If you had told me, going into this marriage, that Seamus Fitzpatrick would one day tell me he loved me, I would have laughed so hard I would have given myself a coronary. But it just happened.Oh my God.
Seamus Fitzpatrickjust said he loved me. Hell has officially frozen over. Do I love him? Does he even know what love means? Does he really just mean that he missed having sex with me, and he has equated that with love in his emotion-starved world?
After all my orgasms and hearing him say that, my brain is mush, so I can’t ponder it anymore. My eyelids are drooping, and as much as my brain is arguing that we need to stay awake and over-think this so hard we earn a Harvard degree in the subject, my body is winning the war.
All I know is that I love him back. And I’m too scared to say it out loud.
Chapter Seventeen
TIGGY
I’ve been turning Seamus’s declaration over and over in my head for the past week. He has murmured it in Irish a few times when we’ve had sex, but he hasn’t said it again apart from that, and he hasn’t seemed to expect me to say it back.
Which is a relief. I still haven’t decided what I’m feeling. That’s a lie. My mouth twists into a smirk as I set the table. I know exactly what I’m feeling. I’m head over heels in love with him. I have been for a while.
But I still don’t know whether I’m ready to voice those feelings. Because if I tell Seamus, it becomes real, and I will have given him the power to break me. If he doesn’t know and inadvertently breaks my heart, it would suck, but I would get over it. If he knew I loved him and broke my heart, it would destroy me.
I have been into Oracle twice this week again, but since there haven’t been any more attempted attacks, Seamus has relaxed his hold a little more. I have also gone to my yoga class for the first time in forever.
Unlike in the early days of our marriage, Seamus has diligently come home from Oracle by eight o’clock every night to eat with me, and tonight is no exception.
I finish laying the fish and salad on the table when he walks into the room, looking effortlessly handsome in his jeans and a light green button-down shirt.
Dropping a kiss on my cheek, he takes his seat and raises his wine glass at me as I sit.
“Sliánte.”
I butcher the word as I try to toast him back, stretching his grin wider.
“How did you get on today?” he asks, picking up his fork. I open my mouth to respond when a flash of green catches my eye, Niall appearing in the doorway.
“Perimeter’s clear,” he grunts at Seamus, nodding to us both and melting out of the doorway.
I keep my eyes fixed on the table, not even acknowledging him. Seamus notices. We eat in silence for a beat until he sighs, reaching over and taking my hand in his, smoothing his thumb over my healed fingers.
“Why don’t you talk to Niall anymore?”
My eyes flicker up to him as I hesitate. I shrug, frustration flashing in his dark eyes.
“Mochroí. Tig,talkto me.”
Sighing, I put down my fork, take a large sip of white wine, and turn my eyes to meet his.
“My mother betrayed my father. With one of his men. Someone he trusted. I was fifteen.”
Seamus freezes, watching me carefully, his expression controlled, giving nothing away, though his hand tightens on mine. I swallow painfully.
“My father put a bullet through my mother’s forehead,” I whisper. “As honor dictated. The man, I don’t know what happened to him, but I can’t imagine it was pleasant.” My eyes find Seamus’s again. “I don’t want you even tothinksomething like that might be happening. That’s why I don’t talk to your men.”
Seamus stares silently at me for a long moment, his thumb smoothing over my hand again.
“Tig,” he sighs. “I trust you. I don’t want you isolated. I want you to talk to them. They’re my closest friends. You’re my wife. I want you to all get along.”
“But…” I start to protest, falling silent as his eyes flash with something else. Something dark.
“Besides,” he growls, his voice low and controlled. “Even if I didn’t trust you, I trustthem. They would never betray me.”
He blinks, the hard, dark look disappearing, and a new, tender look that he’s used for me over the last week is back.