I took a deep breath and finally met her eyes, braced for pity, but it wasn’t there. I lifted my hand off her mouth and she licked her lips, leaving them shiny.

“I had two miscarriages,” she said.

“I know,” I said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

“The first one everyone knew about. The senator put out a fucking press release and I . . . God, I just wanted to die. When I found out I was pregnant the second time with the senator’s baby,” she paused, shaking her head. “I can’t tell you the despair I felt. The idea of bringing a child into that house. With that man. I mean . . . with my first pregnancy, I was hopeful. I thought I could love a baby enough to shield it from the senator. To negate whatever awful things he might do—”

“My ma probably thought the same thing,” I said, and then because we were on some kind of raft floating adrift of our lives and none of this really mattered, I crawled up into the bed beside her. My arm around her, her soft weight against me.

“But the second time, I was so scared. And . . . God, I’ve never talked about this.” She looked up at the ceiling, blinking back tears. I pulled her tighter. Held her closer.

“I don’t remember, like, planning it,” she said. “But I just . . . I did everything I could to make him mad.”

I sucked in a breath when it struck me what she was saying.

“And it’s not like it was hard. Everything made him mad. Everything was a reason to punish me. And so, I just did it. I didn’t answer him when he talked to me. I walked into his office without asking permission. I didn’t plan or make dinner. I stayed in bed until he was already up. I left my makeup all over the bathroom. In one day, I did everything I’d ever been taught not to do in front of the senator.”

“So he’d hit you?”

“So he’d beat me. Just knock the shit out of me. And he did. And I miscarried.” She looked at me stone cold, a woman at peace with the choices she’d made when every single option was awful. “He had this doctor who would come to the house and wouldn’t say anything when he saw the truth of how our lives were. And when the doctor told him I was miscarrying? The way he looked at me . . . he knew. He knew I’d done it all on purpose.”

Her whole body shook.

“The crazy thing was that I’d expected to die. I thought for sure he would kill me and I . . . was ready for that.”

I turned on my side and shifted her so her back was all against the front of me. We breathed in unison. Our hearts beat at the same pace. I felt the tension in her melt away, bit by bit, and the warm drip of tears against my hand where it held her close.

“Survival is ugly,” I said. “But surviving is a thing of beauty. You are a thing of beauty, Poppy. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She didn’t say anything, and I knew I had timed it right.

She was asleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Poppy

I woke up alone, which wasn’t at all surprising. But . . . the music was surprising. The tinny sound of a radio in the main room and the smell of coffee and food cooking were too. Sinead, I thought, sad that whatever time Ronan and I had was over.

But the dark outside the window was broken by the silvery light of a waning moon. It was still the middle of the night.

I stood and found the clothes we’d abandoned in front of the fire folded and stacked on the edge of the bed. The shirt he’d used to bind my wrists I tied it in a knot around my waist and went out into the main room.

Ronan was making food, something in a pot he was stirring, and humming along to music being played on the radio. Old Irish songs like in movies.

“Hi,” I said.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No.” I smiled. “Not at all. Did you sleep?”

“No.”

I stepped from the cold wood floor to the rug, rubbing the bottom of one foot on the top, wishing I had put on socks. “What time do we have to leave?”

“In about four hours. You should go back to bed.”

“I’m not tired.”

“You hungry?”

“Starving,” I said. He smiled at my fierceness and pointed at a seat at the table. The coffee pot was on the table and I poured myself a cup.

“What are you listening to?”

“Sinead’s radio gets one station. The oldies out of Derry. It’s nothing but folk songs.”

“It’s nice.”

“Nice is a stretch.”

He laughed. It took me a second to reconcile all of this. This whole scene of him: shirtless in a pair of blank sweatpants hanging low on his hips, stirring a pot on the old stove. I realized what the sharp blade of him, which I had been sure made him cold all the way through, actually was. Protection. Fierce protection. For the people he decided to protect.

Tags: Molly O'Keefe Hearts Romance
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