Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100086 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
He focused on putting one foot in front of the other, each step creating some much-needed distance between him and the past. A fine sheen of sweat covered his skin, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about that right now. First, home. Second, a shower, as hot as he could stand it. Then…well, if the last nine months were any indication, then he’d spend most of the night lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. It was fucking pathetic.
The only time he’d actually slept through the night was when they had him drugged to the gills after he was shot. He reached up and touched the new scar. He might have slept, but the nightmares were worse while on meds than they were normally. Two nights of that was all he could take. After that, he chose to deal with the physical pain instead.
Enough.
The memory of what he and Olivia had done might be enough to get him through the night, though. She’d been so hot and free in his arms, and for the first time in longer than he cared to remember, he hadn’t been thinking about alliances or politics or death. He’d been so focused on making her go wild around his cock that there was no room for anything else.
It had been fucking glorious.
He walked through the front door of the town house, bracing himself for running into someone in his family.
Sure enough, as soon as he got to the top of the stairs, he was nearly run over by his baby sister, Keira. Baby? She was nineteen years old now.
“Keira.” Then he did a double take. “What the fuck is this?”
She wore shredded skinny jeans and a tank top that started its life as a T-shirt, nothing that would make him give her a second look…But the size of her pupils did. She was on something. He’d bet his favorite suit on it.
She lifted her chin. “I’m going out.”
“The hell you are.” He took in her bedhead that had to have taken her a hell of a long time to create, the dark eye shadow, and lipstick that on any other woman he would have called fuck-me red. Seeing it on his sister made him break out in hives. The reckless look on her face was even worse. “What are you on?”
Keira laughed. “Please. You’re not our father, and you can’t tell me what to do.” She shoved past him and wobbled down the stairs, bumping into the wall as she went. Cillian inhaled sharply. Vodka. That’s what he smelled on her breath. Drugs and alcohol. Shit.
“Keira!”
But she was gone, disappearing toward the back of the house—the better to sneak out without an escort. Fuck. He started to go after her, but his legs chose that moment to remind him that he was still shaky from the stupid goddamn panic attack. And what the hell was he going to do? He couldn’t help her. Hell, he could barely help himself.
He couldn’t just let her go by herself, though. He already had the blood of one sibling on his hands—another one might actually kill him. Cillian fished his phone out of his pocket and texted Liam. Keira’s heading out the back door.
A few seconds later, it chimed. On it.
Cillian sighed and walked to his room, managing not to run into anyone else. He stripped, leaving the clothing wadded up on the floor as he headed for the bathroom. He’d given up a lot of things since everything went to hell, but his suits were one thing he still clung to. There was nothing on this earth that could fool him into thinking he was in control like shielding himself in a perfectly fitting suit.
He turned the shower as hot as he could stand it and stepped beneath the spray. The shock of it hitting his skin centered him, which only made it clearer just how off-balance he’d been since he left Jameson’s. He wished he could blame it on Olivia and that goddamn sex. It wasn’t the truth. The snarly bartender, the panic attack, and his run-in with Keira were just the icing on the shit cake.
It didn’t matter.
Tomorrow was a new day, except nothing would change and he’d just be going through the motions all over again. Sometimes he felt like he was in a particularly brutal version of Groundhog Day, stuck in a wheel that would never stop spinning.
* * *
Olivia climbed out of the cab in a daze. She couldn’t believe she’d just gone there with Cillian O’Malley. She licked her lips, still tasting apple juice and him, and shivered. It was a onetime thing. It’ll never happen again.
As good as it was, he was the kind of trouble she couldn’t afford, even if she was in the market. Which she wasn’t. She nodded to herself and headed for the stairs up to her apartment. She had other priorities.