Page 97 of The Irish Redemption

“Oh, God.” Evie coughs and coughs until I take her hand and help her brush the ash from her hair. When she looks up at me, her eyes are bright and a swell of love overtakes the grief in my chest.

“I love you,” I say, cupping the side of her neck. “So much. Thank you for being here.”

“Of course,” she says. “I love you too. And I’ll always be here.”

“My strongest pillar,” I say. She leans up onto her tiptoes and kisses me tearily.

“Right!” Cian declares, slapping his hands together. “Enough crying. Time for the pub!”

39

EVELYN

Cormac swings his leg outward and I side-step, drawing my hands up to my chest and quickly returning a few light jabs to his shoulder. He spins, his fist lightly colliding with my ribs. I grab it and turn, twisting in the way he taught me and drawing a grunt of pain from him as I spin us both and force his arm up his back.

“Do you concede?” I ask breathlessly, having spent the past four hours sparring with Cormac in the gym.

In a flash, Cormac slips out of my grip and faces me, then he hooks one ankle around my leg and sends us both tumbling down onto the mat with a grunt. He rests above me, grinning as he pins me there firmly.

“Do you concede?”

I jerk upward and crash our lips together, pressing my knee into his crotch and using that leverage to roll us over until I’m on top and it’s my turn to smirk down at him.

“Do you?”

“You play dirty,” Cormac says accusingly.

“And I win.”

“In a real fight, this won’t work.”

“I know. But here, I win.”

“You do.” Cormac cups my face and teases his thumb along the bottom swell of my lower lip. “You’re getting faster.”

A final kiss and we climb to our feet. I push sweaty strands of my hair out of my face and groan softly. “Not fast enough.”

“What counts as fast enough?”

“I don’t know.” Walking over the mat, I snatch up a bottle of water from the bench. “I want to beat you properly.”

“You won’t be able to.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m much bigger than you and I’ve been fighting since I was a kid. You’ve been training for six months.” Cormac stands next to me and gently nudges my shoulder. “But that’s not a big thing.”

“Isn’t it?” I gaze up at him as I gulp mouthfuls of cool, refreshing water. “I mean, most people are bigger than me. If I can’t take you down, what hope do I have?”

Cormac affectionately nudges at the bottom of my bottle, then he steals it to drink his fill. “Saoirse is smaller too, remember.”

“And she can kick your ass.”

“Again, there’s a huge time difference there. My point is that you are learning for survival and your goal to take me down will take a lot longer than six months. We have to play to your strengths. Your speed. Using your opponent’s strength against them.”

He speaks sense, and in the past six months, it has felt amazing to learn how to defend myself at different levels. The first time I shot a rifle was scary, but now it’s as easy as curling my hair.

“Do you want to go again?” Cormac asks, passing my water back.

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