“There’s only you, love,” I said in a rough voice, making it clear to her that I wasn’t just talking about her standing there, but that I meant it in all things.
Brooklyn hesitated a moment longer, scrunching her skirt tighter in her fists and raising her chin before stepping into the room. She took her sweet time walking up to me, sliding one foot towards the other and humming a bridal march until someone took pity on her and played the real thing through speakers hidden in the corners of the room – which was especially appreciated as I was fairly sure it was The Imperial March from Star Wars she was actually humming.
I watched her as she drew closer to me, this wedding so unlike the one I’d taken part in before in so many ways. For one, we weren’t being watched by countless people who I hated. Nor was there a family of innocent, oblivious folk taking up the pews to the left, believing in the lies I’d fed them about what I did for a living and who I really was. The girl who walked towards me wasn’t drinking in the sight of a perfectly presented lie.
No.
Brooklyn was looking right at me, darkness, bloodstains and all. And she was still drawing closer with every damn step, her eyes lighting up in a way that made my frantic heart pound. I pushed the dark outa my mind, forcing it to recede and make way for something so much better.
She stopped beside me at last, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip as she looked up at me, this tiny little package of mayhem dressed up like a Tudor princess, looking like she couldn’t hurt a fly when she had in fact laid siege to the heart of a heathen and claimed it for her own empire singlehandedly.
“Niall,” she whispered, cutting a look to the officiant like she thought he couldn’t hear us even though he was barely a few feet away. “Is this because you put your cock inside me?”
The officiant cleared his throat, backing up a step and muttering something about giving us a moment and frowned as I looked down at my little psycho, shaking my head.
“No, love,” I replied, stepping closer to her so that I was dominating all of her space and forcing her to focus on me as I prepared to cut myself open for her and let her see me bleed. “What we did tonight, what you gave me, only made this fate more obvious than it should have been from the fucking start.”
“What fate?”
“You and me, beautiful,” I said roughly. “Two of a kind and all sorts of fucked up.” I reached for her cheek, cupping it in my roughened palm and tipping her head up so that she was fixed in my stare and her lips hovered perilously close to mine. “All this time, I’ve been trying to keep you away from me, working to force some distance between us because I feared the fate you would receive if anyone ever found out about you. I have more enemies than I could even count within other organisations like my pa’s, from within my own family, from the friends and loved ones of those I’ve killed and no doubt many more I haven’t even given any thought to. People like the Nelsons who took Ava from me.”
“Your one true love,” she breathed, her eyes welling with tears for a woman she’d never even met, and my grip tightened on her cheek as I shook my head, hating myself for what I was about to admit, but needing her to hear it more than I needed to keep lying to myself or anybody else.
“No, Spider,” I breathed. “Ava was…a beautiful daydream. She was sweet and naive, and she liked the things my dirty money could offer her while turning her gaze from the dirty acts which earned it. I was in love with the idea of her, and with the idea of the man she pretended I was. And she was no doubt in love with that man too. We had something which meant a great deal to me, but it was a lie. That’s a lot of the reason for the guilt I feel over causing her death. She turned her eyes away from the truth of who I was and by the time she was forced to face up to the reality of me, it had already come to claim her innocence and destroy it as brutally as possible.”
“You said you took my innocence,” Brooklyn said with a frown and I nodded, running my thumb across the seam of her sweet lips as I drank her in.
“The very last piece of it, I’ll wager,” I agreed.
“So what are we doing here? Because I don’t want a pity wedding based on nothing but the destruction of my hymen, Hellfire.”
“You’re supposed to give your virginity to someone who matters, Spider,” I said to her firmly, gripping her cheek harder as she tried to look away from me and making her listen.
“You do matter,” she breathed, her eyes pricking with tears again and I pressed on, not wanting to be the cause of more pain for her.
“So do you,” I growled. “And this is me proving it. You matter more than my fear of what my love might cost you. You matter more than my insecurities about not being enough for you or being a burden on your heart. You matter more than the family who I have been forced to stay loyal to for my entire hellish life and you matter a whole lot more than some fucking Russian woman who I’ve been told I have to marry.”
“I don’t underst-”
“When we return home, my obligations won’t go away. My pa won’t give a fuck about you even if I tell him I love you and I want to burn the fucking world down for you.”
“You love me?” she breathed, her eyes going wide like saucers and I leaned in to kiss her, making sure she had no fucking doubt about the truth of that fact as our mouths collided and that molten heat which burned between us exploded through my veins, making me want to dive right into it and never stop burning for her.
I forced myself to pull back, touching my forehead to hers as we both closed our eyes and let ourselves feel this thing we’d been denying for too long.
“I’m yours, Brooklyn,” I reminded her. “And no man of yours is going to make you into his mistress while he marries some fake, Russian bitch who his pa chose for him.”
“You choose me?” she whispered in a voice so small I barely even heard it, and the disbelief in those simple words cut into me heart and soul because I knew that it was my fault that she doubted that. I shoulda owned this thing between us from the moment I realised what it was and now I’d gone and forced a wedge right through her trust in me which I was going to have to claw back out again with every action I took around her until she didn’t doubt me anymore.
“It ain’t my choice to make, love,” I reminded her, pulling back and making myself release her, needing her to really look at me and see what I was offering before she just blindly accepted it. “If I make you an O’Brien, my pa won’t have a choice but to accept it,” I told her, so she understood the practicalities of this. “He will be forced to call off the deal with the Russians and accept you as one of his own. That means the O’Brien umbrella of protection will fall over you too. He won’t allow anyone to harm a hair on your head no matter how pissed he is over me going behind his back.”
“What will he do to you for defying him?” she asked and I forced myself not to wince as I thought of the many cruel and unusual punishments I’d no doubt receive for my insubordination.
“Nothing I wouldn’t gladly endure in payment for you, little psycho,” I promised her. “Besides, el burro might even cough up the location to his treasure at some point and then we can just fuck all the way off like I’d planned and be done with my family and everything involving them.”