I decide to ignore him.
“I’ll keep you warm,” I bargain, “if I can hear your story.”
He raises his eyebrows. “I haven’t heard much of yours, though.”
“All in good time,” I reply, as though we have an abundance of it.
He smiles. “Fair enough. Let’s see then… I guess a lot of it starts and ends with Artem Kovalyov.”
“He sounds important.”
“He is. He was born the son of a don. Like me,” he says. “Except he was the only son. The only possible heir.”
Cillian starts telling me about his past, but it feels like he’s talking about his friend more than himself. He frames every single story about himself around Artem Kovalyov.
But I catch glimpses into the life he has led in Los Angeles.
Some of it terrifying.
Some of it exciting.
All of it dangerous.
“You changed countries, but you didn’t switch lives,” I chuckle, getting used to his consuming warmth.
He laughs along with me. “No, I guess not. This is all I’ve ever known. It’s all I was ever meant to be.”
“Not true,” I argue. “You can be anything you want.”
He considers that for a minute. “I know,” he says. “But this is what I want. Not to be don. I don’t think I ever dreamed that big. But everything else: right-hand man to my brother…”
He trails off. I remember the pain that engulfed his brother’s departure.
“Have you heard from Sean since he left?” I ask quietly. “Does he know that you left Dublin shortly after he did?”
He looks at me in surprise. “You remember his name.”
“I remember everything,” I mumble awkwardly.
Cillian tilts his head to the side and surveys me in a new way. Like he’s seeing a part of me he hadn’t known was still there.
When he refuses to stop staring, I glare at him and dig my elbow into his side. “Well?” I ask. “Are you going to answer my question or not?”
“I haven’t heard from Sean in over a decade,” he admits. “I tried to get in touch with him several times over the years. But…”
“But?”
Cillian sighs. “It’s like he disappeared into thin air.”
“Do you suspect something happened to him?” I ask cautiously.
“Life probably happened to him,” Cillian says with a sigh. “But if you’re asking if I think he’s still alive and out there—yes, I do. I believe I couldn’t ever find him because he didn’t want to be found.”
“I’m sorry, Cillian,” I say, my hand twitching towards his. I suppress the instinct at the last second. “I know how much you loved him.”
“I still do.” His voice is proud. Defiant.
“Right,” I say, shaking my head. “Of course. That was a silly thing to say.”