“You lied to me.”
“Yes,” she says softly. “I lied.”
“Was it worth it?”
I’m trying really hard to rein myself in. But I’ve opened Pandora’s box and there’s no going back now.
Seeing her again after all these years is only making me realize just how unresolved our relationship still is.
I used to think I’d moved on. Got over her. Made peace with how we had left things.
But none of that was true.
It was denial, plain and simple.
Maybe I’m more like my father than I ever thought.
“That’s not fair,” she says in a muted voice.
My eyes dart to the scars on her arms. “How did you get that one, Saoirse? Or that one? Or that one?” I jab my finger at each mark that I know Tristan left on her. Each fucking sin that glows in the starlight.
God help me—if I ever get the man alone, I’ll pay him back tenfold for what he’s done to her.
A veil falls over her expression. I can see her closing herself off to me. And for a moment, I don’t fucking know who she’s protecting.
Tristan fucking Rearden?
Or herself?
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because you can’t save me, Cillian!” she yells, her tone rising with heat. “I’ve dug my grave.”
More silence.
This time, I’m the one who’s speechless.
It takes me a long, long while to find my words. “Is that really what you think?” I whisper.
“Stop trying to be the hero,” she begs, voice breaking. “I’m not yours to save. And I don’t owe you an explanation. You don’t get to invite yourself back into my life. Especially when you refuse to let me into yours.”
I frown. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not a fool, Cillian,” she hisses, jerking to her feet.
Her chair makes a clawing sound against the cobblestones, but the expression on her face is the one that grates most of all.
“I know you’re hiding something from me,” she says. “All those unused clothes in that wardrobe upstairs? The fact that you freaked out when you walked in on me watching those old tapes? You’re not telling me something. So don’t come out here and lecture me on keeping secrets. You’re just as bad. You’re every fucking bit as guilty.”
I leap to my feet. My chair topples over and clatters to the ground behind me.
“And you expect me to be completely transparent with you, even though you refuse to be honest with me?” I shoot back at her. “That’s some double standard bullshit.”
She rears back at that, lips opening and closing but no words coming out.
We stare at one another, chests heaving. Both stubborn. Both refusing to back down.
“You know what? You’re right!” she says firmly. “You know why double standards happen at all? It’s when people expect shit from one another. We should just stop expecting anything from each other. That’ll solve it like that.”