“Yeah?” she seethes. “Glad you could come all this way to point that out to me.”
I wince. “Saoirse, I wasn’t trying…”
“No, fuck you!” she snaps. “We can’t all be as brave and as strong as you, Cillian. We can’t all let pain rolls off our backs like it doesn’t fucking burn. We can’t all stare death in the face and keep our smile at the end of it. We don’t all get to escape to another country when shit gets hard.”
“That’s not fucking fair.”
“Finally caught on, have you?” she demands, throwing up her hands in frustration. “Life is not fair!”
She strides over to the fire and kicks up a cloud of dust, destroying her drawing of me in the process.
But I watch her face when she does it.
And I see the truth.
She hates herself for doing it. Her jaw tightens further every time she sees another graceful line disappearing into the dirt.
But she does it to make a point. To prove to me just how little she thinks of her own talent.
Or maybe to prove just how little any of it matters.
Once the drawing is completely gone, she straightens up and turns to me, shrugging off my coat. She tosses it at me with her chest rising and falling rapidly. “I need you to take me back to my house. Now.”
I look her dead in the eye. “No.”
She may be stubborn.
But I invented the fucking word.
“No?” she balks.
“That’s what I said,” I tell her calmly. “I’m not taking you back there. I’m not taking you back to that motherfucker.”
“That’s not your call.”
“I’ve just made it my call,” I reply. “Deal with it.”
“Jesus, Cillian. You have enough on your plate with the Murtaghs and the Kinahans,” she points out. “You really wanna bring Tristan into this, too?”
“I’ve always liked a challenge.”
“This is not a game, Cillian.”
“Wrong. That’s exactly what it is. And I intend to win it.”
I grab my phone and check for cell phone reception. Like a gift from the heavens, I’ve got two full bars and an intermittent third. Good enough to get the job done.
I send a text to Rory with my location and a request for a lift.
He texts back almost immediately.
Stay by the road. I’ll be there in half an hour.
I turn around and realize that Saoirse has left me and she’s almost halfway to the Rolls.
“Baothóg!” I curse under my breath as I start to run after her.
Foolish fucking woman.