Chapter 13: Love
The sitting room had settled into its evening rhythm. The fire crackled low in the hearth, and the last of the light had drained from the windows, leaving the brass curtain rods to gleam faintly in the lamplight. Seamus was in his armchair, reading the sports section of the Irish Times, his reading glasses perched low on his nose. He let out a small groan as he turned the page, something about the rugby, and Roisin smiled from the sofa without looking up from her knitting.
Javier sat at the other end of the sofa, a heavy textbook open on his knee, though he had not turned a page in close to twenty minutes. His attention kept drifting to the soft click of Roisin's needles, the way the lamplight caught the gold of her pendant, the way her foot rested on the edge of the cushions, bare and small and somehow unbearably intimate.
She must have felt his gaze, because she looked up. Their eyes met. Her needles slowed for a beat, and a faint colour rose in her cheeks before she looked back down at her wool.
"You're quiet tonight, son," Seamus said, not looking up from his paper. "All that studying taking it out of you?"
Javier blinked, forced his shoulders to relax. "A bit, Dad. Feels like the lecturers saved the hardest material for the last stretch."
Seamus grunted. "Well, don't let it eat you alive. You've a weekend coming. Get out of the house, blow the cobwebs off."
"I might do that."
Roisin's needles clicked on. Javier could feel the tension in the air between them, a current that ran under the pleasant chatter, invisible to Seamus but electric to them both. It had been three days since the confession in the kitchen, three days of stolen glances and careful touches that said nothing but meant everything. Three days of pretending that nothing had changed, when everything had.
Seamus folded his paper and stood with a groan, stretching his broad back. "I'm for bed, love. Early start tomorrow, the lads are pouring the foundation for the extension down in Dalkey. You two mind yourselves." He bent and kissed the top of Roisin's head. "Don't stay up too late, Javier."
"I won't, Dad."
Seamus padded out of the room, his steps heavy on the stairs, and then the house settled into a deeper quiet. The fire crackled. A coal shifted with a soft thump. Javier heard the bedroom door close upstairs, Seamus's footsteps moving across the floorboards overhead.
Neither of them moved. The needles had stopped clicking.
Roisin let out a long, slow breath, and when she spoke, her voice had changed entirely, lower, softer, as if she were speaking only to him through a veil. "I thought tonight would never end."
Javier set the textbook aside and turned on the sofa to face her. "I've been watching the clock all evening."
"And I've been trying not to watch you." She put her knitting down, her hands trembling slightly as she folded them in her lap. "Javier, I can't stop thinking about it. About us. Every minute of every day. I feel like I'm walking around with a secret lit up inside me, and any moment someone's going to see it shining through my skin."
He shifted closer along the sofa, close enough to smell her perfume, something floral and warm. "Roisin. I feel it too. Everything."
Her eyes glistened in the lamplight. "I'm frightened. I haven't been frightened like this since I was a girl. I look at you and I feel such joy, such a rushing feeling, and then I think of Seamus and I feel like I'm drowning in guilt. And then I look at you again and the guilt goes away, and it's only joy."
"That's how I feel too. Roisin, I know it's complicated. But I can't pretend it isn't real."
She reached out and took his hand, her fingers small and warm around his. "Come with me," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
She led him up the stairs, treading carefully past the closed door of the master bedroom, where Seamus's gentle snoring had already begun. Javier followed her down the landing to his own room, his heart hammering in his chest. She closed the door behind them and stood with her back against it, looking at him in the dim light of the bedside lamp.
"I want you again," she said, her voice shaking. "I know I said we should be careful, and I meant it. But I can't be careful tonight. I've been lying awake for three nights thinking about your hands on me, thinking about the sound you made when you were inside me. I need you, Javier. I need you to make me feel alive again."
He crossed the room and took her face in his hands, thumbs brushing the delicate skin beneath her eyes. "I need you too, Roisin. You don't know how much. I wake up thinking about you. I go to sleep thinking about you. You're the first thing in my mind and the last."
She let out a small, broken sound and pressed her lips to his. The kiss was hungry, desperate, months of unspoken longing flooding through it. Her hands came up to grip his sweater, fisting the wool, pulling him closer. He walked her backwards until the backs of her knees hit the bed and she fell onto it with a soft gasp, pulling him down with her.
He kissed her neck, the soft skin just below her ear, and she gasped again, arching up against him. Her body was soft beneath his, yielding and generous, and the heat of her through her dress made him ache.
