Page 80 of While You Sleep

I eased over the rest of the way and wrapped my arm around his waist, desperate for him to hold me. “I missed you,” I whispered.

* * *

Cillian

I needed to get the hell up and leave this room, but I couldn’t bring myself to push her away. I liked her there, pressed against me, too fucking much. Seamus would say I was weak, and he’d be right. When I was a kid, he would have beaten my ass for letting emotion get the better of me, because that’s what this was. My breathing had calmed, but it’d started growing choppy again. Fuck, I felt as if something were pressing against my windpipe.

My heart raced faster, a feeling that I did not fucking like almost had me gasping. I felt…out of control. All logic, all common sense vanished when Sophia wrapped her arms around me and pressed close.

She was my prisoner, but right then it was her that held me captive. Whatever it was that had me breaking into her apartment, watching her sleep, obsessing over her, wanting her for a full year, was the same thing that had me lying here now, unable to move. She didn’t even know it, but she was the one with all the power.

Why the fuck was she doing this, why was she pressed against me like this?

Because she knew just how weak she made me. Somehow, she knew.

Declan asked me if I wanted her to love me, and the truth was, I did. I wanted that badly. But I couldn’t trust her, and I couldn’t trust this. Not anymore.

I sure as fuck didn’t want her pretending she had feelings for me because she was scared, because I had her locked in my house, in this room, like the psycho I was.

What the fuck was I doing?

I pulled away from her and got the fuck out of the bed. She sat up, her blond hair mussed around her beautiful face, her cheeks still flushed. “Cillian? What are you doing?”

If I didn’t do this now, I’d change my mind. I’d keep her locked in here for the rest of her life and never let her go. “Be ready to leave in an hour.”

“Leave? Where are we going?”

“We’re not going anywhere,” I said.

Silence filled the room, and her wide blue eyes filled with hurt.

“You promised me…you promised that you’d never let me go,” she whispered.

Her words fucking pierced something inside me. I choked it down. “I lied.”

* * *

Sophia

There was a knock, and the door to my room opened exactly one hour later.

Conor gave my body a sweep, making sure I was ready. “Time to leave.”

“Where am I going?”

His gaze actually softened. “I have instructions to take you wherever you want to go.”

I didn’t understand what was going on here. “Go?”

“Everything’s packed, what we couldn’t fit in the car will be sent to your new address.”

Pain and disbelief had me shaking. This couldn’t be happening. Cillian was throwing me out, throwing me away? “I want to speak to Cillian.”

“He’s busy right now.”

“My phone, do you have it?”

He pulled it from his pocket and handed it to me. I quickly opened my contacts.

---