“It’s your show, acushla. Have at it.”
I watch her hide the flinch his insensitive words provoke and begin to walk over to us. Like me, Colin must sense that something is amiss, because he’s right at my side, taking inventory of our woman.
“Petal?” I whisper, running my hand through her hair to caress her cheek. Her eyes are bloodshot, proof that she must have spent her night crying. But it’s the dull emptiness in her gaze that really sets my teeth on edge. “The fuck did you do to her?!”
“Nothing,” Tiernan grumbles under his breath, taking another shot of whiskey.
“The fuck do you mean nothing? You broke her!”
“I didn’t break anything. Stop being overdramatic,” he slurs, his half-drunken voice taking me aback.
I’ve never once heard Tiernan slur a day in his life. Even before he was crowned king, he always kept his wits about him. I’ve seen him pour bottles and bottles of alcohol down his throat, and not once did he even look like he was intoxicated.
But that’s not the case today.
The fucker is two sheets to the wind.
It seems while Rosa cried herself to sleep, my brother drank his body weight in booze.
The fuck happened between them?
I turn to my girl again, this time palming her face in my hands so I can have a clear view of her pain.
“Talk to me, petal. What’s wrong?”
Her dim-lit gaze meets mine, and in her eyes I see a woman who is near the brink of succumbing to her misery. This isn’t her. My Rosa is a fighter. He did this. He fucking did this to her. I’m about to call the fucker out when Colin halts me in place, putting himself between Rosa and me and my brother.
“Leave,” I hear Colin command. “Now.”
If I wasn’t so pissed off, hearing Colin talk that way to Tiernan would have dropped me on my ass with shock. Even more so, when my brother’s gaze falls behind Colin’s broad build to look at his wife one last time before he gets up from his seat and leaves just as our cousin ordered him to.
“The fuck?” I mumble, still in a daze that shit went down.
But all too soon am I pulled to the here and now when Rosa begins trembling so hard, I have to sit her on the bed so her legs don’t give in.
“Petal, oh fuck, petal. Please don’t cry,” I beg, her tears making me feel like my heart is being sliced open by a million papercuts.
Colin brushes her hair away from her face and rubs her back, trying his best to soothe her pain away. I kiss her cheeks, squeezing her cold hands in mine, hoping some warmth will trickle down to her soul.
“Talk to us. Let us make it all better.”
“He hates me,” she whispers, pained. “He really hates me.”
“And you’re not okay with that?”
She shakes her head, tears still pouring down her face.
“I’ve tried to play by his rules. Tried to understand him. But every time I think I’m getting close, he shuts the door on me. Reminds me that all he could ever feel for me is hate.”
“Why, petal? Why does that bother you so? Tiernan has always been upfront with you about this marriage. You knew it could never be real. So why, after all these months, does it bother you what my dick of a brother thinks or feels about you?”
She doesn’t answer me, pulling her hands away from my grip to clean her tears away. She then leans into Colin, cradling her head in the crook of his neck to hide her face from me. It’s unsettling, to say the least. A quick glance at my cousin’s face tells me he feels just as unbalanced. All because there is a truth in the air we can’t ignore any longer.
I expected a lot of things coming here today.
To be with the woman I love.
To tell her how much living these past two weeks without her suffocated the very air out of my lungs.
But never did I expect this.
“You love him,” I finally acknowledge the big fucking elephant in the room. “You fucking fell in love with him.” I get up off the bed, pulling at the strands of my hair in such a way some come out by their roots. “Shit, petal. I knew you had a big motherfucking heart of gold to care for Col and me, but this is just too much.”
“Shay?” She hiccups between sobs, pulling away from Colin to wrap her trembling arms around my waist.
“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that you didn’t fall in love with your husband after he’s been a total asshole to you.”
“The heart wants what it wants. Even if it’s a killer. Even if he’s the last man I should ever want.”
“Jesus!” I yell, turning around and gripping her arms. “So it’s true? You have fallen for him?”
She nods, as if the admission of her love is the death sentence she’s been trying to avoid all along.
“Where does that leave me and Col, huh? What about us? What happens to us when you both decide to play house without us?”
She shakes her head vehemently, a fresh batch of tears coating her eyes.
“It changes nothing. Not for me.” She entwines her fingers in mine and reaches out for Colin to take her other hand. My mute cousin gets off the bed and immediately takes it, as if it’s the lifeline he needs to keep from drowning in his despair. “It’s true. Somehow without my say so, I fell in love with Tiernan, but that changes nothing for what I feel for you. I gave you both my heart long before I ever gave him a piece of it. You are my family. The ones I see myself growing old with. Please don’t take that away from me just because I committed the sin of falling in love with a man that can never love me back.”
Her words burn as much as they calm my errant heart.
“Are you sure, sweet rose?” Colin asks, pulling her hand to his mouth to pepper tender kisses on her knuckles.
“It’s the only truth I know for sure, and I don’t take it for granted. I love you, Colin. With all my heart, I love you.”
When the big guy sniffles and pretends he’s not seconds away from bawling, all the tightness I was feeling begins to subside. She leans into him, never taking her hand out of mine, and presses the sweetest kiss on his lips.