"I want to see you," he murmured against her throat. "All of you."
Her hands found the hem of her sweater and pulled it up, and he helped her, easing the wool over her head, then unbuttoning her blouse with careful fingers, revealing the lace beneath. He paused, letting his gaze travel over her. She was beautiful, full and curved, her skin flushed and warm in the lamplight. The lace of her bra strained over her breasts, and the sight of her in that fine lingerie, her own design, made him groan.
"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, Roisin."
A tear slipped from her eye, trailing down her temple into her hair. "Don't say such things. I'm fifty years old. I have stretch marks and grey hair and wrinkles."
"You have years in your skin and laughter in your eyes," he said, and he meant every word. "And I love every single part of you."
She looked up at him, her blue eyes shining. "Love?"
"Yes. I love you, Roisin."
She broke then, a sob escaping her chest, and she pulled him down against her, holding him tight. "Oh, Javier. I love you too. God forgive me, I love you."
He kissed her again, gentler this time, tasting the salt of her tears. He worked the clasp of her bra with one hand, and she arched up to help him, the lace falling away to reveal her. She was soft and full, her nipples dark and peaked, and he lowered his head to kiss her breasts, first one, then the other, feeling her shiver beneath him.
"Javier," she breathed, her fingers carding through his hair. "Javier, my love, my brave boy."
The name, the same one she had used when tending his wounds after the fight, sent a thrill through him. He kissed down her belly, felt her flinch and then relax, her hands guiding him lower. He worked her skirt down over her hips, then her stockings, then the damp lace beneath, and she was bare to him, open and trembling and utterly beautiful.
"Let me take care of you," he said, and he lowered his head between her thighs.
She gasped and arched up as his mouth found her, her hand flying to the back of his head. She was so wet, slick and warm, and he tasted her slowly, learning her, listening to the small sounds she made, the way her hips rocked against his mouth. He found the rhythm she loved and held it, and her breathing grew ragged, her thighs trembling against his shoulders.
"Oh, God," she moaned. "Javier, oh God, that's, please, don't stop, don't stop."
He didn't stop. He worked her up, feeling her climb, her body tightening against him, and when she came she cried out his name, her hips convulsing, her hands fisted hard in his hair. He held her through it, gentled her down with light kisses on her inner thigh, and when her breathing began to ease, he crawled up her body and gathered her into his arms.
"Was that alright?" he asked, and there was genuine worry in his voice.
She laughed, a wet, shaking sound. "Alright? Javier, I think I left my body for a moment there." She cupped his face in her hands. "I haven't felt like that in, I don't know how long. Look at me, I'm an old woman and you've turned me into a girl again."
"No," he said, stroking her hair back from her forehead. "You're a woman, Roisin. The woman I love. And I want to be inside you."
Her eyes darkened. "Then do it. I want you in me. I've been dreaming about it every night since the first time."
He fumbled with the button of his trousers, and she helped him, her fingers working the zip with a desperate urgency. When he was bare above her, his cock hard and leaking against her belly, she reached down and took him in her hand, stroking him slowly, a look of fierce wonder on her face.
"You're so beautiful," she whispered. "All of you. I want to give you everything, Javier. Everything I have."
She guided him to her entrance, and he eased into her, inch by slow inch, her body opening to him with a slick, perfect heat. She gasped, her eyes fluttering shut, her hands gripping his shoulders.
"God, you're so deep," she breathed. "So deep. Javier, you feel incredible."
He moved slowly at first, letting her adjust, letting the rhythm build between them. But she hooked her legs around his hips and pulled him deeper, a demand in the way she moved, and he answered it. The pace quickened, their bodies finding a rhythm that felt older than words, a language spoken without sound.
"Don't stop," she gasped. "Don't ever stop. I want this forever. I want you forever."
"Roisin," he groaned, burying his face in the curve of her neck. "Roisin, you feel like heaven."
She was crying again, tears streaming down her face, but she was smiling too, a wide, radiant smile that he could feel against his skin. Her hands roamed his back, his shoulders, gripping the muscle there, pulling him down into her.
"Give me everything," she whispered. "Everything you have. I want it all. I want your love and your body and your heart."
He drove into her, faster now, and she met him with equal hunger, her hips rising to meet his, her body moving with a passion that seemed to have no bottom to it. She was generous in everything, he thought, and this too she gave with her whole self, holding nothing back.
