Page 13 of Beneath His Robes

He knew.

Ronan knew I had lost control and that I was here because of my stupidity. I could see the story click into place as his studious gaze flittered to the evidence in the room. It was no surprise why his mother was here. I often saw her fall further into her addiction, especially when Ronan had moved away all those years ago.

I couldn’t think about that night. It hurt too much. The pain was like a vice…

* * *

The door creaked open behind me, and my heart skipped. My breath caught in my chest as I heard the unmistakable sound of slapping.

What moron was Maria screwing now?

I froze, my eyes drawn to the figure leaning against the wall.

Ronan.

For a long moment, everything was suspended. The air thickened with tension, and my gaze locked on him. Ronan’s face was pale, his eyes wide with a mix of panic and something else—something that made my stomach twist. His chest was bare, all those tattoos dancing on his rippling back and shoulders. The world seemed to shrink, all the noise and chaos fading into a distant hum as I stood there…watching him.

Maria was underneath him, and her body was…wound around and into his. It felt like a knife to my chest, a cruel reminder of what I’d suspected but never fully allowed myself to believe. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out at first.

“Ronan?” my voice was barely a whisper, strained and thick with the confusion that clouded my mind.

My gaze flickered between him and Maria while my heart shattered in my chest.

I needed answers, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from Ronan or break the grip of whatever it was between us. The silence stretched, suffocating me.

“Stay out of this,” he muttered, his voice low, filled with a rawness I could feel deep in my bones. “Just get out, Elias.”

Ronan’s words were like a punch to my gut. The coldness in his tone made my chest tighten further, but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t pull myself from the mess we were caught in. And Maria? She seemed to sense the gravity of the situation, her eyes soft with understanding, but there was hurt and anger there, too, a reflection of my own.

“Why?” I said, on a choked sob.

The word slipped from my lips before I could stop it. It wasn’t just a question. It was a plea. A desperate cry for something I didn’t know I needed, something that could make sense of this tangled mess.

Ronan’s face twisted with pain.

“I thought…I thought if I could just…” he paused, his gaze darting to Maria, still half naked with his fucking dick buried inside her, then back at me. “If I could just make it go away. If I could just…be with someone else…maybe I could forget.”

The words felt like a slap to the face, like something sharp and jagged piercing through the fragile barrier I’d tried to build around my heart. But then I saw it—the guilt, the regret, the shattered look in his gunmetal eyes. He was breaking, too.

Maria was trapped between us, but she deserved any pain she was feeling. She deserved to hear what she had done.

“You chose to pretend to be normal with my fuckingsister, Ronan,” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could think better of them. “You didn’t have to pretend with me…”

I stepped closer to him, but his gaze was elsewhere, his body tense like he was trying to hold everything together with fragile strings.

“I don’t know how to stop,” he said, his voice shaking. “I don’t know how to make it go away, Elias. You…You’re all I fucking think about. You can’t live in my mind. You are poisoning me. I need you to get out of my fucking head, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t. So if fucking your sister will force you to do it for me…then so be it.”

My breath caught in my throat. He just said everything I’d ever hoped to hear, except for that last sentence. He wanted…to forget me.

I didn’t know what to do with this. I didn’t know how to fix this. I just wanted to pull him close, to erase the hurt from his eyes, to make it all stop hurting…and to commit murder by shoving my fucking sister out of our window.

“You’re a coward,” I said, my voice steady despite the storm raging inside me. “If you wanted me gone…you only needed to say the words.”

I stepped forward, two more viciously heavy, heart-crucifying steps.

“I’m…sorry,” he whispered, his voice barely audible, like he was breaking under the weight of his own words. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I just…I can’t. I need…to stop feeling this way for you.”

He was sorry. The apology, regret, and guilt were visible and tangible.

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