The Wedding Pact (The O'Malleys #2)(4)

She’d bet what little freedom she had left that he’d never been there at the same time she was. As tempting as it was to chalk it up to a coincidence, it was too damn much to believe he’d been there tonight by chance. Which meant he’d been there looking for her.

She shivered. Taking the album was a mistake. She’d known the second she opened it and saw its contents that he wouldn’t rest until he had it back in his possession.

If she had half a brain in her head, she’d send the thing back to him and good riddance. Even as the thought crossed her mind, she shook her head. As questionable as it was, she wasn’t ready to give up that pawn—especially since it was important enough for him to seek her out.

He said he’d been thinking about that night.

He lied.

He had to have lied. The sex obviously didn’t mean shit to him since he’d thrown her in a trunk less than ten minutes afterward. Not to mention that every remaining member of his shrinking family had been all too happy to threaten to kill her—and worse. They would have done it. She wasn’t naive enough to think they wouldn’t have.

Hell, her own father did worse than that to people who crossed him. There was no reason to believe James would have suddenly developed a conscience and played white knight to her damsel in distress. Yes, he’d stepped aside and let her and Callie go when they were sneaking out. He might have let them escape, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have stood by and watched her tortured and killed if his father commanded it. Her body burned at the memory of how he’d kissed her, of the look in his eyes when he’d growled that they had unfinished business.

Stop it.

Which was why it was so incredibly unforgivable that her brain kept circling back to him in the intervening months. She could claim Stockholm syndrome until she was blue in the face, but it wasn’t the truth.

The cab pulled up in front of her family’s home, saving her from following that train of thought any further down the rabbit hole. James Halloran was the enemy, and she’d be every bit the stupid bimbo her father thought she was if she forgot that.

Carrigan paid the driver and climbed out of the cab. She made it all of three steps when she realized what she’d done—she’d come home wearing her clubbing clothes when she was supposed to have been at church, praying for her father’s immortal soul. Goddamn it.

“Rough night?”

She startled, nearly tipping over her heels, and spun to face the male voice. It took all of a second to recognize who it belonged to. “Cillian? What the hell are you doing lurking out here?” The middle child of seven—and third boy—Cillian had lived as much a charmed life as possible under their circumstances. He’d always been kind of an idiot, but he’d never had to face the same things she and her sisters had. Or even that Teague and Aiden had. There had been no one requiring him to grow up, and so he’d happily played at being a Lost Boy.

Until Devlin died.

It seemed like so much of their lives centered on that one tragedy. Things had been a certain way. Before Victor Halloran lost his mind and declared war. Before things escalated to the point of no return. Before a bullet from a Halloran man snuffed out the life of the best and brightest of their family. Now life was divided into Before Devlin and After Devlin. She rubbed a hand over her chest, wondering how much time it would take to dull the edge of pain that thinking about him brought.

As Cillian moved closer, the toll the last few months had taken on him was written all over his face. Even in the shadows, his eyes were haunted. He glanced at the intimidating front door to the town house, the trees lining the street making the darkness feel more absolute despite the lights peppered between them. “I wasn’t ready to go in.”

To face their reality.

Was there anyone in their family who didn’t want to run as far and fast as they could to get away from the hell they lived in? Carrigan didn’t think so. Six months ago, she would have put Cillian on that short list. Maybe even Devlin, too. Now? Now Devlin was gone and everything was different.

Devlin was the one who had still maintained an aura of innocence despite everything. The one who might have escaped the net their father was so intent on tangling them in. The net called family. She almost laughed. Who was she kidding? No one escaped. Not Devlin. Not Cillian. Sure as hell not her.

And what would you do if you did escape?

There was no point in thinking about it. This was her reality, and she had to make the best of it that she could. Carrigan looped her arm through his. “I’m not ready, either. Want to go for a walk?”

He glanced down the street. The same direction he’d been coming from—the direction of the pub where her brothers had all been walking back from the night everything went to hell. “It’s not safe.”