"I'm close," she gasped. "Javier, I'm so close, stay with me, stay with me."
"I'm with you," he promised, and he was, wholly, utterly with her, his body moving in perfect time with hers, their breath mingling, their eyes locked.
She came with a broken cry, her body convulsing around him, and the sight of her, the feeling of her, pushed him over the edge. He spilled into her with a groan, his forehead pressed to hers, his whole body shuddering with the force of it.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The only sound was their breathing, ragged and slowing, and the soft crackle of the fire downstairs. And then Roisin began to sob, deep, helpless sobs that shook her whole body.
Javier lifted himself on his elbows, panic rising. "Roisin, what's wrong? Did I hurt you?"
"No," she managed, shaking her head, tears streaming. "No, you didn't hurt me. That's the problem, you fool. You made me so happy. So happy I feel like my heart is going to burst out of my chest."
He gathered her into his arms, holding her tight, feeling her cry against his chest. "Roisin, love, please don't cry. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
"I know," she wept. "That's the terrible, beautiful thing. I know you're not. And I don't know what I did to deserve you, but I thank God for you every single day." She pulled back to look at him, her face wet and blotched and utterly beautiful. "I'm crying because I'm happy, Javier. Because I love you so much it hurts. I love you as if you were my own flesh and blood, and I love you as a woman loves a man, and I don't know how to hold all of it inside me."
He kissed her forehead, her wet cheeks, her lips. "Then let it out. Let me hold it with you."
She laughed through her tears and pulled him down against her, wrapping her arms around him, her legs tangling with his. They lay there in the lamplight, the warmth of the room settling over them, and for a long time there was no sound but her slowing breathing and the steady beat of his heart against hers.
Eventually, she stirred, her voice quiet and sleepy. "I should go back before Seamus wakes. It's the middle of the night."
"Stay a little longer," he said, stroking her hair. "Just a few minutes more."
"A few minutes more," she agreed, and she pressed her lips to his chest, a small kiss over his heart. "My brave boy. My love."
The fire downstairs had burned to embers by the time she finally rose, slipping back into her clothes with a series of soft, rustling sounds in the dark. He watched her, the silhouette of her body against the faint glow from the window, and felt a tenderness so vast it almost hurt.
At the door she paused, looking back at him. "No regrets? Not even a small one?"
"Not one," he said, and he meant it.
She smiled, then, a smile so full of joy it lit up her whole face. "Good. Because I haven't got any either." She blew him a kiss. "Sleep well, my love."
And she left, the door closing softly behind her, her footsteps fading down the landing. Javier lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, his body still humming from her touch. He knew the complication of it all would come back with the morning light. He knew there would be guilt, and fear, and the exhausting work of pretending. But for now, in the lingering warmth of her body on his sheets, he was happy. For now, he was loved. And that would have to be enough.
He lay there for a long time after she left, staring at the ceiling, the ghost of her warmth still pressed into the sheets beside him. The house was silent except for the occasional creak of old timber and the distant hum of the city outside. Sleep came slowly, and when it did, it was thin and restless, filled with fragments of dreams he could not hold onto.
Morning arrived grey and soft, the light through his curtains the colour of pewter. He showered, dressed, and went downstairs to find Seamus already gone and Roisin standing at the stove in a pale blue dressing gown, a mug of tea in one hand. She turned when she heard him, and for a moment they simply looked at each other. There was a tenderness in her eyes, and a flicker of fear too, the knowledge of what they carried.
"Morning, love," she said quietly, and the word was soft, intimate, meant only for him.
"Morning."
"Seamus left early. There's porridge on the hob if you want it."
He crossed the kitchen and took her free hand, squeezing it gently. "Thank you. For last night. For everything."
Her eyes shimmered. "Thank you for staying."
He wanted to stay, to spend the whole day with her, but there was a weight on him that had nothing to do with Roisin. It had been growing for days, the knowledge of what he owed Molly, the dishonesty he was living. He could feel it in his chest like a stone.
He ate the porridge quickly, barely tasting it. Roisin watched him from the table, her mug cradled in both hands, and she seemed to sense the shift in him.
"Javier? What is it?"
He set down his spoon. "I need to go and see Molly today."
Roisin's face flickered, a subtle tightening around her mouth. "Oh."
"Not for the reasons you think. I need to, I need to talk to her. About us. About this." He gestured vaguely between them.
