna were dust. The world had moved on without him, and he couldn’t touch theground without losing everything that kept him young. In some versions, he falls from his horse and becomes an old man. In some, he lives long enough to tell the stories before he dies. My mother liked the part where he remembered. She said forgetting would’ve been the real death.”
The silence afterward is almost painful so I take another bite, needing something to do.
Tally reaches over and squeezes my wrist once. “Your Mom had good taste.”
My eyes burn so fast I have to look away. The clubhouse keeps moving around us, but for one dangerous second I’m back in my mother’s kitchen with her fingers in my hair and my name in her mouth like something worth keeping.
“She was the only one who called me that like she meant it,” I push out.
Tally’s hand leaves my wrist, but the warmth stays. “Then we’ll have to do better around here.”
I take another bite of the sandwich because I don’t trust myself to answer.
***
That evening, I know the second he enters the clubhouse because the room adjusts itself around him before I hear his boots. Voices lower, chairs shift, and the front bar pulls its attention inward. Tally glances toward the hall, then back at me. The creak of Saint’s office door hits my ears and I brace myself for the worst.
“You touch Moth’s board?” she asks.
“Maybe.”
“You alive?”
“So far.”
“Then either Moth liked it or he’s saving the murder for Saint.”
Saint appears in the doorway a moment later, still in his cut, dark shirt stretched across his shoulders, jaw set in a way I’ve learned means controlled irritation rather than active rage. His eyes find me, moves briefly to Tally, then returns to my face.
“Office,” he says.
Tally raises her brows. “He ate.”
Saint’s mouth moves faintly. “Good.”
“And you’re welcome.”
This time, his eyes cut to her. “Thank you.”
The words are so blunt and unexpected that I stare at him too long. Saint catches the look and steps aside, making the hallway available with one small motion of his head. I go because refusing in front of Tally would turn the moment into theater, and because some part of me has been waiting for him all day.
He doesn’t touch me on the walk to his office. Somehow that’s worse. Without his hand on my neck, I’m too aware of every step, every shut door, every muffled voice. His silence has weight, and by the time he closes us inside, my nerves are tight enough that I speak before he can. “I didn’t erase anything.” Saint grunts in response as I let out a small sigh. “If you’re angry because I touched the board, say that.”
“I’m angry because you fixed something my own people missed.”
I swallow nervously, pausing where I stand, waiting for the anger that usually comes with these moments. It never comes.
Saint drags a hand down his face and then turns to me, anger threaded through his expression. “Which means, I underestimated how much you know.” His gaze stays on mine. “How many production locations does Canon know about?”
My stomach drops. “What?”
“XR3. How many production locations does Canon know about?”
