Page 92 of Fearless Sinner

She stands and gazes at me with disbelief. “Cillian, this is way too much. You can’t do this for me.”

I join her, towering over her petite frame. “This is what you wanted to do when you came back to New York, wasn’t it? Above everything else.”

She touches my cheek and nods. “Yes. It was all I wanted to do.”

“Then it’s not too much.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Just be happy.”

She throws her arms around me and hugs me, then she pulls back to stare at me. “I am happy.”

“Then I did my job.”

I slip my arms around her and read everything shining in her eyes. Everything she wants to tell me and knows she shouldn’t.

She’s easy to read, so I know she fell for me, too.

Seamus’ words come back to screw with me. It’s been well over a month since I heard them, but I hear him now talking to me as if he’s right here.

He might have been right about what he said, but not in the way he thought.

I never chose to marry Chloe because it would be easy to let her go. I also didn’t pick her because I thought I couldn’t have a future with her.

I picked her because I saw her being my everything, and I thought I’d rather have her in my life for a short time than not at all.

Chloe rests her head against my chest when I don’t say the words that are fighting to break free from my mind.

I love you.

She doesn’t say them either. She shouldn’t have to say them first.

It’s me who has the problem. Not her.

Because of my truth, which is this—death fucked me over.

Not just Erika’s death but my parents' too. I guess the problem started with Erika, though, because that was my first brush with death.

I planned to marry her, then she got sick and we were told she wouldn’t make it back, and I realized that death was something I couldn’t fight. When she took her life, the hard truth hit me worse because I blamed myself.

I got the same mind-fucked feeling after it was confirmed that my parents were dead.

I’m a man who needs to be in control at all times, and losing the people I loved chipped away pieces of me I can never get back.

I would never dishonor my father by being unfit to take the lead of the clan. Sealing off my heart is the only way I know how to do that and not lose myself.

If not for the marriage clause, I would never have brought Chloe into my life at a time when I’m in the most danger.

Because of who and what I am danger will always be in my life, so I can’t promise her that death won’t follow me. And I can’t be the guy who stays married to this beautiful girl, has kids with her, then has to accept his failure when death comes to take them from me.

This is all I can give her. So this is what it has to be—the way we are now.

No matter how hard it is for me.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chloe

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