Her hands stilled on the mug. "What are you going to tell her?"
"The truth. Not about you. I can't tell her that, not yet, not like that. But I can't keep pretending with her either. She deserves better than someone who's half elsewhere. She deserves the whole of a man, and I can't give her that. Not anymore."
Roisin was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded slowly, her eyes bright. "She's a lovely girl, Javier. She doesn't deserve to be hurt."
"I know."
"Doesn't make it easier to do the right thing, does it?"
"No."
She stood and came to him, resting her hand on his cheek. "You're a good man. It takes a kind of courage to end something that's not right instead of letting it rot. I'm proud of you."
He pressed his forehead to hers for a moment, breathing her in. "I'll see you tonight."
"I'll be here."
He took his jacket from the hook by the door and went out into the grey morning. The walk to Molly's flat was twenty minutes through the back streets of Dublin, past the canal and the row of red brick houses with their neat front gardens. The air was damp and cold, and he turned his collar up against it.
He knocked on Molly's door at half past ten. She opened it in a pair of soft grey joggers and an oversized university hoodie, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, a wide smile breaking across her face.
"Javier! I wasn't expecting you. I thought you'd be studying. Come in, come in, I just put the kettle on."
She stepped back to let him in, and he followed her into her small, bright kitchen. The flat smelled of coffee and laundry detergent, and there were plants on the windowsill, a pile of textbooks on the counter, a half-eaten bowl of cereal in the sink. It was a life, a real life, warm and uncomplicated, and he felt the weight of what he was about to do press down on him.
"You look serious," she said, turning from the kettle. "Everything alright?"
"Molly, I need to talk to you about something."
The smile faded from her face. She studied him, her brow furrowing. "Okay. Sure. Sit down."
She brought the kettle to the little table and sat across from him, pulling her knees up onto the chair, wrapping her arms around them. There was something guarded in her posture now, a slight wariness in her eyes.
"What's going on, Javier?"
He looked at her, at her kind face and her wide, trusting eyes, and for a moment he almost couldn't do it. But he thought of Roisin, and of the secret living inside him, and of how it would poison everything if he let it go on. He took a breath.
"Molly, I think we need to end things."
The words hung in the air between them. She blinked, as if she had misheard. "What?"
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But I can't keep doing this."
Her face went pale. "What do you mean? Javier, what are you talking about? We've been fine. We had a wonderful weekend. We, I thought we were good."
"You are. You're wonderful. It's me. It's not you, it's, I can't explain it properly, but I'm not in the right place for this. For us."
"Not in the right place." She repeated the words slowly, as if tasting them. "Javier, that's, you were the one who asked me out. You were the one who came to my flat and cooked with me and stayed the weekend. And now you're saying you're not in the right place?"
"Molly, I know. I know it doesn't make sense. I know I've given you every reason to think this was going somewhere. And I should have been honest sooner. I owe you that, and I'm sorry."
Her eyes were filling with tears now, and she wiped at them angrily with the back of her hand. "Is there someone else? Is that what this is? Because I'd rather you just told me the truth."
The question hit him like a punch to the gut. He couldn't lie, not directly, but he couldn't tell her the truth either, not the whole of it. Not yet. "No one you need to worry about," he said, and even to his own ears it sounded hollow.
"That's not an answer, Javier."
"Molly, please. I'm trying to do this as kindly as I can."
"Kindly?" She laughed, a sharp, hurt sound. "You come to my flat on a Saturday morning to tell me you're ending things, and you're trying to be kind? There's no kind way to do this, Javier. There just isn't."
She stood up, her hands shaking, and turned her back to him. He watched her shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. The kettle clicked off, and neither of them moved to pour the tea.
"I don't understand," she said to the window. "I thought, I really thought you were different. I thought we had something real."
"We did. We do. That's what makes this so hard."
"Then why?" She turned back to face him, and her face was wet, a mess of tears and blotchy red skin. "Help me understand, Javier. Why are you doing this?"
He stood up, crossed to her, and took her hands in his. She let him, her fingers limp and cold, and that was somehow worse than if she had pulled away.
"Because I'm not the man you deserve," he said, his voice raw. "I'm not whole. There's something in me I can't give you, and it wouldn't be fair to keep taking what you offer when I can't give it back in full. You deserve someone who can love you completely, without reservation, without, without anything held back."
"And you can't love me completely?"
"I can't love you the way you need to be loved. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Molly."
