Page 66 of Manacled Hearts

The cake seems to melt in my mouth, and the spoon clanks on the porcelain plate as I drop it.

Finally, when eyes burn into me from all directions, I turn my head, and I instantly wish I didn’t. It shouldn’t, but the vision before me fills me with such visceral emotions, I swear the seat shakes beneath me.

Who am I kidding?! I’m the one shaking, and the chair is holding on for dear fucking life, because I have no idea how to physically react to what I’m seeing.

Plum-colored hair, shining a deep red where the sun rays hit it, barely grazes that treacherous spot where the neck meets the shoulder. High-waisted, black, flared jeans hug gentle curves I never noticed on her, cinching a narrow waist I could wrap my hands around, with an oversized distressed T-shirt tucked in, but ripped in a V-neck shape to reveal just enough cleavage to make me wanna rip it further. Then there’s the makeup—black winged eyeliner that makes her gray and gold eyes shine like fucking stars even on the day sky, sculpted brows, and the same color lipstick on her lips as her hair.

I can’t look away. I can’t stop taking in the details of the woman standing before me. She’s… different. Yet she looks more like herself than ever. Gone is the natural wheat-colored blonde, gone is the long hair she frequently wore tucked away, gone is the innocence she exhumed.

Now, Evelyn looks… dangerous.

Unlike any woman I ever looked at before, yet I can’t seem to stop.

Her olive skin shines in the contrast with the purple that, on her, looks like it belongs. Like she should have been born with the unnatural color. And that bob-length haircut, parted in the middle and framing her delicate features, is not anything I would have imagined her with.

Stunning.

And I get angrier. More at myself than her, because she looks like the dessert I want to taste, the flavor I want to discover, one layer at a time, until I get to know all her notes.

She watches me with a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment, and the sudden flush in her cheeks fills me with a warm, thrilling emotion.

I open my mouth to speak, to say something, anything. Either about the cake she apparently baked like she’s been doing this her whole life, or maybe about her new look. Does she look stronger? I swear there’s more meat on her bones, more muscle too. But the sound of the front door distracts me before any sound spills from my lips.

As I turn and my eyes land on it, I wish I wouldn’t have turned at all. Or came here. My lungs strain with the pain of a suppressed gasp at the sight of him, but that ache goes way beyond the physical, through my very soul, and stabs me straight in the fucking heart.

“Hello, little brother.”

CHAPTER 15

FINNIGAN

I blink once, twice, but the third time it’s clear that the image before me isn’t going away.

He’s here.

No—they are.

Annika, an older but somehow more beautiful version of her, walks in holding the little hand of a child hiding somewhere behind his father. Christ, that word tastes bitter even when it doesn’t touch my tongue.

“Hello, Finnigan,” my darling brother’s wife greets me, and her tone throws me far in the past, because she sounds just as shy as she was eight years ago. “Aaro, come here.” She looks down at her son—my nephew—and the little boy finally steps out from his father’s shadow.

I hear a small gasp somewhere behind me, and as my eyes find the little boy’s, I share the sentiment in its entirety. I know that kids often take traits from their uncles or aunts, but this is too much. That head of wild, sun-kissed curls is mine, not my brother’s, and that bright-blue of his eyes is much more like mine than Ronan’s.

I wonder if it kills him, looking at his son every day and constantly being reminded of me. Of what he left behind. Who he abandoned.

“Hello.” Aaro’s little voice comes out. There’s a forced confidence in it, yet it compels me, nevertheless.

“Hi,” I answer. To him only, not my brother, nor his wife.

“Are you Uncle Finn?”

I swallow a lump caught in my throat, because the anger that’s seeping through me, searing one vein at a time, is forced to hold back. This kid hasn’t done anything to me. But his father’s eyes burn through me, and my god do I wanna pummel him back through that goddamn door.

“I suppose I am, yes,” I answer reluctantly.

I’m an uncle.

I knew the theory of it all, I knew I was an uncle. After all, Annika’s pregnancy was one of two driving forces in my brother’s decision to quit this life and leave. But I was never faced with the prospect of it. Never faced with my… nephew. The moment Ronan left us—left me—he was all but dead to me. Eight years have passed, and still I haven’t spoken a word to him. Yet here I am, talking to his son… my blood.

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