The Murphy sisters gasped. “End it?” they asked in unison.
“You don't want to be with Alec?” Bronagh asked, her eyes wide with shock.
I glared at Aideen who held her hands up. “It was a viable question.”
I looked away from her and back to Bronagh. “I do want to be with him. I love him. I just don't know about how fast everythin' is movin' with us. It's so much for me to wrap me head around.”
Branna blew out a sigh of relief. “So explain that to him, he will understand.”
I frowned. “He won't, if he had his way we would be married and knee deep in babies.”
“You don't want that?” Branna asked.
“I do, but not right now,” I explained. “When he asked me to marry him we only knew each other just under two weeks. I fell for him too hard and too fast, I didn't think feelings could develop that quickly but they did and my acceptance to his proposal was fuelled on by almost losin' him to Marco and that entire fucked up situation. I was livin' in the now, when I should have been realistic and just started up a normal relationship and took it one day at a time.”
The girls all listened to me as I spoke.
“So you just wanna be engaged for a few years?” Bronagh asked.
I nodded my head. “We're still learnin' new things about one another, and findin' out little things here and there about our pasts from before the Bahamas. I just want it to be me and him simply datin' for awhile longer... is that so terrible?”
All three girls shook their heads.
“No, it's not,” Aideen said. “It's completely understandable.”
Oh, thank God.
“You have to tell him eventually,” Branna said after a moment.
I cast my gaze downwards. “I know, but I don't know how to go about it.”
“You might wanna try today before we take all your stuff to the new house.”
I froze. “I can't do that, he can't wait to move to the new house.”
Bronagh look deflated. “Better you let him know your feelings here than when you move into the new house and can't come back here.”
I thought on that for a moment and pushed the idea away. “No, I'm just extra touchy because of the move. Once we're settled into the new house I'll explain everythin' to him and we can go from there.”
None of the girls looked happy with my decision, but they accepted it.
We all stopped talking and I quickly wiped away my tears when I heard laughter come from outside my apartment. Bronagh wiped her eyes too, but it was obvious from the redness and blotches on her cheeks that she had been crying. She was cursed with the evidence of crying—she couldn't hide it.
The lads entered the apartment and they called out to us. Alec spotted us still in the bedroom so they all walked down the hallway to us.
“I win, Kitten.” Alec grinned. “I have more boxes packed than you.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. I'm gonna poison your food.”
Alec laughed and looked from me to the girls. I saw the second his eyes landed on Bronagh and the change in his demeanour.
“Bee? What's wrong?” he asked, worry laced in his tone.
I smiled. They all loved Bronagh.
“Nothin',” Bronagh replied.
Nico stepped forward. “You were crying,” he stated.
“I wasn't, I rubbed me eyes 'cause dust got in them... that's all.”
She was the worst liar in the history of liars. She wouldn't look Dominic in the eye, and she kept glancing at me. Nico looked at me, and I cast my gaze down to my fingers and played with them. Bronagh was a shite liar, but I was pretty sure I was no better so I didn't look at him.
“What happened?” Nico asked us girls.
“Nothin',” I mumbled.
“Did you argue?” Nico asked us.
We shook our heads.
I glanced to the other brothers and found they were all staring at me.
I was startled.
“What?” I asked them.
Kane and Ryder remained silent, but Nico said, “Something happened, the girls keep looking at you.”
Cheers, girls.
“Nothin' happened,” Bronagh insisted. “We're cool.”
“What were you four talking about while we were downstairs then?” Nico challenged.
Aideen snorted. “Ways to give Alec the shits if he makes Keela cook for him for a month.”
“Hey!” Alec shouted. “You would have made me do a striptease if you won!”
I gasped. “I would have never—”
“Keela,” Alec cut me off and gave me a knowing look.
I couldn't help but laugh. “Okay, I would have.”
“Exactly.”
We all chuckled then.
I glanced around. “What can I box that will even the game out?” I murmured.
“Nothing. Everything is done.”
Damn it.
“I don't believe that,” I said.
I went in search of anything that I could put into a box and pass off as an addition to my haul in the moving van downstairs, but I couldn't find anything. All of us girls were in the sitting room when the lads suddenly screamed and looked over at the front door.
“Storm!”
Storm?
“What?” I shouted. “What is it?”
Alec looked at me with wide eyes. “Storm ran out.”
My baby!
He could get out of the apartment complex and run out onto the road and get hit by a car.
Oh my God!
I was going to vomit.
“Storm?” us girls screamed out in unison and ran out into the hallway of my building.
I jumped with fright when a bang sounded from behind us.
We each spun around and stared at my now closed apartment door.
What the hell?
I stepped forward and pressed down on the handle of my door, but it wouldn't open. It was locked, but it couldn't be, you had to lock it from the inside—
“Omigod!” I gasped and cut my own thoughts off.
I looked up and down the hall and gasped again.
“What?” Bronagh asked.
I kicked my apartment door. “They tricked us. We're locked out.”
Bronagh was silent for a second before she exploded into rage. “You lyin' bastards!” she shouted and slapped on my apartment door.
Laughter sounded from inside my apartment. “All is fair in love and war, Pretty Girl.”
Bronagh growled, “When I get me hands on you Dominic you're goin' to wish you were never born.”