Shay
When Colin and I arrive at The Avalon, it’s hard to keep our feelings in check. My brother has kept Rosa from us going on a fortnight now, and time spent without her gracing my days has been utter torture. The way Colin is standing stiff beside me, staring daggers at each elevator button lighting up that isn’t our floor, tells me he’s just as antsy as I am.
“Best take that scowl off your face, or you’ll scare our girl away.”
“Rosa isn’t scared of me,” he retorts, cracking his neck to the side to relieve the tension built up there.
“Aye. She isn’t, is she? How she can love that ugly mug of yours is anyone’s guess,” I tease him, hoping it will ease his anxiety somewhat. “But I’ll tell you one thing. If you keep that deep-rooted scowl on any longer it’s going to be permanently tattooed to your face. It doesn’t make you look any prettier if that’s what you’re going for.”
Instead of him shrugging off my taunt, I watch my cousin’s brows pull together while he just stares at his feet.
“I don’t know how she feels about me,” he mumbles despondently, to which I pull ‘a Colin’ and slap him across the head.
Before he has time to growl at me, I slap him again for good measure.
“Don’t be a daft fool, Col. You fucking well know how she feels about you. About us. Even if she hasn’t said it yet.”
“Stop saying shite like that, Shay. Don’t go giving a desperate man room to hope when there isn’t any to have. She’s Tiernan’s. Not ours.”
“Fuck Tiernan,” I rebuke, eliciting the growl I expected to hear from my cousin. “And fuck you if you think being loyal to him will make a difference when he finds out you fell in love with his wife.”
“He already knows.”
“Nah. You think he does. If he knew for sure, I doubt he would have called us in today.”
“Now who’s acting like a daft fool?” Colin scoffs. “What’s a greater test of loyalty than to taunt us with the one thing that we want and can never have while requiring us to do as he commands?”
When the elevator doors swing open, I step out and turn to my cousin.
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Not when you’re talking sense. I like living in my delusional bubble, thank you very much. You should try it sometime. It hurts less.”
I flip him the bird and walk in the direction of where the woman who has captured my heart and soul is currently confined. Colin takes my words to heart and shuts his trap as he follows me into the apartment and down the hall to the bedroom. When we reach inside, I know things are about to go to shit.
“Off work already?” I ask my brother, who is currently sitting in his chair, whiskey in hand. “You don’t usually show up this early.”
“I didn’t know my punctuality would be so inconvenient for you.”
“Not inconvenient. Just surprising.”
“Hmm.”
“Where’s petal?”
“If by petal you mean my wife, she’ll be with us shortly. Just getting ready.” He tilts his chin to the locked bathroom door.
I sit on the bed in front of him, while Colin prefers to give us a wide berth, standing by the door.
“It’s been so long since you called us, I was starting to think you were going to put an end to our little clandestine meetings. Haven’t heard a peep out of you in weeks. No one has seen you around, either. You haven’t even come to Sunday lunches up at Ma and Da’s place.”
“Are you upset that you didn’t see me for so long or that I kept her from you?” he says, going to the root cause of my frustration.
“What do you think?” I throw him my toothy grin.
“I think not fucking my wife has made you irritable. And frankly, I don’t care for it.”
“Like I give a shit.”
“Careful there, Shay. Remember who you’re talking to. I have no qualms in cutting you down a peg if you need a reminder of who holds your strings.”
“I’m no man’s puppet,” I seethe.
“Maybe just a woman’s then.”
I get up to my feet, ready to punch his smug grin off his face, when Rosa opens the door to the bathroom and steps into the room. Usually, Tiernan is the one to give her the green light to come out, but today she’s taken matters into her own hands. My hackles rise further when instead of her making an appearance in her preferred discreet white teddy, she comes out in a hot little number that leaves very little to the imagination.
“You wore red,” Tiernan gasps, slinking further down into his seat, white-knuckling his tumbler.
“I promised I would,” she replies, her cold voice pinching a nerve inside me.
What the fuck is going on?
From Tiernan being here early, drinking before noon no less, to Rosa making her presence known in fuck-me red lingerie, something is definitely not right here.
“What’s going on?” I ask outright.
“I have no idea what you mean,” Tiernan retorts, drinking his whiskey in one pull, only to refill his glass for seconds. He slams the half-drunk bottle back to the side table and then proceeds to blankly stare at his wife.
“It’s your show, acushla . Have at it.”
I watch her hide the flinch his insensitive words provoke and begin to walk over to us. Like me, Colin must sense that something is amiss, because he’s right at my side, taking inventory of our woman.
“Petal?” I whisper, running my hand through her hair to caress her cheek. Her eyes are bloodshot, proof that she must have spent her night crying. But it’s the dull emptiness in her gaze that really sets my teeth on edge. “The fuck did you do to her?!”
“Nothing,” Tiernan grumbles under his breath, taking another shot of whiskey.
“The fuck do you mean nothing? You broke her!”
“I didn’t break anything. Stop being overdramatic,” he slurs, his half-drunken voice taking me aback.
I’ve never once heard Tiernan slur a day in his life. Even before he was crowned king, he always kept his wits about him. I’ve seen him pour bottles and bottles of alcohol down his throat, and not once did he even look like he was intoxicated.
But that’s not the case today.
The fucker is two sheets to the wind.
It seems while Rosa cried herself to sleep, my brother drank his body weight in booze.
The fuck happened between them?
I turn to my girl again, this time palming her face in my hands so I can have a clear view of her pain.
“Talk to me, petal. What’s wrong?”
Her dim-lit gaze meets mine, and in her eyes I see a woman who is near the brink of succumbing to her misery. This isn’t her. My Rosa is a fighter. He did this. He fucking did this to her. I’m about to call the fucker out when Colin halts me in place, putting himself between Rosa and me and my brother.
