Page 51 of Iron Cross

Not from illness, either, but from complete and total embarrassment.

Was I so love-starved that a man showing the most tertiary concern made me form a crush? I felt the heat on my cheeks and placed my cold hand on it, to try and hide them.

But his smile told me I hadn’t been successful.

“That’s cute,” he said, his low drawl doing something to me.

Was I a chick that liked accents? Was that what I was now?

“You look flushed,” he commented casually, before he looked down at the paintings, scratching his beard as if it was itchy. There was a crook in his pronounced nose that looked like it had been broken and never healed quite right.

“I’m just…” I felt my cheeks pink again and then became a little dizzy.

“Jesus,” he said, lunging to catch me. “Love, you’re more than flushed. You’re feverish.”

“What did you just call me?”

He tilted his head. Or maybe I was tilting.

“Up you go,” he said, and I found myself horizontal. My feet off the pavement.

“Oh, that is just…” Magda sighed and in my dizziness, I watched her bring her hands to her chest. “You get her home and I’ll lock her store up.”

The world was spinning, moving slow and fast at the same time. Like I was dancing under some strange influence and unable to stop. Like I was spinning in the space between dreams and waking.

“Cillian,” I whispered, only to be shushed and cooed. I was comforted by rough hands, with promises that my boy was safe.

My boy.

My everything.

But like so many years before, I could not think of my boy without also thinking ofhim.

“Eoghan,” I whispered into the void.

I whispered into the darkness that would keep my secrets. My hopes. My waking dreams that would never come true.

“Darling? Do you have any tea?” his voice asked, as his warm hand cupped my cheek. “Jesus, your fever is at 104 degrees.”

“Eoghan?” I whispered, not sure how he was in my house. “Eoghan, please…”

“Everything is going to be fine.” The voice was Irish. I knew it. Or maybe I felt it? I wasn’t sure.

Hands touched my hair, my forehead… my lips.

I knew that touch. “Don’t hurt us.”

I had thought a thousand different ways that Eoghan would find me. What would I say? And every time, I had come to my kneesand begged for his mercy. And even in my head, he had granted it freely. Or he’d tell me that he’d long forgotten me, and was only there to take his son and heir.

That I was nothing, and that broke me every time.

“I miss you,” I whispered the sad truth of my existence.

I missed my husband. I missed him so much it hurt. I would have him quit the Mafia and run away with us if I could.

“You’re okay, love. You’re okay.” That was what Eoghan kept saying, and I believed him with every fiber of my being. Because Eoghan, the monster that he was, only ever told me the truth.

“I’m sorry.” I said it because I owedhimsome truth, even if he’d never hear it.

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