Page 45 of Irish Oath
I thought about what I told Ronan when I called him off the Chicago pavement.
You'll want to be sitting down.
I hadn't sat down. Hadn't sat down since.
Sienna Madigan was asleep in the room that faced the sea, and I decided that was probably fine.
I hadn't sat down since Chicago.
I didn't intend to start now.
17
SIENNA
The sea came in first, the way it did every morning now, filling the space Chicago traffic used to. For one second I didn't know where I was.
Then I remembered.
I lay still and took stock. The room. The fire burned down to embers. The weight of an arm across my waist that belonged to Tiernan Rafferty, asleep on his stomach beside me, his face turned my way, his hair doing something that suggested he had very little control over it unconscious.
He looked younger asleep. The charm he wore so easily awake had settled into something quieter. Just a man. Just his face. The specific softness of a person who'd dropped his guard because he felt safe enough to. It sat in my chest in a way I wasn't sure what to do with.
I was very sure about what I'd done last night. I was less sure what to do with the morning.
I eased out from under his arm. He stirred but didn't wake, which meant he was either a heavy sleeper or had decided to give me the exit gracefully, and knowing Tiernan, I suspected the second. I found my clothes, dressed in the gray light, and stood at the window with my arms wrapped around myself.
The same water. The same horizon.
I'd made a decision last night. I didn't regret it. I'd processed it, which is different, and what I do with everything that matters. I ran it through the same system I run everything through, turning it over, taking stock of what it meant and what came next.
What it meant was that somewhere in the last two weeks, something shifted. The certainty I'd brought to Dunraven, all those years of it, the carefully built wall of it, had cracked too many ways to hold its old shape. I'd heard my mother's voice in a recording in this house. I'd sat on the edge of a bed with Ronan Kerrigan. I'd let Tiernan Rafferty lead me upstairs. All of it pointed the same direction.
I wasn't the same person who'd driven through those gates a week ago. I wasn't sure yet who I was instead.
The bed shifted behind me.
"You're thinking," Tiernan said. Voice rough with sleep, unhurried. "I can hear it from here."
"Go back to sleep."
"Mm." The sound of a man not going back to sleep. Then, "You okay?"
"Yes."
A pause. "That was a very fast yes."
"It was an honest yes." I turned around. He was propped on one elbow, blue eyes gone soft in the morning in a way they weren't always in the day.
I thought about what he'd said in the kitchen the night before.I didn't want to be the one who took that off you the second I sat down."I'm okay," I said. "I just need a minute."
He nodded. He didn't push. He lay back and let his eyes fall shut, giving me the minute.
That was the thing about Tiernan I hadn't expected. The warmth was obvious from Chicago. You couldn't miss it. It wasthe first thing about him. But under the warmth was something steadier. A patience that wasn't passive. A way of being present that didn't ask for anything back. I wasn't used to people who did that.
"Last night," I started.
"Was good," he said to the ceiling. Simple. No agenda on it.