She pulled her hands free and wrapped her arms around herself, a small, defensive gesture that made him ache. "I don't know what to say."
"You don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to hear it from me, not through a text or a phone call. You deserved that much."
"Such a gentleman," she said bitterly. "My mum always said the nice ones are the worst to fall for."
He said nothing. There was nothing he could say that would soften it.
She wiped her face. "Was any of it real? The weekend, the cooking, the, the sex. Did you mean any of it, or was I just, I don't know, a warm body?"
"It was real. Every minute of it was real. You're an incredible woman, Molly, and I don't regret any of it. But it wasn't, it wasn't leading where I thought it was. And I couldn't let it go any further."
"Where were you leading it? Because I thought, I genuinely thought, we were heading somewhere."
He closed his eyes. "I thought so too. And I'm sorry that I led you to believe that."
She was crying openly now, her shoulders shaking, and she let him come to her, let him wrap his arms around her. She cried into his chest, her fists bunched in his sweater, and he held her, feeling her grief come through him like a wave. He could smell her shampoo, something fruity and young, and he hated himself for the thought that it didn't smell like Roisin's perfume.
After a while, she pulled back, sniffing hard. "I think you should go."
"I'm sorry, Molly."
"Go," she said again, her voice cracking. "Just go."
He turned and walked to the door. He had his hand on the handle when her voice stopped him.
"Javier?"
He looked back. She was standing in the middle of her kitchen, small and broken, a paper towel pressed to her face.
"I really did love you. I don't know if it was love yet, but it was heading there. And I hope, I hope whatever it is you're protecting yourself from is worth it. Because I would have given you everything."
He couldn't answer. He opened the door and stepped out into the grey morning, and the closing of the door behind him sounded louder than it should have.
He walked for a long time, aimless, through streets he didn't know, past a schoolyard and a row of shops and a church with its doors open and the smell of incense drifting out. Tears pricked at his own eyes, and he wiped them away angrily. Molly didn't deserve this. She had been nothing but kind to him, generous and warm and open, and he had used her warmth to shield himself from his own confusion. The guilt sat in his stomach like a stone.
He bought a coffee from a corner shop and stood outside, watching the traffic pass, the damp air settling on his shoulders. His phone buzzed. A text from Roisin.
Are you alright, love?
He stared at the screen for a long moment. He was not alright. He had just broken a good woman's heart because he was in love with his landlady, a married woman twice his age, and the whole thing was a mess he could see no clean way out of. But even as the guilt weighed on him, he felt a strange, guilty lightness too. A weight had been lifted. He was no longer lying to Molly, no longer pretending to be one thing while feeling another.
He typed back: I'm okay. It's done. I'll be home soon.
Her reply came almost instantly: Hurry home.
He drank his coffee, threw the cup in a bin, and walked back through the grey streets toward the O'Sullivan house. The rain was starting now, a fine mist that clung to his jacket and hair. By the time he reached the front door, he was soaked through.
Roisin was in the hallway as he came in, as if she had been waiting there. She took one look at his face and crossed to him, wrapping her arms around him without a word. He buried his face in her hair, held her tight, and for a moment let himself simply breathe.
"I did it," he said against her neck. "It's over. I ended it."
"I know, love. I know." She stroked his wet hair. "Come in. Come sit down, you're soaked through."
She took his jacket and hung it over the radiator, then led him into the sitting room and sat him on the sofa. She knelt before him and took his cold hands in hers.
"How was she?"
"Devastated. She cried. She asked if there was someone else."
Roisin's grip tightened. "What did you tell her?"
"I told her there was no one she needed to worry about. It was a lie, and I think she knew it was, but I couldn't tell her the truth. Not about you. Not yet."
Roisin's eyes were bright. "Javier, I'm so sorry. I know that couldn't have been easy."
"It wasn't. But it was the right thing to do. I couldn't keep lying to her."
She reached up and cupped his face. "And us? Is this what you want? Still?"
He looked into her blue eyes, the eyes he had dreamed about for weeks, and he knew the answer with a certainty that surprised him. "You are what I want. I've known it for a while. I was just too afraid to admit it."
A tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it away with a small, trembling laugh. "I'm fifty years old. I've been married for thirty years. I have a business and a garden and a husband who loves me. And you, you're a young man with his whole life ahead of him. What are we doing, Javier?"
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But I know I can't stop. I know I don't want to."
