“We’re not,” I retort. “This is just… a robust conversation.”
“Mhmm. Kian, if the girl’s a problem, remove her from the equation.”
“I will,” I say with a half-hearted nod. “I will.”
“Good,” Cillian says. Then he chuckles.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just amused by the irony of this,” he says. “For two decades, I’ve been waiting for you to express interest in a woman. And when you finally do, she’s forbidden fruit.”
“Fuck you. I don’t want her.”
“Have you looked at her tits?”
“I look at every woman’s tits.”
“When they’re trying to kill you?”
I growl, but it comes out more like a groan.
Cillian laughs. “Don’t worry. The right woman is out there for you.”
I fiddle with a letter opener on my desk, carving up a spare piece of paper. “Are you deliberately trying to annoy me now?”
“I’ve been trying to annoy you from the moment we started this conversation.”
“I have no intention of settling down, Cil. Ever.”
“So you’ve said.”
“And you refuse to believe me,” I press. “Because, as usual, you think you know better.”
“I do know better.”
“You got lucky with Saoirse,” I tell him. “But you’re also an incurable romantic.”
“How dare you?”
I smirk. “I’m not you, brother. Not after… not after everything that happened. You know my rules. You know how I live my life.”
He sighs. I’m sure he’s doing the exact same thing I’m doing—rubbing the bridge of his nose to ward off a headache.
He knows what I went through. Even Cillian O’Sullivan, who never dreamed up a joke that wasn’t worth mentioning, knows better than to make light of it.
“Yeah, well, we can’t all be churning through every eligible bachelorette in Manhattan in twos and threes like you do. You’d better be careful, though, brother—at your age, you might have a heart attack in the sack. Lucky bastard, that would be a hell of a way to go.”
I laugh, but I know my brother. There’s not a trace of longing or jealousy in his tone. He doesn’t want the single life. He hasn’t since he set eyes on Saoirse. Their love story is three decades strong now.
Sure, there’s a minor thirteen-year interruption in there somewhere. But otherwise, a modern-day fucking fairytale. With a few extra guns and gore thrown in. Which really just makes the story much more interesting.
“I’ve got to go handle this shit,” I tell him.
“Right. And call Saoirse when you have the chance. She worries about you.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know why.”
“She’s a worrier.”