Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87709 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
“Declan.” I stare at him. “Did you bring enough for the entire floor?”
“Maybe,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “I just started thinking—what if you weren't feeling that great and couldn't eat the meatballs or something, you know? Or maybe you wanted a different flavor, so it just… It seemed safer to have options.”
Dora bites her lip to hide a smile. “I'll leave you to it.” She pulls the door shut behind her.
“This is good stuff,” Declan says, already leaning over a container and inhaling. “This one's mine.” Placing it in front of him, he tears off a generous slab of bread and passes it to me without asking. Our fingers brush. I stare at the bread so I don’t meet his eyes.
I take a bite. It's delicious, all salty crust, warm and exactly right, the kind of comfort food I crave these days. I eat slowly, savoring it. My mother would have fussed over whether I wanted the meatballs or the broth or just the greens, and I love her for it, but sometimes the fussing is its own kind of exhaustion.
It feels easy and natural to eat with him. Not what I expected at all.
“So,” Declan says, settling back in the chair like he owns it. “You want to tell me more about why you’re in here?”
I’m very good at avoiding conversations about my health with him and have managed to do so, mostly, but he deserves the truth.
“Well. You know how my bone marrow’s fucked,” I say in terms I know he’ll understand. He stares. “Sometimes I have flare-ups and need transfusions. I just—” I pause. “I'm not doing very well right now, actually.”
“How not well?” His eyes darken as he tracks the bruising on my arms, his jaw tightening.
I don't mean to tell him everything, but it’s time to stop being vague. “Well, with Aplastic anemia, there’s not a lot of options for treatment, but we’re trying some experimental treatment. So far, so good.” He listens without interrupting, elbows on his knees, watching me with an expression I can't quite read.
“Well,” he says when I've finished. “That feckin’ sucks.”
“I know,” I say, and somehow the bluntness of it is the most comforting thing anyone has said to me all week. Everyone else tries to look at the positive side of things, remind me of what I should be grateful for, and it’s getting old. Erin’s pragmatic and supportive, but busy these days.
I've polished off the bread without noticing. Mam would be proud. She’s always harping on me to eat more.
He reaches into the bag, pops the top off a Coke, and hands it to me.
“That was your drink at the club, wasn't it?” he says, with a small smile that does crazy things to my heartbeat.
“It was. Thank you.” My heart keeps doing something inconvenient, and I'd rather it didn't because Declan McCarthy might be the most commanding man I've ever had in a room with me, and I know better than to find that comforting.
I gulp the soup. “Right. And why are you… here?”
Well, that was dumb.
He shrugs, but it's a careful shrug, the kind that's doing a lot of work. “Cavin and Erin are married. You're family, more or less. Seemed like the right thing.”
I look at him. Declan McCarthy does not do things by half measure, and I'd bet everything I have that he doesn't make casual hospital visits unless there's a reason. “But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”
He holds my gaze. “I thought we were friends.”
“Is that what we are?”
“You're sick,” he says. “And after that night at the club, I couldn't stop thinking about you walking back in there and making a decision you'd regret. Some fucking choice you'd make alone, without—” He stops, setting down his drink. “I didn't like the thought of it.”
“Right. So you came to check on me.”
“I came,” he says slowly, leaning forward, “because you said something that night that I haven't been able to let go of. And because there are some things—” He exhales. “I feel an obligation to… I dunno, watch over you.”
So not friends. An obligation. “What exactly does that mean?” I'm trying not to be offended, but I’m doing a piss-poor job of it because a part of me is hurt. Crushed really.
“I'm not a kid who needs watching over.”
“I know,” he says. “But I don't want you going to The Craic alone, and something tells me if I don't… make sure you understand that, that's exactly what you're going to do. So I'm proposing that if you go, you call me. I’ll make sure you get home in one piece.”
I sit up straighter and cross my arms on my chest. “I didn't sign up for a bodyguard.”
His jaw flexes. “Maybe you ought to.”
My whole body makes a decision my brain immediately vetoes. I try to hide the pounding of my heartbeat and look away.