Page 40 of Velvet Betrayal
He blinked, caught off guard. I almost regretted asking, but the look on his face wasn’t pain or even longing. Just realization, a ghost of a smile. “Like, together?” he said. “You and me? With the kid and the job and the mortgage and all of it?”
“Yeah.”
He stepped closer, the back of his hand brushing my cheek. “It would’ve never worked,” he said quietly. “What did you call it? Untenable.”
He didn’t need to say more. I remembered those first few months—reckless and loud, every night a dare, every morning a mess we tried to fuck our way out of. It wasn’t sustainable. It wasn’t safe. But God, it was alive.
I let my head fall back against the cold tile, almost smiling. At least he didn’t pretend it had been some great love story that got away. “Yeah,” I said. “Untenable like setting fire to the house and hoping it keeps you warm.”
That made him laugh—real and sharp, teeth flashing like it might cut him on the way out. Then he caught my eyes in the reflection of the window, and for a second, I saw it all again—everything we’d tried to bury still sparking behind his stare.
“We try anyway?” he said—a question that was also a joke, the punchline of our entire shared disaster.
I shrugged. “You’re already on my couch. Try all you want.”
“Okay,” he said, and his hand moved to my chin, tilting it up so he could look at me. “God, I could stare at you for years.”
I shook my head. “Well, don’t. It’s creepy.”
“I’m going to. I don’t care what you think.”
“Then why ask?”
He sighed. “Ruby…do you want something from me?”
My stomach turned, slow and warning. How the hell could I answer that question when I wanted him to leave me the fuck alone but also wantedeverything?“You know I do.”
“I mean more than this.” He gestured at the counter. “More than the fucking and the protection and the kitchen sink.”
“A real answer,” I said. “Not a Callahan answer. Not something you’d feed a cop or a crew boss or a brother.”
His lips curved like he was bracing for another joke.
But what he said wasn’t a joke at all.
“I’d have made you so fucking happy, but I also would’ve driven you mad,” he said. “I’d have insisted on making sure you only worked when you wanted to…on makingextra sureyou’d want for nothing. And I’d have wanted to make more beautiful babies with you. Once Rosie was born…I wouldn’t have wanted to stop.”
My breath caught. Not in my throat—deeper than that. In my gut, my chest, the hollow place that had stayed raw since the day he left.
He wasn’t even touching me, but I felt it anyway: the weight of his want, the way it burned through the quiet like a fuse.
“Kieran—” I started, warning or plea, I didn’t know.
But he just looked at me, eyes dark and wide open. No lies, no performance. Just him, stripped to the bone.
“I think about it all the time,” he said. “You in my bed. You in my house. Our girl coming down the stairs on Christmas morning. You laughing in the kitchen. You carrying another one. All of it.”
My knees went soft.
He bent low, mouth near my ear, voice frayed with restraint. “Tell me to stop. Or tell me what you really want.”
I didn’t answer.
Because every cell in my body was already screaming it.
Kieran
It started the same way it always did: a look, a dare, a line neither of us pretended to draw. I didn’t wait for permission. I pressed my mouth to hers, hard, and for a second she went stiff—maybe for show, maybe not—but then her hands were in my shirt, dragging me closer, her mouth opening against mine like she was challenging me to back down. I tasted coffee, adrenaline, and the ghost of whatever perfume she’d used after her shower. Underneath it, something rawer: resignation, maybe, or just the knowledge we were always going to end up here.