“Leave,” I hear Colin command. “Now.”
If I wasn’t so pissed off, hearing Colin talk that way to Tiernan would have dropped me on my ass with shock. Even more so, when my brother’s gaze falls behind Colin’s broad build to look at his wife one last time before he gets up from his seat and leaves just as our cousin ordered him to.
“The fuck?” I mumble, still in a daze that shit went down.
But all too soon am I pulled to the here and now when Rosa begins trembling so hard, I have to sit her on the bed so her legs don’t give in.
“Petal, oh fuck, petal. Please don’t cry,” I beg, her tears making me feel like my heart is being sliced open by a million papercuts.
Colin brushes her hair away from her face and rubs her back, trying his best to soothe her pain away. I kiss her cheeks, squeezing her cold hands in mine, hoping some warmth will trickle down to her soul.
“Talk to us. Let us make it all better.”
“He hates me,” she whispers, pained. “He really hates me.”
“And you’re not okay with that?”
She shakes her head, tears still pouring down her face.
“I’ve tried to play by his rules. Tried to understand him. But every time I think I’m getting close, he shuts the door on me. Reminds me that all he could ever feel for me is hate.”
“Why, petal? Why does that bother you so? Tiernan has always been upfront with you about this marriage. You knew it could never be real. So why, after all these months, does it bother you what my dick of a brother thinks or feels about you?”
She doesn’t answer me, pulling her hands away from my grip to clean her tears away. She then leans into Colin, cradling her head in the crook of his neck to hide her face from me. It’s unsettling, to say the least. A quick glance at my cousin’s face tells me he feels just as unbalanced. All because there is a truth in the air we can’t ignore any longer.
I expected a lot of things coming here today.
To be with the woman I love.
To tell her how much living these past two weeks without her suffocated the very air out of my lungs.
But never did I expect this.
“You love him,” I finally acknowledge the big fucking elephant in the room. “You fucking fell in love with him.” I get up off the bed, pulling at the strands of my hair in such a way some come out by their roots. “Shit, petal. I knew you had a big motherfucking heart of gold to care for Col and me, but this is just too much.”
“Shay?” She hiccups between sobs, pulling away from Colin to wrap her trembling arms around my waist.
“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that you didn’t fall in love with your husband after he’s been a total asshole to you.”
“The heart wants what it wants. Even if it’s a killer. Even if he’s the last man I should ever want.”
“Jesus!” I yell, turning around and gripping her arms. “So it’s true? You have fallen for him?”
She nods, as if the admission of her love is the death sentence she’s been trying to avoid all along.
“Where does that leave me and Col, huh? What about us? What happens to us when you both decide to play house without us?”
She shakes her head vehemently, a fresh batch of tears coating her eyes.
“It changes nothing. Not for me.” She entwines her fingers in mine and reaches out for Colin to take her other hand. My mute cousin gets off the bed and immediately takes it, as if it’s the lifeline he needs to keep from drowning in his despair. “It’s true. Somehow without my say so, I fell in love with Tiernan, but that changes nothing for what I feel for you. I gave you both my heart long before I ever gave him a piece of it. You are my family. The ones I see myself growing old with. Please don’t take that away from me just because I committed the sin of falling in love with a man that can never love me back.”
Her words burn as much as they calm my errant heart.
“Are you sure, sweet rose?” Colin asks, pulling her hand to his mouth to pepper tender kisses on her knuckles.
“It’s the only truth I know for sure, and I don’t take it for granted. I love you, Colin. With all my heart, I love you.”
When the big guy sniffles and pretends he’s not seconds away from bawling, all the tightness I was feeling begins to subside. She leans into him, never taking her hand out of mine, and presses the sweetest kiss on his lips.
“I’m yours as long as you’ll have me. That I promise you. I’ll be yours until my final days.”
“I love you, sweet rose. I fucking love you, too.”
Suddenly the air in the room shifts, each vow uttered sounding more sacred and profound than its predecessor. When Rosa turns to me, her eyes filled with newfound hope, I swallow the mountain-sized boulder lodged in my throat.
“Shay, please don’t hate me. But if you promise me that you can love me just a sliver of how much I love you, then I’ll be the happiest woman this world has ever known. I love everything about you, but most of all, I love how you make me feel. How at peace and safe I am in your arms. Please don’t shun me, love me instead. Love me, as I love you.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
How the hell can I say no to that?
I bridge the small gap in between us and hold her to me, making sure her connection with Colin stays intact.
“I’m yours, petal. I think since the first day I saw you, I’ve been yours. Te amo. ”
“Te amo .”
I kiss her until my words of love and devotion fill her bloodstream, only pulling back once I’ve made sure I’ve left her boneless and content.
Her hooded gaze tells me she’s ready for Colin and me to drag her to bed and have our way with her, but that’s going to have to wait.
“I’d love nothing more than to consummate our vows to one another, but I have a better idea in mind.”
“You do, do you?” She giggles shyly, the sweet melody making my heart want to leap out of my chest.
“Aye, I do. Get dressed, petal. We’re going shopping.”
“Shopping?” She says the word like it’s a curse, and by the way my cousin groans I can tell he has a million different ideas on how to fill up our afternoon. Most of them involve being inches deep inside our woman.
But again, that is going to have to be placed on the back-burner. For a day at least.
Right now, I want to fill the home she bought with all the furniture we need to start our lives together. We may be a family, but the faster we start acting and living like one, the better. We need to get her knocked-up as quickly as possible and moved into our home and away from my brother’s influence. Permanently.
Rosa won’t bat an eye at my suggestion, especially because she thinks Tiernan hates her.
But I know my brother.
And even if I didn’t, I saw it in his eyes just minutes ago.
There wasn’t an ounce of hate in them.
Only love.
And that will be a problem.