Chapter 23

TWENTY-THREE

brOOKE

I wake up sleepily, so, so warm and perfectly cozy. It’s only after my eyes blink several times that I realize I’m tucked up against a huge, warm bare male chest. Domhnall’s chest.

I inhale sharply. Everything smells like him, and it eases me even in my confusion.

He stayed the night after a session?

But no, that’s not right. He never stays. Except… the room is flooded with light.

I’m not in the dungeon anymore.

And then it all rushes back in, though it’s a confusing blur. I’m not sure exactly what happened yesterday. I went upstairs and then there was? —

I gasp again when I remember all the pictures and—and?—

Donny’s horrible accusations of who I was in the past. The hateful way he looked at me over the rim of his whisky glass, and then it shattering against the wall.

I struggle to get out of his arms. No. No, I’m not who he said I was! I can’t be!

“Hey.” Domhnall’s strong arms suddenly fly around me, holding me to him. “Love. Love. It’s all right. I’m here.”

Love? His confusing gentleness is enough to stall my scramble to get away.

“Is Brooke still here with me?” he asks, caressing some hair out of my face and behind my ear.

I nod miserably, vaguely remembering the dark place I disappeared to yesterday. Or at least, I remember coming out of it in the shower, anyway. It was dark but safe. Different from?—

My brain stalls out before finishing the thought and I cling back to Domhnall, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist.

“It’s all right,” he soothes. “You’re all right now.”

I’m not sure exactly what has flipped the dynamic so dramatically between yesterday and today but I’m so glad to be here with him holding me.

I wanted away from him, I also remember. But that was before?—

“Domhnall,” I start, my voice as quiet as a mouse, “What were we to each other? Back then? What happened? ”

He squeezes me tighter. “It’s a long story. You need food in your system.”

I nod against his chest, maybe glad to put it off a little longer. Whatever the story is, it obviously doesn’t have a happy ending.

I— I?—

I betray him at the end.

Maybe I don’t want to hear it after all. Maybe I can beg him to only tell me the beginning, where we were happy like in the pictures. Like turning off a movie before the sad part. I made Moira do that with The Notebook .

I just want to hear the good part. The part where he looked at me like he loved me.

I wanted to be whole but I’m obviously broken beyond repair. I’ll want this instead. I can be whole with him if he’ll just look at me like that again.

If he’s holding me like this, does it mean he’s forgiven me? We can just fast-forward to this part where we’re happy again. All I want is to be happy in the arms of someone who cares about me. I don’t care if that’s childish. I don’t care about fucking anything but being here and safe and with him.

But too soon, Domhnall sits up and lets me go.

I reach for him but he’s by the door. I sit up, too, and look down at myself. I’m wearing one of Domhnall’s oversized undershirts and his boxers. I wrap my arms around myself.

Maybe I shouldn’t be giving into this new obsession for Domhn so easily. But the pictures gave me permission. I loved him before, so it’s okay to give into this deep feeling now. I’m broken inside, but there’s this too, and this is good. Maybe the only good thing inside me.

And Donny wasn’t even pulling away really, because he’s hurrying back around the bed with a pair of socks. He lifts each of my feet, kissing the sole of my foot and then fitting the sock on, one foot at a time.

“Your feet are cold.” He frowns at himself. “I shouldn’t have allowed your feet to get so cold.”

He’s literally kissing my feet now.

I can only blink down at him, stunned. My insides flood with warmth.

Is this what… happiness feels like?

He lifts up and takes my hand to draw me from the bed to follow him.

“Breakfast now. Did you sleep well?” he demands, half Donny, and half Sir.

“Um,” I blink again. “I barely remember my head hitting the pillow. Then I woke up just now. So, um, good.”

“Good, good,” he murmurs, hand rubbing my back as we walk to the elevator. He pushes the down button, and I tense, eyes flicking up to him.

Is this a trick? Is he taking me back to the basement now?

I hesitate when the doors open. I should run away from him. I’m an idiot to step back into this elevator with him again. But like a sheep mesmerized by the shepherd’s touch at the small of my back, I just step right in .

He doesn’t hit the basement floor, though, he hits G. I think that means ground floor? I still barely breathe for the short ride down.

My breath expels in relief and confusion when he urges me forward by the light touch at my back when the doors open at the ground floor.

Daylight floods in through windows as he leads me through his maze-like mansion, not saying a word. I look up at his gorgeous, god-like face several times, and he meets my gaze with an easy, unconcerned smile.

