Page 108 of Keep Me

I cannot and will not take that house from him. Not until he’s healed and ready to do that himself.

While Killian sleeps, I hatch my plan. And I worry about him, about us, and about me if this somehow doesn’t work. Because now that I’ve come here and flipped my whole life around, I no longer care to know what my life could be like without him. I don’t want that.

I want him. I want this life that I borrowed.

After picking up the mess in the dining room, I come back upstairs to find Killian lying in bed with his eyes open. I stop in the doorway and stare at him, waiting to see how he’s feeling.

“I want to go home,” he mutters lowly without looking at me.

“Of course,” I reply, my lip quivering as I try to hide the fact that I’m barely holding it together.

Carefully, I cross the room and climb into the bed to face him. When my head hits the pillow, his eyes meet mine. The restraint I was carrying until this moment is gone.

My face crumples, and my tears fall. “I’m so sorry,” I sob.

He reaches for me, dragging me against his body as he tries to quiet my cries. “Stop, Sylvie. You don’t need to apologize. I just wasn’t ready.”

“I knew you weren’t ready,” I cry. “I knew it, and I tried to push you anyway. I thought you could handle it.”

“Shhh…” he whispers with his lips in my hair. “You had no idea, mo ghràidh.”

“Have you ever had that before?” I whisper, carefully wiping my tears as I pull away to stare into his eyes.

I see the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallows the heavy weight of emotion in his throat. “After my parents died, yes.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper again.

He touches my cheek, but his face doesn’t have the same animation it had yesterday. It’s dull and tired, and I cry again at the memory of his smile on the beach.

“It’s okay.”

It’s not okay, I think to myself. None of this is okay. Nothing his family is doing or what I’ve done is okay, but he’s toughing it out. He’s surviving the only way he knows how.

I just wish I could help him more, but I can’t if I don’t understand.

So very gently, I brush back the hair in his face. “What happened…to bring them on?”

He looks uncomfortable as he swallows again. “My parents were always really hard on me. My father was a very strict man, and he had so many expectations for me and the kind of man I was supposed to be. I always did as I was told, and I always made him proud.”

“That sounds like a lot of pressure,” I whisper, touching his hand.

He nods. “On the night of the car wreck, I was leaving the house to pick up Anna from my aunt’s house. My parents had been out at a party. It was dark, and the roads were slick. I remember seeing their headlights and briefly wondering if that was them. They swerved toward me so fast there was nothing I could do. We collided, and they both died on impact.”

I let out a gasp, gripping his arm tighter as tears pour over my lashes. “Oh myGod, Killian.”

“I found them. I didn’t have a phone on me. I had to wait with them, with a concussion, until a car drove down that long empty road and found us.”

I squeeze my eyes closed and let the sobs rack through me.

“That wasn’t your fault. You have to know that,” I reply through my cries. “Please, Killian. Tell me you know that.”

His eyes are wet with dark circles around them. He looks so tired and in pain. But he does eventually nod. “I know it’s not. It was an accident. My father had a lot of alcohol in his system, and the swerve marks were still on the road, but it didn’t stop my family from treating me differently. As if I could have saved them. As if I wouldn’t have given my own life just to see that night end any other way.”

I squeeze him tighter. “Don’t say that. They died, and that was terrible, but it wasn’t your fault, Killian. And you didn’t deserve to live your entire life with that sort of pain.”

Then, his eyes focus on my face for a moment. “I thought for a while I was really getting over it. I thought I could finally move on. Having you has helped, Sylvie.”

“We can get you even more help,” I reply, nestling closer. “Whatever you need, we can do this together.”

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