“I have so many questions right now.”
“Fire away,” he says amicably as he lounges against the doorjamb, blocking my path out of here.
“Did I just wake you up?”
“As a matter of fact, you did. Not particularly pleasantly. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“Does that mean you were sitting outside my bedroom door the whole night?”
“Sure looks that way.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t want you ravaging me in the night,” he jokes. “And I knew that was inevitable if I slept in there with you.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You…”
“You know it’s true.”
“For God’s sake, Cillian,” I groan, “can you be serious for five minutes?”
He smiles. “What makes you think I’m not serious?”
“Goddammit! Why are you sleeping outside my room, Cillian? And why was I locked in?”
“I locked you in because I knew you’d try and sneak out the first chance you got,” he points out matter-of-factly. “And I slept outside your room because I wanted to make sure you were safe. Felt like a fair compromise.”
“What happened to ‘This is a secure compound?’” I point out, throwing his own words back in his face.
“I thought so, too,” he replies. “But then we were ambushed by the Kinahans and my parents were dragged away to who-the-fuck-knows-where. So I wasn’t taking any chances.”
I’m touched. There’s no denying it.
But I still don’t want him to know that. I don’t want to encourage this. Any of it.
He’s not my knight in shining armor. He’s not protecting me. He’s not back in Ireland on a rescue mission.
Because no one can rescue me. I’m too far gone to be saved.
I frown. “You shouldn’t have locked me in.”
“I just wanted to make sure I could speak to you before you left.”
“About what?”
“About your chances out there,” he replies. “Versus your chances in here with me.”
“Cillian…”
His voice takes on an odd urgency I’ve never heard from him before. It freezes every thought of mine in place.
“I know you think you have to go back to him, Saoirse. But let’s face it: by now, he’s got half the police force out there looking for you. Not to mention the Kinahans. It’s safer for you here.”
“You just want me to stay with you.”
“Wow,” he says, recoiling with mock shock. “Someone certainly has a big ego.”
I almost smile. “I can’t stay here forever, Cillian.”