Meanwhile, I feel like a nervous wreck.

What is seriously going on?

“What is this?” I ask, nerves finally giving out. “Why aren’t you taking me back to the dungeon?”

The Sir facade drops completely and he’s the Donny from the pictures, features soft as they crumple with remorse. “Fuck. Mads—Brooke, I mean. I’m so feckin’ sorry, love,” he says, brogue heavy. “I’ve been an evil gobshite an’ I know t’ere’s no way of makin’ it up to ya. I’m done with it. I’ve been up all night. It kills me but I’ve got ta let ya go. It’s t’e right t’ing. After getting some food in ya, I’m taking ya back to Moira’s.”

“What?” My hand immediately shoots out to grab onto his forearm. “No,” I say sharply, before I even realize what I’m doing. “I can’t— We can’t?—”

He stands up taller, his Sir persona returning. “I’ll answer any question you have, of course, but I’m not sure it will be much help as to your actual identity. When I knew you, your name was Madison Harper. You hadn’t been in Dublin long. You spent your younger years in America but I think your father took you overseas with him when?—”

He swallows and breathes out heavily, eyes averting. “—When you were quite young. I never knew anything about your mother.”

He turns away and I follow him as he heads into a huge kitchen.

I feel my eyes go wide as saucers as I try to take in all the gorgeous marble and fine appliances. It’s way bigger than the kitchen at the shelter, and that fed sixty women.

“I’ll talk while I make some omelets.”

“This is just for you?” I gesture around the high-ceiling room.

He nods and pulls open the refrigerator. “You can sit there.” He points to luxury padded stools by the gigantic counter of the center island.

Instead, I wander towards the huge wall of windows. A door leads to a patio deck. Beyond it is a glittering pool and a gigantic, beautifully manicured backyard.

“Did we meet some place like this?” I ask. “At a chalet in Ireland or something?”

I turn back around to see Domhnall shaking his head. “It was a dive of an internet cafe in the bad part of Dublin. You looked over my shoulder and saw I was on a hidden wiki. You asked if I knew the way to the Silk Road and I turned around and was knocked on my ass— Fuck,” he winces. “I still can’t believe you were only thirteen or fourteen. To me you just seemed like a gorgeous blonde American bombshell. You looked like Brittney Spears but um… hotter.” He mutters the last word.

“Blonde?” I hold out my brown hair.

“You must’ve dyed it. I’m sure it was part of the gig.” His face hardens. “The fucking bastard knew the blonde would turn the head of any lad.”

I take a small step back and he drags a hand through his hair. “Jaysus, Mads. I’m sorry I blamed you for any of it. I shoulda fucking seen how young you were. None of it was your fault.”

“It wasn’t?” I ask with a small voice.

“Course not! It’s your cocksucker father’s, may he rot in hell!” If I thought his face was hard a moment ago, it’s nothing to the iron jaw he’s got now. He looks absolutely murderous. And I remember the rest of what he said yesterday. About what my father did to him. Over and over and over.

I fly across the room and plaster my arms around him again.

“Hey there,” he says, all softness.

“I’m so sorry.” My voice is barely a whisper.

“I’m alrigh’.”

Is he?

I just nod into his chest, though .

He’s got eggs on the counter. “Can I help you crack them?” I ask.

“You know how?”

“I wanna try,” I say tentatively. I pick up an egg and it feels like I know what to do. I crack it expertly against the bowl with one hand, dropping yolk inside without any shell. I beam up at Domhn. “Look, I know how!”

He pushes a button, and a trashcan extends from a cabinet in the island. I toss the shell.

“Five more. I’ll get to chopping the peppers.”

I nod happily. And, wanting to keep to lighter things, I decide not to prod at my past anymore. “How old were you and Moira when you came to the states? Other than sometimes, you barely have an accent.”

“Seventeen.”

I curl into myself. Right. Because of what me and my father did to them. Making them leave their country.

He looks back at me. “But I’m not done telling you about us. It’s alright, love. I’ll skip around the bad parts. I know you always wanted to leave the movies before they got to the sad bits.”

I freeze where I’m about to crack another egg and look over at him where he’s brought peppers and onions from the fridge to chop beside me. “I still do that!”

He smiles a little, and it looks so foreign, it transforms his whole face. For just a second, Donny’s back. He’s so serious all the time, he usually seems a decade older than twenty-six .

