Page 78 of Obsession
“I know that.”
“No,” he says quietly. “You know it operationally. You know what it means for the corridor, for Canon, for the Rogues, for whatever counterstrike you’re building. You know where to move crews because of what I told you. You know how to use it. I’m asking if you know what it means for me.”
The room feels smaller than it did a minute ago.
I push off the door. “Sín—”
“Don’t.” He shakes his head once, and the exhaustion in the gesture stops me more effectively than anger would have. “Don’t use that voice unless you’re actually going to answer.”
I close my mouth.
Oisín’s thumb moves over his ring. This time, he notices me noticing and doesn’t stop. “Tell me what I am to you.”
I can answer it a dozen ways. Mine. Husband. Protected. Useful. Dangerous. Necessary. The man who sees patterns other people miss. The man who sleeps in my bed and quiets my head. The man who made me let go once and didn’t use it against me. The man who kissed me like wanting me belonged to him first. The man who walked away from blood and brought me the knife before it could reach my club. Every word is true, and none of them are the answer he’s asking for.
Oisín watches my face change. “Say it without making it about the club,” he says.
I stand there with nothing in my mouth. The truth is locked behind Sol’s voice, behind my mother’s emptied face, behind every lesson that taught me needing someone gave them a handle and naming the need gave them a knife. I can kill for Oisín. I can put my body between him and a bullet. I can restructure an entire operation around information he brings me and burn down half the state if someone tries to take him. I can do all of that without flinching.
But he’s standing in front of me asking me to speak for him, and I can’t get a single word out that doesn’t sound like ownership.
His face shifts slowly as the silence answers.
I reach for him too late. “Oisín.”
He steps back before my hand touches him. “I know you want me when it’s easy to turn me into something you can hold. I know you want me when I’m in your bed, when I’m useful, when someone threatens me, when I give you peace.” His voice shakesonce, then steadies around the hurt. “I needed to know if you wanted me when I’m just standing here asking.”
“I do.”
The words come out too fast and even I hear the failure in them, as they did after the silence, after he had to watch me search for a version of the answer that wouldn’t expose anything vital.
His eyes close for half a second, and when they open, he looks quieter than before. “You don’t have to lie.” Oisín lets out a heavy breath. “I don’t think you know what you’re doing.” He runs his fingers through his curls before staring directly at me. “I need air.”
“You’re not leaving the clubhouse.”
He almost smiles, but there’s no humor in it. “I’m going to the courtyard,” he says. “You can have someone watch me if that makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then don’t.”
He walks past me, moving close enough that I could stop him if I wanted. Every instinct in me says to catch him, turn him around, put him against the wall, force the room back into a shape I understand. For once, I understand that touching him right now would prove the exact thing he’s trying not to believe.
The door opens and closes behind him. I stay where I am, staring at the board while the room settles around his absence. Bricks appears in the doorway less than a minute later and I’m beginning to hate how routine his appearance is after Oisín leaves.
Some part of me knows that Bricks probably just waits outside, hearing everything I wished no one would.
He looks from the closed door to me. “Are we about to have an issue?”
I turn my head slowly. “Define issue.”
“The kind where you need an outlet and everyone else needs to be warned.”
I drag a hand over my mouth and taste the ghost of an answer that came too late. “I need to go shoot something.”
Bricks’ face lights with the kind of delight only a bad friend can get from useful violence. “You’re in luck.”
I look at him.
