Page 130 of Claiming Pretty

“Too much of a risk,” Ciaran said, his only kindnessbeing to withhold the wordsand you know it. “We have no idea what we’ll be walking into. A security check being the least of our worries. The lift of your sleeve and there would be a bullet between your eyes regardless of how much they look like mine. And Ava…”

Ciaran’s silence allowed the implications to hang like a guillotine over my head.

My shoulders slumped and I rubbed my eyes. I suddenly felt so tired, like it’d been five long years since I slept properly.

“You okay?” Ciaran asked, an unusual softness in his tone. I heard him speak to Ava that way. But never to me.

A nostalgia for our childhood days stirred a mix of pain and sweetness in my heart.

I nodded. “Grand.”

Ciaran removed his boot from behind my chair, both of us knowing that I would remain in place.

My place.

There in the van.

Watching. Helpless. No control on whatever might happen in that fucking tomb.

I rested my elbows on the desk and dragged my fingers through my hair.

“It’s meant for me to do this now,” Ciaran said softly. “As it was meant for methen.”

I raised my head and found Ciaran watching Ava at the front of the van.

It was the only thing I had left to hold on to—that my brother, as much as I hated him for it, loved her as much as I did.

He would die for her.

I just didn’t want him to.

Maybe it was because I felt like Ava had always beenmineto protect. Maybe because I was older, by four minutes, but it counted, at least in my head, and I wanted to protecthim,too.

After a tired sigh, Ciaran met my pained gaze. “It should have beenmewho went to prison.”

Even in the dark of the van with its sickish green glow from the array of computer screens, I could see that this was a wound Ciaran carried with him. All his erratic emotions and wild impulses blurred the edges of a deep, deep cut.

I only understood how he felt because it wasmyturn to stay behind. My turn to have the sacrifice stolen from me.

I couldn’t reach out to physically touch Ciaran. That was too far across a burned bridge. But I knew I had to speak now or risk never getting to tell him.

“I would do it again if I had to,” I said in little more than a whisper.

“But—”

“You are mybrother,” I said, my voice firm, admitting far more than my words would allow me. “Then, now, and always.”

You are my brother.

And I love you.

Have always loved you.

Even after the woman we both love tears us apart, I will always love you.

The only sign that Ciaran heard me—really heard me—was a quiver in his chin.

He gazed down at his hands which he rubbed against one another.

---