The day we went to her family’s house, I came to help Nolan. He didn’t tell me who’d be there. Hell, I’m not sure he knew himself.
I can still feel the chill of that night when the sun set, as we piled into the car and drove to Stone City. I can still see the dilapidated streets, still smell the scent of stale cigarette smoke and whiskey lingering in the air. I can still see her home, dingy and dark, with a worn front step and smudges on the windows. I can still see her, the very first time I laid eyes on her.
Though petite, she held herself with confidence, proud even as a young lass. She was the spitting image of her sister with her flaming red hair, freckled cheeks, and pouty lips.
I’ll never forget that day. I was only a lad, straight out of St. Albert’s, and she was only a lass, handed a crap deal in life. Living in utter destitution with Ireland’s poorest of the poor in Stone City, she did her best to rise above. She was stunningly beautiful, her innocence and purity miraculously intact. I’m neither a superstitious nor romantic man, but I swear, when I first laid eyes on her, something inside me whispered one word that rocked me off my axis: her.
I blinked in surprise, struck by a frisson of awareness that passed between us when our eyes met. It wasn’t sexual, and it wasn’t platonic, but something else altogether.
I asked her name, and she answered, her sweet voice carrying through the small room like church bells in summer.
“Fiona,” she said. I told her her name was beautiful.
Like you, I supplied in my head. Like you.
We brought them home, and the need to protect her, to ensure that she never lost the innocence in her eyes or the sweet, trusting smile, consumed me. I went to bed that night and punched my pillow before I tried to rest, but I couldn’t.
I told myself it was because the children we’d rescued that night shared a similarity to me: orphaned at a young age, I craved family and stability. The McCarthy clan gave me that. But the very next morning, when I saw her at breakfast, I knew it was no hero’s rescue that distracted me.
She flushed when she looked at me, and I couldn’t help but respond with a smile and warm welcome. It was dangerous. I denied the truth staring me in the face. She’d felt what I had, and it was fucking lethal. Sugar-laced poison that could lure me in and seize my heart.
I schooled myself in any way I could. I lifted weights until my muscles ached and sweat dripped from my body. I ran at the gym until my lungs threatened to burst. I threw myself into my work, leading my brothers of the Clan. I earned my reputation as a natural leader, but they don’t know the truth. They don’t know that I was trying to occupy my mind so I wouldn’t fall for her. They didn’t know I did exactly what I was taught by my mentor and teacher, Malachy, at school. I pushed my body into hard labor to punish myself for the sins of my flesh I had yet to commit.
I never did anything. I never acted out on my longing for her. I never flirted, or even mentally entertained any thought beyond protecting her. For that was my job and is to this day: to devote my life to the safety and well-being of the Clan. Fiona’s one of us now. I threw myself into taking care of Fiona.
She had a guard like all of them did, especially when she fell under the protection and guardianship of Nolan and Sheena. But I was the one who oversaw her guards, who took them to task if they weren’t vigilant. I was the one who saw to her safety, her protection. I still am.
I kept what I did hidden from her, but I knew. I knew who her friends and allies were, and when she was bullied at school by an overbearing arsehole who tried to rough her up, I was the one that paid him a visit. My brothers held me back. We may be above the law, but I could have killed him. I roughed him up. I let him know who I was.
No one bullied her after that.
Tonight, when I saw her arrive with Tiernan, my heart longed to go to her. To gather her in my arms and wish her a happy birthday. To kiss her pouty lips and give thanks to the heavens she isn’t a child anymore but a woman.
But I held myself back. She’s still so young. She’s got a lifetime before her, and I won’t take that from her. In my heart, I know. If I pursued her, she’d let me.