Page 117 of Devilish Ink

Which meant I had to leave Ryleigh in Dublin, alone.

LIAM

Ithink it was fate that Eithne was running late the evening I’d arranged to leave for Cork.

As the little bell above the door for Dublin Ink rang, Eithne was still sitting at Rian’s side on the sagging floral couch.

It was so easy to imagine what would have happened if she’d already set off to my place to meet up with Rachel and Aurnia for their girls’ night in.

Rian would have stormed at me. I wouldn’t have been able to get even a word in. Would he have hit me? Would his knuckles have cracked the delicate bones along my cheek?

I could see that. I could see the scar he would leave me. I could see it in the mirror, in a different future, my fingers tracing over the jagged white line. It would be the last gift from my brother. My only remaining memory of him.

It would have all fallen apart if Eithne hadn’t seen the lightning bolt of rage surge through Rian and placed her hand on his knee…

I heard her say to him, “Just think if I hadn’t heard you out. If I’d not let you utter a single word to me.”

Rian did not look at Eithne as she spoke, his glare was only for me.

“Rian, please,” Eithne continued, her hand now flat against his chest, pressed tight against his heart, “youneedto listen to him. If only because I listened to you.”

Her lips were light as a butterfly’s wing against his cheek. It was enough to break his rage as he grabbed her roughly and kissed her back.

I lowered my gaze to give them some privacy.

“Good luck,” Eithne whispered like a soft breeze as she passed me.

The door clicked shut behind her, her footsteps swallowed by the noise of passing cars. The softness left Rian’s face along with her.

“It’s about Ry,” I said before he could advance on me.

Eithne was Rian’s saving grace.

Ry was mine.

Her name alone brought me more leniency than any apology I could manage to perfect over years, decades. By invoking her name, I’d cashed in my final chip. There it rolled to a stop between us: our mutual love for the woman who’d chosen me.

Rian carded his fingers through his hair as he leaned forward, fixed his eyes on the frayed rug beneath his rapidly tapping toes.

“You’re the only other person in the world who loves her as much as I do,” I said from where I remained, upright and firm footed by the door.

Rian scoffed. “What good that love did, eh?”

He lifted his eyes to me. His pupils burned in rage. But they were ringed with the redness of exhaustion. It was tiring to carry this much hate.

“It didn’t have to be that way. None of this had to be like…” I waved my arms vaguely at the empty shop, its pink neon glow flooding over Ryleigh’s empty tattoo chair, “…likethis.”

“Don’t talk to me about how things could have, should havebeen different. I’m all too familiar with thoughts like that. They’ve been chains around my ankles nearly all my life.”

I tried to ignore the sting his words brought to my chest.

Rian and I had unfinished business. There was no denying that. A reckoning was coming. I could feel it like I felt the hairs on my arms before a thunderstorm.

But I was here for Ryleigh.

If Rian just heard me out, I was hoping he would be, too.

“I’m leaving town for a night or two,” I said, pushing aside the urge to run to Rian and shake him, hug him, hit him. “And I’m here because I want to ask you, as her best friend or at least as someone who was once her best friend, to look after her.”

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