“Every afternoon you and me would grab some food and head over to the Green.” He looks up from chopping, crystal blue eyes intense on me. “You’d feed the ducks your leftover bread, chattering on and on.” He smiles and it lightens his whole face. “I’d just stare at you, mesmerized that a woman like you’d ever be interested in a lad like me.”

He looks back down and starts chopping again. Meanwhile my stomach’s dropped out from underneath me. I can’t imagine the two of us ever like that.

Finally I drag my eyes away from him and crack another couple eggs. “Of course I’d be interested in you,” I murmur. “You’re gorgeous and smart and really kind…” I shoot him a shit-eating grin, “at least when you want to be.”

His eyes come back to mine, and he smiles again, this time with a wicked edge that makes my stomach swoop in a different way. And I can’t decide if I like that smile best or the gentle one, and then decide I like them both best.

“What did I chatter about? Or was it just background noise?” I feel my cheeks heat, eyes dropping. Obviously he’s not going to remember after all these years.

He laughs, de-seeding the peppers with efficient, expert hands. “What didn’t you chatter about? The tree you thought was shaped like a dinosaur. The woman at the market arguing with her daughter. You were always listening in on other people’s conversations. You called it people-watching. You said the whole world was your experiment, and you were a social scientist, watching on. You wanted to go to college, but your dad never stayed in one place long enough.” He only grits his teeth a little at the mention of my father before going on. “We said we’d use the money to send you to college when we ran off together.”

He looks up at me as he pulls green onions out of a bag. “I always wondered if you ever got to go. You know, with the money.”

“What money?”

He blinks for a second, then looks back down at his onions on the chopping block. “Right. You don’t remember. We were hacking back then. It’s what you recruited me for. Companies had shit security in the 2010s, so we’d backdoor our way in and skim off the top. Small enough amounts not to be noticed. Rounding errors.” He looks up at me. “And then, right before we were supposed to leave, big chunks.”

“Oh.” I’m a little speechless. Then I take another look around the huge, luxury mansion I’m standing in. “Is that what you still do?”

A laugh bursts from his chest, startling me into smiling and looking back at him. It’s always so unexpected when I get any expression of actual mirth from him.

“No,” he says, still looking amused, then a little less so when he goes on, “No, I work for the other guys now. Anti-spyware and anti-virus software. I learned my lesson after—” he cuts himself off, his eyes distant in that way he seems to get whenever he thinks of… of him . “Well, after.”

He drops the knife to the chopping block and shoves both his palms into his eye sockets, and again, I take a couple of steps back.

Is he disgusted by me now? Because he thought I was a beautiful woman who looked like Brittney Spears but in reality I was just a kid?

Or is he disgusted because I’m my father’s daughter?

Ridiculously, I want to shout, I’m a woman now .

Everything I learn about the past is so ugly. “I don’t want to know anymore. Don’t tell me anymore about what happened then.”

“Alright.” He drops his hands and turns back to the counter, whipping the eggs we dropped into the bowl furiously. His voice comes back deep and even. “I’ll just get you breakfast and then drop you at Moira’s.”

My mouth drops open and I felt like a horse has just kicked me in the chest.

That easy?

He’ll just discard me like that?

After everything he just put me through? And all he said we were to each other? Why the fuck does he get to decide? Because he still thinks he’s Sir?

“No!”

He’s just poured the egg in the hissing pan, when he turns to me.

“What?” He asks it almost distractedly, as if annoyed I’m questioning him .

“I said no.” I stomp over to him and get right in his face. “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

His jaw tenses as he glares down at me. “You will. Because it’s what’s best for you.”

I scoff. “And you suddenly know what’s best for me?”

“Yes. I do.”

I scoff again. “Why the fuck is that?”

His eyes narrow. “Because I’m your elder.”

“You’re just a twenty-six-year-old asshole. You don’t control me. You don’t control shit.”

His features harden dangerously in the way Sir’s did downstairs in the dungeon sometimes. “Don’t push me, love. I’m keeping myself on a very tight leash.”

Oh he is, is he?

I know what I want now. I don’t just want to be near Donny. And I want more than for him to look at me like he did at me in those pictures. I want to feel it all. That and what I had this last week, all mixed up together in whatever we are or could be together now.

So I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him.

And the second our lips collide, it’s like I’ve unleashed a storm, because he kisses me just as furiously back.