Page 40 of Beneath His Robes

His voice was light, but I could hear the sadness beneath it, the weight of the things unspoken in that snowstorm.

I looked at him, really looked at him, and I could see the frustration in his gray eyes, the way his lips pressed into a thin line. He wanted to say something in response to Maria.

I could feel it in the way he avoided her gaze.

But he didn’t.

And neither did I.

I wanted to reach across the table, take his hand into mine, and tell him I was still here, erasing the pain in his eyes. But I couldn’t. Not in front of my family. Not now. The weight of my responsibilities, vows, and family bogged me down, and I felt my collar suffocating me further.

The awkwardness between us stretched into an unbearable silence, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. My hand shook slightly as I picked at my food, the weight of everything too much to bear.

I tried to make small talk to keep up the facade that everything was fine.

“It was colder out there than I expected,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Wasn’t it, Ronan?”

Ronan didn’t respond, but he was looking at me again, his eyes full of questions I couldn’t answer.

Not here.

Not now.

Maybe ever…because I didn’t know the damn answer myself.

The fire crackled in the hearth of the silence between us, but it didn’t compare to the heat in his eyes. The flames didn’t warm the freezing parts of my heart or stop the ice from erecting around the fragile, broken structure I had become.

Nothing could.

ChapterFourteen

Ronan

The pathetic amount of clothes in my bag was a testament to how damn bare my life was. I ran. It had been a week since I left my hometown and the man who held my heart inside it.

He made his decision. Fuck, he shot our chance with a literal bullet right between the eyes.

I had to accept this. I had to move forward and understand that this was my life.

Sighing, I pulled out a pair of sweats and a tee, dropped my towel on them, and threw them over my damp body.

The apartment in Vegas wasn’t bad.

Lord knew it was better than my mom’s couch, but yet it felt emptier than her drug mule trailer. I had fixed that piece of shit while I was there. Rebuilding my mom’s world to keep her safe.

She had everything she needed to be free of my stepfather, free to push him out and lock the new locks, but she wouldn’t. She never chose herself when it came to that monster.

I asked her to move here, offering her a place in my own world. I wanted her to leave that man behind and sober the fuck up.

But just like Elias, she rejected me.

My mother chose her own hell, and Elias chose his ‘heaven.’

I tossed my duffel bag onto the couch. The rough scrape of leather against fabric echoed in the stillness of my apartment.

It was as cold and impersonal as ever, just another empty space I’d tried to make mine but never quite fit into. The lights outside flickered. The glow of the city barely reached the dim corners of the room. Nothing could drown out the memory of the fight I’d just left.

I wasn’t even sure why I bothered to unpack.

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