Page 59 of Never Too Late

He looked taken aback by my veracity. “Yeah, love.”

I prodded him in the chest, because it was that or hit him, and a prod seemed the lesser evil of the two. “You start with that,” I said, my voice an octave higher than it should have been. “You don’t slip it in as an aside while you’re doing your woe is me monologue.”

“It wasn’t a…” He gave himself a mental shake. “Not the point, Cillian. You know I love you.”

“Do I?” Two octaves higher. At this rate, I’d be an opera singer before the night was through, which was a career change I hadn’t banked on. “How? I’m not psychic.”

“I said…” I waited while Cillian thought things through. “I must have said.”

“When?” I questioned, annoyed enough not to let it drop. There’d be time later once I’d raked Cillian over the metaphorical coals to let those words sink in and bathe in their magnificence. “Did you say it when you were in Paris last time? Did you turn up at my door and say, Finn, I can’t let you go because I’m hopelessly and madly in love with you?”

“Well, no… That would have been a bit full on.” Cillian grimaced. “And probably extremely humiliating given that you then locked lips with another man a few seconds later.” He held up a hand. “I know it wasn’t your doing, that it was Laurent’s, but it still happened.”

“Changing the subject,” I said tartly. “If you didn’t say it then, maybe you said it in the five days we spent together?”

“No,” Cillian conceded.

“Then it must have been during one of our late-night conversations. Either on the phone or on video. Do you remember saying it then?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that I might have assumed through my actions that you knew.”

“I didn’t.”

He gestured to the seat I’d vacated. “Can you sit down?” He tipped his head back. “It’s difficult to have this conversation with you towering over me.”

“You could stand,” I suggested obstinately. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me onto his lap. “Or I could sit here,” I added. “Here’s good.”

Cillian reached up to palm my cheeks. “I love you Finlay Prescott. I think love was such a foregone conclusion ever since the first day we met that I convinced myself we’d work with very little effort on my part.”

I screwed my face up. “That’s a terrible excuse.”

“I know. And I was wrong. Clearly, I was. And I intend to spend every day from now until eternity showing you how sorry I am that I ever took you for granted.”

“Eternity, hey?” I said. “That’s a long time.” I wanted to keep Cillian hanging for longer, but there was such softness in his eyes, such yearning, that I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. “I love you too. I left because I loved you.” Cillian’s frown was understandable. “It was too painful,” I explained, “to be stuck in what I felt was a one-sided relationship. I would have lost all respect for myself if I’d put up with it any longer, and I didn’t trust myself not to give in if I stayed in London.”

“So you came here,” Cillian said.

“So I came here,” I echoed. “And I thought that would be the end of it, that I’d eventually meet someone else.”

“Laurent?” Cillian questioned with an expression too neutral to be real.

“No, not Laurent,” I said with a laugh. “He made it clear very early on that we weren’t going to be anything but friends. I didn’t know it at the time, but he’s got a lot going on. I think the last thing he’s looking for at the moment is a relationship.”

“Good,” Cillian said. “Because I’d almost feel guilty for hating a man who recently got out of surgery and is lying in a hospital bed.”

“Almost?” I questioned with a smirk.

“Almost,” Cillian confirmed. “I’d manage it, but it would take effort.”

“Speaking of Laurent,” I said, with a glance at my watch. “Visiting hours started forty-five minutes ago.”

Cillian brushed his lips over mine with a frustrated growl that made me smile. “When we get home,” I said, “I’m going to take you to bed and get you to say those words repeatedly, and I’m going to say them back.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Cillian said as he tugged me to my feet. “But first, let’s see your annoying friend.”

“He’s not annoying.”

Cillian’s snort said he was yet to be convinced of that.

---