Page 114 of The Love Destroyers

“No alcohol right now,” she says firmly, no hint of give in her voice.

“You sound like Rosie.”

One of her dark eyebrows rises, her expression wry. “Thank you. Rosie’s a smart woman.”

“All the women in my life are.” I take a gulp of the coffee. “All right. You know who my uncle was. You know he died in an accident at home.” There’s more to that story, involving my brother, but that’s his story, and she’s here for mine.

She nods.

“After he died, we knew there’d be trouble. A power vacuum. Declan wanted to leave, to change our names and get the fuck away. Off the radar. I suggested that maybe we should be the ones to step into the vacuum. Do things differently than he did.” I pause, swallow. “I should have known better. I told you. I only lasted a week working for him.”

“But you wanted to impress that woman.”

“Sort of. I mostly didn’t want to leave my home. I never told Declan this, but I’d rented out a space to open my own auto body shop. But that wasn’t the only reason. My uncle had this guy working for him. Tom. He was violent, and he’d been wanting to take things in a different direction for a while. More shakedowns, harder drugs, that kind of thing. There were whispers about human trafficking. Really bleak shit. Seemed like he’d be the one to walk into that vacuum if we didn’t.”

“So you had good intentions.”

I run my hands through my hair again, trying to put myself back in my shoes at the time. I want to be honest with her. I don’t want to sugarcoat anything. She deserves more than that.

“Good and bad, sure. But my brother didn’t go for it, and after we talked it over to death, I agreed with him. We both wanted to get Rosie away from that shit, and neither of us trusted Tom. I didn’t like leaving everything behind, not when it had finally felt like I was getting somewhere, but there wasn’t much choice.”

She doesn’t say anything or urge me to continue spouting shit. All she does is watch me from across the table.

“So we got new IDs and we left. Dec came here, and Rosie and I went to New York.”

I fall silent, drawn back into that time. The confusion of it. The frustration of having to start over again, when I’d been doing okay back home.

Emma shocks me by reaching across the table and taking my hand. I turn it and weave my fingers through hers, feeling strong enough to keep going. “So you can imagine how surprised I was when someone from home stopped by the apartment.”

“Tom?” she asks.

I shake my head, feeling the past push up and try to suck me back into the muck. But I push back. I’ve got to tell her first. Not telling her is no longer an option, and I realize I actually want her to know everything. “No, it was this guy Jimmy. He was the other person who wanted in on that vacuum. He told me he’d found us by following Tom’s footsteps. Tom was looking for us, wanting to either work with us or kill us. Jimmy knew we didn’t want anything to do with that world anymore. So he made me an offer. If I took care of Tom, he’d give us his protection. We wouldn’t be running scared, looking over our shoulders all the time.”

She lifts her eyebrows, indicating she knows there’s more to the story.

I shrug, feeling the pressure of getting close to the end, knowing there’s a very good chance she’s going to walk out ofhere forever. “I didn’t tell Declan or Rosie. I called Tom. I told myself I could talk him around. Convince him we weren’t any kind of threat, but I didn’t really believe it would work. I set up a meeting at an abandoned cabin I’d found outside of town.” I wrap my hand around the warm mug of coffee, needing the heat to leach into my skin. “He….he’d known our uncle, so he trusted me. He didn’t bring his muscle. When he got there, he asked if we’d back him. I said we wouldn’t. He told me what would happen to us if we didn’t. I said not if I took care of him first. He got out his gun, but I managed to disarm him. I couldn’t just shoot him, though. I couldn’t do that. I told him we’d see who’d come out ahead man to man. Knife to knife. I knew my family was in danger—that he’d kill them if he won—but it felt like the only fair way to decide it.”

She sucks in a breath and draws her hand back. “He’s the one who stabbed you.”

I nod slowly, feeling cast down by it. Overwhelmed. “Jimmy stitched me up himself. I don’t know how Nicole found out. Maybe she doesn’t know as much as she pretends to. All these injuries over the last few days…it’s kind of made me feel like karma was finally getting its piece, but that doesn’t explain you. Because all the bad luck in the world doesn’t outweigh you.”

She’s watching me with those serious eyes, and I know in the pit of my stomach that it’s too much for her.

“Are you going to turn me in, Emma?” I ask, turning the mug around with the tips of my fingers. “Is that what karma wants from me?”

She shakes her head, but her mouth is a firm line, her expression unreadable. This is what she’d look like in court, delivering a guilty man to his doom. “You could have made a different choice.”

I nod, knowing it down to my bones. “No doubt. It would have been easier to live with. But I made a promise to whatever’sout there, if there’s anything, that I wouldn’t ever get mixed up in that shit again. I meant it. I’ve been doing the steady thing, walking the line. When I found out the guys from the garage I was working at in New York were going on the take, I quit and didn’t look back. But being around that man yesterday, I realized I'm still capable of violence, even if I don’t like doling it out. I wanted to hurt him. I still do.”

Her lips part. She flattens them again.

Look at me, making women speechless. I’m a real charmer.

I rub my forehead. “Look, it’s okay if you want to leave. You probably should. I wanted to help you, but I fucked everything up so badly a kid with two braincells had tocome to the rescue. I should stick to cars. They’re the only broken things I’ve ever been good at fixing.”

She shocks me by reaching for my hand again. I’d be a putz not to give it to her. I wrap my fingers around hers, wondering if it’ll be the last time.

Looking at me, her eyes full of swimming emotions now, she says, “Seamus, I care about you. A lot. But I need time to process this. I don’t know—”

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