Stress was making a mess of her. I could see it. The tears in her eyes, the trembling of her lips, and I’d made so many mistakes. So many. But there was only one way to keep her safe.
“This is what it will be like,” I told her. “If you don’t come with us. You’ll never feel safe.”
She looked from me to Eden. “They’ll leave my sister alone?”
“Yep.”
“And they won’t kill you?”
“No.”
“Will they kill him?” she asked, pointing at me. Him. And not looking at me. Good, I thought. She was building her own walls. You’ll need them, princess. Where we’re going, you’ll need every wall you can get.
“No. We all go back, and everyone is safe.” Eden wasn’t lying as much as she was hoping, and Poppy got it. There were no guarantees where we were going.
She laughed at that and when she looked at me, her eyes were dull. Resigned. “I’ll be married again. And to a Morelli. Hardly seems safe.”
“I’ll keep you safe,” I promised her.
“I don’t want this,” she told me. “I don’t want any of this.”
“Me neither.”
“Perfect! A proper Morelli wedding,” Eden said, standing, her eyes alight. “I don’t suppose you guys know where we can find a priest?”
The three of us walked up the hill to the church. I carried a bag of money and had three guns on my body and Eden, in tall boots with tiny little heels that made no sense at all on the rocks, had another one. Poppy, in front, wore black sweatpants and a flannel shirt tied at her waist with practically no buttons. She’d resisted Eden’s efforts to make her hair look “less like a nest.” The cats, like they knew her, or remembered me, came out to hop along the stones.
We’d taken every knife in Sinead’s kitchen and hid them on our bodies. Fully armed, Poppy was walking up the hill like she was walking to her grave. And I was following her with something like . . . satisfaction. I didn’t have to make a choice anymore. She was mine. Under law. Under the eyes of God. I wouldn’t have to wake up tomorrow and hope she was safe.
Or wonder what she was doing.
Or if she’d found that man who told her she was wonderful and fucked her in all the ways I’d refused.
The realization that I could fuck her was one I pushed away.
I could have her or I could keep her safe. Not both. Never both. So, I cultivated my anger. I considered all my plans. And the familiar cold of my life before her settled down around me, even while my heart and my brain and my body burned for her with the satisfaction of knowing—she was mine now.
To have and to hold.
* * *
Poppy
The church door was heavy, and I put all my weight into pulling it open. I felt a stitch pop in my shoulder and the sting barely registered. Nothing registered. I was moving through quicksand, my brain occupied with trying to mitigate this disaster.
I remembered with a bitter, hysterical laugh how I’d mitigated the senator’s cruelty. That little thing with my hand so he couldn’t grind my bones together in his grip. What a tiny thing. What a silly stupid thing I was.
Survival had taken everything from me before. Pride and sense of self. Babies and a bloody painful future that I’d gotten free of. Only to be pushed into something worse.
Marriage to Ronan would grind me into dust. There was no way to protect myself. No way to hold my body or heart so they might be safe. Too late I realized never seeing him again would have been a blessing. Wanting what I couldn’t have was not going to be pleasant while married to this man.
I couldn’t make sense of it, and there was no talking it through with him either. He’d gone someplace deep in his head. I could see it. Someplace I couldn’t follow even after everything we’d shared. He was cold and he was brutal and he was a stranger.
A Morelli, even.
Soon, he’d be my husband.
I tried to follow his lead, to let the chill of not caring fill me. I tried to look at him like he was a stranger, and with his face set in brutal terrifying lines, I could almost convince myself it was true.
“Poppy?” Father Patrick came out of the vestry with a smile and concern on his face. “Is everything all right?”
“Actually,” I said with my best false smile, my implacable calm that I’d learned during all my years with the senator. “We’ve come to ask a favor.”
“Of course.” His eyes darted to Eden and then up at Ronan. Quickly, he looked back at me, his eyes wide. His smile gone. He wasn’t a dumb man. He knew something was wrong. “What do you need, Poppy?”