I let a smile break through, but my cheek muscles feel strangely tight. Or maybe I’m just tired.
Now that I think about it, actually, I’m bone-deep exhausted.
Cillian must notice it, too, because just then, he says, “There’s a room upstairs for you. Someone will show you to it.”
I take a deep breath. “You’re really going to keep me here, Cillian?”
“I’m trying to protect you,” he says gently.
I shake my head. “Cillian… Tristan is not a man you want to cross. I tried, and look where it landed me.”
“I remember—in a fucking cell, Saoirse,” he snarls, his tone darkening. “And you want me to just hand you back to that psychopath?”
“He won’t hurt me,” I lie smoothly.
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s… Well, he thinks of me as his. I’m his property. He wants to control me, yes. But he won’t hurt me.”
“So you’re saying he’s never hurt you in the past?”
“No.”
“Look at me and say that to my face.”
I shake my head, refusing. “Why do you have to make this so hard?”
“I’m trying to make it simple for you,” he retorts. “If someone is hurting you, stay the fuck away from them.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Jesus!” he roars, standing up so fast he almost upends the bowl in front of him. “What has he done to you?”
I make the mistake of looking him in the eye. When I do, I feel my stomach drop.
He’s looking at me like he barely recognizes me.
It’s a fucking gut punch.
“I’ve changed, Cillian,” I say, owning my own weaknesses. “I’m not the girl you met thirteen years ago.”
“That’s a lie,” he says fiercely. “The girl I met thirteen years ago is still there. She’s just been stifled and oppressed and silenced. She’s trapped. And part of that is on him. But part of it is in your head, Saoirse.”
“In my head?” I repeat, trying not to let his words get to me. “I—”
I stop short, feeling a strange new coldness spreading through my body. It’s the kind that accompanies an unwelcome realization.
The kind you want to run from.
The kind that denial has cloaked you from for years.
I stare at him, trying to refute him.
But there’s no way I can do that.
He’s right.
All these years, I thought the abuse was just physical. But Tristan has been casting his net over me for so long that I haven’t even realized that it was happening.