Chapter 5: The Morning After
Three days. Seventy-two hours of silence that screamed in Sloane’s ears louder than any subway train. She’d tried to paint, but the colors turned to mud on the canvas. She’d tried to sleep, but the memory of the cold wall against her cheek and the heat of him at her back played on a relentless loop. She was scrubbing a brush clean for the third time when the knock came.
It wasn’t a friendly tap. It was heavy, hesitant.
She knew, with a cold certainty that settled in her bones, who it was. Wiping her hands on a paint-stained rag, she walked to the door and looked through the peephole.
Kieran stood in the hallway of her walk-up, soaked through. Rain plastered his dark hair to his forehead and dripped from the end of his nose. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just a thin, dark t-shirt that clung to every line of his torso, the tattoos beneath the fabric looking blurred and ghostly. He was shivering, but his eyes, fixed on her door, were utterly sober and full of a devastation that made her breath catch.
She unlocked the door and pulled it open.
The silence between them was a physical thing, thick and charged. He just looked at her, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
“You’re letting in the rain,” she finally said, her voice quieter than she intended.
He blinked, water dripping from his lashes. “I… I didn’t know where else to go.”
She stepped back, a silent invitation. He moved past her into the small studio, water pooling around his boots on the floorboards. He looked out of place, a storm-drenched giant amidst her easels and half-finished canvases. He stared at a painting she’d been working on—a chaotic swirl of red and black that perfectly captured her mood—and flinched.
“Sloane,” he began, his voice rough, as if dragged over gravel. He didn’t turn to look at her. “What I did… at the bar. There’s no excuse for it. I was drunk and I was… I was trying to scare you away.”
“It worked,” she said flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. “For about forty-eight hours.”
A shudder ran through him. “I’m not that person. I don’t… I don’t do that.”
“You did.”
He finally turned, his green eyes stark in his pale face. “I know. And I am so, so sorry. It was a violation. Of you. Of whatever this is.” He gestured weakly between them. “You should have slammed the door in my face.”
She studied him—the genuine tremor in his hands, the raw honesty in his gaze. This wasn’t the performative brooder or the drunken brute. This was someone else, someone stripped bare. “Why didn’t I?”
“I don’t know.” The words were a whisper.
“Yes, you do,” she countered, taking a step closer. The scent of rain and cold night air clung to him. “You’re here because you knew I wouldn’t. And I didn’t because…” She trailed off, searching for the truth. “Because the part that was angry was real. The part that was messy was real. I’d rather have that than the polished barkeep who acts like I’m a stranger the next morning.”
He let out a breath, a broken sound. “It’s all a defense. The charm, the silence, the… the anger. It’s easier than this.” He gestured at himself, at the vulnerability laid plain between them.
“Than what?”
“Than feeling like this.” He closed the small distance between them, his hand rising slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. When she didn’t, his fingertips, cold and damp, brushed a stray strand of hair from her cheek. His touch was unbearably gentle, a stark contrast to the memory of his hand on her throat. “You scare the hell out of me, Sloane Hayes.”
Her breath hitched. “The feeling is mutual.”
He leaned in, his forehead coming to rest against hers. It was a gesture of pure exhaustion, of surrender. They stood like that for a long moment, breathing each other’s air, the only sound the drip of his clothes onto her floor and the distant hum of the city.
“Come on,” she murmured, taking his hand. “You’re freezing.”
She led him out of her apartment, down the single flight of stairs, and into the back entrance of the speakeasy. It was dark and closed, the chairs upturned on the tables. They didn’t stop, moving through the silence and up the private staircase to his loft.
The air in his space was different. It was warm, smelled of old paper and clean linen, with the faint, ever-present undercurrent of whiskey from below. A single lamp cast a soft, golden glow across the worn rug and the shelves of books. The large window was a canvas of city lights blurred by the continuing rain.
He stood in the middle of the room, looking lost. She reached for the hem of his wet shirt. “Lift your arms.”
He complied without a word. She pulled the soaked fabric over his head and dropped it with a wet slap on the floor. His torso was a map of ink in the dim light—the dragon, the script, the patterns she’d only felt in the dark. She could see the rapid beat of his heart against his ribs.
She fetched a towel from his bathroom and returned, beginning to dry his hair, his shoulders, with a slow, methodical patience. He stood perfectly still, his eyes closed, his hands hanging limp at his sides. She worked her way down his arms, over the intricate tattoos on his forearms, tracing the lines with the towel as she dried them.
When she was done, she simply placed her palms flat on his chest. His skin was cool, but warming rapidly. He covered her hands with his, his grip firm, anchoring.
“Talk to me, Kieran,” she whispered.
He led her to the worn couch by the window. He didn’t pull her onto his lap, didn’t try to kiss her. He just sat, holding both her hands in his, staring at their joined fingers.
“The mural,” he started, his voice low. “The one in the bar. I painted it the year I opened this place. It was supposed to be a fresh start. Bury the old things, the old me. But you were right. It’s a cage. I just locked all that shit inside and hung it on the wall for everyone to see, thinking no one would ever really look.”
“I looked,” she said.
“I know.” He finally met her eyes. “You see things. You see me. And when I’m with you, I can’t… I can’t hide behind the ink and the whiskey. It all just falls away, and it’s terrifying.”
He brought one of her hands to his lips and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her knuckles. It was an apology. A plea. A beginning.
This time, when they came together, it was nothing like the bar. It was slow, deliberate, a silent conversation of hands and mouths. He undressed her with a reverence that made her throat tight, his fingers tracing the curve of her hip, the line of her collarbone, as if committing her to memory. He kissed the freckles on her shoulders, the sensitive spot behind her ear, the pulse at her wrist.
When he laid her back on the couch, it was with a question in his eyes. She answered by pulling him down to her.
It was a devastating exploration. A careful, painstaking unraveling of every wall they had each built. There was no frenzy, only a deep, aching need to connect, to understand. He moved inside her with a slow, rolling rhythm that felt less like taking and more like coming home. His eyes never left hers, the green dark and endless, reflecting the city lights and something else, something raw and unguarded.
Afterward, they lay tangled in the lamplight, her head on his chest, listening to the steady, strong beat of his heart. The rain had softened to a gentle patter against the glass.
His fingers traced idle patterns on her bare back. “The sketch,” he said into the quiet. “The one I tore up. It’s of you.”
She lifted her head to look at him. “Why did you tear it?”
“Because it was the best thing I’d drawn in years,” he admitted, a wry, honest twist to his mouth. “And that scared me most of all.”
Sloane smiled, a real, unguarded smile that felt strange on her face. She settled back against him, her hand splaying over the dragon on his chest. She felt his breath hitch, then settle. For the first time, the silence between them wasn’t loud. It was peaceful. It was a promise. And she knew, with a certainty that dwarfed the fear, that this was far more dangerous than any fight against a wall.