She kissed him then, a soft, wondering kiss, as if she were still surprised that he was real, that this was real. He tasted the salt of her tears on her lips, and he kissed her deeper, pulling her up onto the sofa beside him.
They lay together in the grey afternoon light, her head on his chest, his arm around her, the rain drumming softly against the windows. She was warm and soft against him, her perfume filling his senses, and he felt a deep, settling peace that he had not felt in a long time.
"I want to give you everything," she murmured against his shirt. "Everything I have. Everything I am."
"You already have," he said. "You have all of me."
She lifted her head to look at him, and her eyes held something he couldn't quite name. A kind of fierce tenderness, a devotion that went deeper than words.
"Then let me show you," she said, and she reached up and unbuttoned his shirt, pressing her lips to the skin above his heart.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a haze of touch and warmth. She undressed him slowly, kissing each part of him as she revealed it, and then he undressed her with the same reverence. In the grey light of the sitting room, with the rain falling outside, they made love again, slower this time, deeper, each movement a promise. She wept again, not from grief but from the sheer force of what she felt, and when he moved inside her, she looked up at him with a wonder that made his chest ache.
"You're everything," she breathed. "Everything I never knew I needed. I love you, Javier. I love you like my own son and I love you like a woman loves her man, and I don't know how to reconcile those things, but I know they're both true."
"I love you too, Roisin. Everything about you. Every single thing."
When the light outside had begun to fade and the house had grown dim, they lay tangled on the sofa, the blanket from the back of it pulled over them. Her head was on his chest again, and he could feel the steady beat of her heart against his ribs.
"What happens now?" she asked quietly.
"I don't know," he admitted. "But we'll figure it out. Together."
She pressed her lips to his chest. "Together."
They stayed like that until the sound of Seamus's van pulling into the drive broke the spell. Roisin sat up with a start, her eyes wide, and they scrambled to dress, straightening clothes and smoothing hair. By the time Seamus's key turned in the lock, she was standing by the window, looking out at the garden, and he was on the sofa with a textbook open on his knee.
"Evening," Seamus called as he came in, shrugging off his coat. "Christ, it's filthy out there. You'd think it was December not March." He looked at them, his broad face breaking into a smile. "You two look like you've been at it all day. D'you get much studying done, Javier?"
"Some," Javier said, and the word came out slightly rougher than he intended.
Roisin turned from the window, and her smile was bright, composed, the perfect mask of the woman who had greeted him on his first day. "I was just about to put the kettle on. Sit down, Seamus, you look done in."
Seamus dropped into his armchair with a satisfied groan. "Now then, what's for dinner? I'm starving."
Roisin's eyes met Javier's across the room, and in them he saw the promise of tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days they would steal from the grey world around them. "Shepherd's pie," she said. "Your favourite."
The evening passed in its familiar rhythm, dinner and talk and the fire burning low. Seamus told them about his day, about a problem with the foundation and a supplier who had let him down, and Javier listened and nodded and made the right noises, while across the table Roisin's foot found his under the table and rested against his. It was a small touch, invisible, but it said everything.
That night, after Seamus had gone up to bed and the house had fallen quiet, she came to his room again. She slipped through his door like a ghost, and when he turned from the window she was there, her dressing gown tied loosely, her hair down around her shoulders.
"I couldn't sleep," she whispered.
He crossed to her and took her in his arms. "Neither could I."
She looked up at him, and in the dim light her eyes were bright with something that might have been joy or fear, or both. "I keep waiting to wake up from this. To find out it's another dream."
"It's not a dream," he said, and he kissed her.
They made love again, slower and more tender than the first time, and when she cried out against his shoulder, it was with the sound of a woman who had been given something she had never dared to hope for. Afterwards, she lay in his arms, her face wet, her hand pressed flat against his chest as if she could feel his heartbeat through his skin.
"I'm going to give you everything," she said, her voice raw. "Everything I have in me. I don't know how long this can last, or where it can go, but while it does, I'm going to give you everything I've got."
He kissed her hair. "That's all I need."
They lay together in the dark, the rain still falling outside, and for a while the world was small and safe and theirs alone. The complications would return with the morning, he knew. Seamus would be at the breakfast table, and Molly would be grieving somewhere across the city, and the secret would press against them from all sides. But for now, in the quiet dark of his room, with her warm and soft against him, he let himself believe that love was enough.
It had to be. He had nothing else left to give.