Page 42 of A Trap So Flawless

I’m rambling. I know I am. But I can’t seem to make it stop. Rowan watches me with a flat expression, his eyes flinty.

“What did Darragh do when he saw my wedding photo?” I ask, because suddenly, I have to know. My abdomen is cramping with the intensity of it. I squeeze my hands together in front of my belly. “Did he smash the phone? Or did he do that thing where you expect him to be really mad, but then he laughs?”

“He cried.”

For a second, I think that Rowan’s joking. That he’s throwing out an answer so nonsensical, so absolutely ludicrous, that its whole purpose is to stun me into shutting up. But one look at his face tells me that this is not a man who jokes. Not when it comes to his boss.

“I don’t believe you,” I whisper, even as the memory of Darragh’s earlier words come back to me with painfully breathtaking force.

Dublin is the only place I’ve ever cried.

“Doesn’t really matter if you do,” Rowan says, facing back towards the fridge, dismissing me both with his tone and the turn of his rock-like shoulder. “You asked a question. I answered it.” He opens the fridge, as clear a signal as any that this conversation is over.

Saliva floods my mouth. The bag of stuff Darragh bought me is still in here where I left it. I snatch it from the counter and go rooting around for the painkillers and anti-nausea meds. That’s how Darragh finds me when he comes back in the door.

“Feeling unwell?”

My head snaps up at the sound of his voice. I give a jerky nod.

“We’re done here for the day.” Darragh says it to Rowan, but his eyes don’t ever leave me as I pop an anti-nausea pill and dry swallow it. He plucks the bag from my grip and then brushes his hand along my lower back before pressing the whole of his palm and fingers there. His hand is so hot. Like having a heating pad. It feels so hatefully good.

Keeping his hand on my back, Darragh leads me to the front door. I don’t fight him or argue. At this point, I just want to go lie down. Outside, the sky at the front of the house is thick with bruise-coloured clouds. When we reach the sidewalk and start walking, the air shifts suddenly cooler. There’s a low rumble overhead, then the sky splits open like a punctured water balloon.

I hiss a curse under my breath, scrunching up my face and lifting one of my hands to try to protect myself from the soaking onslaught. Beside me, Darragh’s movements catch in the corner of my eye. Still holding the bag, he’s wrenching off his shirt one-handed.

“Do you really need to be doing that right now?” I shout over the sound of the rain. It’s so loud it sounds like glass marbles dropping all around us and colliding. I shiver, my shoes already drenched and cold. “Let’s just go!”

Once Darragh’s got his shirt off to apparently enjoy the Dublin rain bare-chested, he forces me to take the drugstore bag.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I take it and start walking ahead without him. He’s the one with the key to the townhouse, but at least there’s a little overhang above the door that I can try to stand under while he catches up.

But on those long legs, he catches up immediately. And suddenly, I don’t feel the rain anymore.

I blink water from my lashes and look up to see Darragh’s white T-shirt held taut above my head, like the top of a tent or a tarp. But instead of posts or poles holding it in place, it’s the inked strength of Darragh’s hands. He has to walk very close beside me to hold his shirt over my head with both arms like this.

He’s getting absolutely soaked. His hair is nearly black, falling in dripping spikes into his eyes. His jeans cling to him, heavy from the rain and sliding dangerously low on his hips. He’s still so fucking big, but his skin looks tighter to his muscles than it should. Striations of veins make his tattoos buckle and roll on his forearms and biceps.

It only then occurs to me that I haven’t seen him eating once since I’ve arrived here.

“Darragh, stop!” I shout. Even though I’m the one who actually stops. My legs halt, and I stand to face him on the sidewalk. Between the rainclouds and the sun setting, it’s gotten much darker already. Streetlights send their missives out into the night. They illuminate Darragh, every beautiful, damaged, rain-splattered part of him.

“Put your shirt back on!” I say. My throat catches. I blink and pretend it’s the rain. Even though I can’t feel the rain on my face right now, because he’s keeping it away. “You’re getting all wet!”

“It’s fine, pet,” he says. “I’m not made of sugar.”

Not made of sugar. No, I suppose someone like Darragh Gowan could never claim he was.

But even so, there’s a dark and dangerous sort of sweetness in him. In this. In the way he silently holds his own shirt above my head, no regard at all for himself.

He has to bend his tall frame quite low to hold the shirt in place above me, so despite the height difference between us, his face is very close to mine. Rain glistens in his hair, rolling down his temples, the crooked bridge of his nose, his jaw. A streetlight is directly behind him. A halo for my devil.

Angel. Evil. Enemy. Protector.

What the hell is Darragh to me now?

He’s trapped me. He’s fought with me. He’s threatened to kill my father in front of me.

And yet, here he is, soaked from the rain, giving me the literal shirt off his back. I want to cry. Or hit him. Or beg him to stop, because I can’t take these moments of softness. Not from him.

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