Keep Me (Sinful Manor #1)

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Four

Killian is still sprawled out naked on the bed when I come out of the shower.

“Ready for round two?” he remarks with a wink.

Keeping my towel around my waist, I climb onto the high bed and curl up beside him. “You’ll be the death of me.”

“I don’t have to be rough this time,” he says, gently petting my hip. Then he starts to crawl down my body, shimmying between my legs. “I can be very, very gentle.”

With a smile, I run my fingers through his hair. But instead of going where I thought this would lead, he pauses and rests his chin on my lower belly. “Do you want kids someday?”

My eyes nearly pop out of my head. “Kids?”

He chuckles, making his chin bounce on my groin. “I keep forgetting how much younger you are.”

“Young or not, it’s a little early to start talking about kids. We’re still fake married, remember?”

He growls at me for saying that, but at this point, I just say it to piss him off.

“We’re legally married. And I’m not saying we should have them right now ,” he argues. “I’m just asking if you want them.”

“Do you?” I run my nails through his hair again, softly scratching his scalp.

He shrugs. “I picture your belly growing big with my child, and it just does something to me. I never thought like that before.”

I can’t help the way that makes me feel too. My stomach actually warms as if it can feel it too. My own little piece of Killian growing inside. Creating someone that is truly ours . Forming our own family that makes up for all of the shit our own have done to us. We would be so much better than them.

“Is that smile a yes?” he asks, looking so hopeful it crushes me.

How could I take anything away from him, especially something that is so perfect and wonderful?

“Yeah…someday,” I reply.

“I can already imagine them scampering around the manor, playing out in the garden, and going with us for rides around the grounds.”

And just like that, the good feeling spoils and dies. He still thinks he gets to keep the house after our year.

“Or…” I say, testing the subject. “We could buy our own new house somewhere different. Someplace that’s all ours.”

His head slants. “The house is ours,” he argues. “It will be ours and then our children’s. I want it to be their home the same way it was mine. Do you not like it at Barclay?”

I swallow the rising dread. “Of course I do,” I reply quickly to cover up the gaping wound this conversation is creating.

“Good, then we’ll need to make lots of babies to fill it,” he replies, peeling apart my towel to place a kiss just below my belly button. I let out a squeal as I wrap my legs around him.

“I didn’t say anything about lots ,” I whine, but he’s already trailing kisses down to my clit, quieting my mind and replacing my thoughts of worry with the sensation of pleasure.

***

I wake in the middle of the night to the sound of groans. On the other side of the bed, Killian sounds as if he’s having a nightmare. This is the first time it’s happened, so I carefully turn toward him and rest a hand on his shoulder, hoping to ease him out of the dream.

His skin is soaked with sweat and covered in goose bumps, so I cover him with the blanket, hoping that will help.

Within a few minutes, the groaning stops, and he falls back to sleep.

So I wrap my small arms around his waist and try to hold him tight enough to keep it from happening again. It takes me a bit longer to nod back off. Worry follows me into my dreams.

When I wake up again, it’s still dark. But the other side of the bed is empty.

I sit up in a panic, looking through the darkness of the unfamiliar room for him. Then I hear thrashing downstairs.

In a rush, I dive out of the bed and snatch a robe off the hook, wrapping it around me as I scurry down the stairs. “Killian?” I call for him.

When I reach the main floor of the house, I hear heavy breathing from the dining room, and I burst through the doors to find the chairs all tipped over and a bottle of whisky resting unopened on the carpet.

It takes my eyes a moment to adjust before I spot Killian sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, much like that first night ten months ago.

Please, don’t let there be any blood this time .

I rush to his side, placing my hands on his shoulders to find him clammy and cold. His head is in his hands, and he’s breathing like he can’t take in enough air.

He’s having a panic attack.

My voice shakes with fear as I call his name. “Killian, breathe. It’s okay. I’m right here.”

“I can’t,” he gasps. “I can’t do this.”

“It’s okay,” I repeat. Again and again, I stroke his back and tell him it’s okay, and I don’t know if it’s enough.

“I can’t, Sylv—I can’t…do this,” he stutters. Struggling with his words, he suddenly snaps, shoving the table hard until it flips on its side. His arms are shaking so bad as he buries his face in his hands again and wheezes through his tears.

“It’s okay,” I whisper, afraid to upset him again. This fear is paralyzing. What am I going to do if I can’t get him to calm down?

“I’m going to call an ambulance,” I cry, about to run for my phone.

He nearly screams. “No! No…no, no, no.” His head shakes emphatically, and I kneel closer to his side.

“Okay,” I say, trying to calm his fears. “I just need you to be okay, Killian, so please breathe.”

“I’m trying,” he replies, but this time, his voice cracks into a sob, and he starts to really lose it.

In my head, I just know that if Killian loses it, then I’m lost. He holds us together. He’s our strength, our force, the thing that keeps us together. Without him, I have nothing.

I hold his face in my hands, tears spilling over my lashes as I press my forehead to his. “We can do this,” I cry. “I just need you to breathe.”

He tries to suck in air, but his breaths are too shallow and don’t pull in anything. It’s all just short gasps and choppy inhalations.

“Hold on to me, Killian. Please hold on to me. I’ve got you, okay? Just breathe.”

His grip is weak and trembling as he attempts to hold tight to my arm. And for the next thirty minutes, we struggle for each breath. Each inhale is a chore, and I keep second-guessing myself, afraid that I’ve royally fucked up by not calling an ambulance, but he refused even to let me leave his side.

The only thing I have to offer is my comfort, and it’s not enough. He struggles in pain, and it tears me apart to watch.

By the time I see the sunrise start to bleed into the sky out the window, he is finally through it.

He’s practically deadweight, collapsed on top of me as if he doesn’t have the energy even to raise a hand to my face.

“Let’s get back to bed,” I whisper when I feel certain the worst of it is past us.

He nods with exhaustion and lets me pull him off the floor. We stumble together up the stairs, and when we reach the room, I wipe his face clean with a warm rag and kiss his eyes as he finally drifts off to sleep.

But I don’t go to sleep. I sit next to him and replay over and over and over what a terrible wife and person I am. I’ve dragged him out here before he was ready just because I wanted to believe he could do it. I wanted to believe that he was capable of something, and for that, I could have seriously hurt him.

I did hurt him.

I can’t stop crying as I rest my face on my knees and stare at him, realizing just how much I love him. The thought of putting him through that again guts me to my core. Right now, the only thing I want to do is take him home and curl up with him in our bed.

But I know deep down what this means.

First, it means that Killian needs help far beyond a weekend away and a wife who can love the pain out of him.

Second, it means that my dream of creating a life with Killian, safe from that awful contract, no longer exists.

I cannot and will not take that house from him. Not until he’s healed and ready to do that himself.

While Killian sleeps, I hatch my plan. And I worry about him, about us, and about me if this somehow doesn’t work. Because now that I’ve come here and flipped my whole life around, I no longer care to know what my life could be like without him. I don’t want that.

I want him. I want this life that I borrowed.

After picking up the mess in the dining room, I come back upstairs to find Killian lying in bed with his eyes open. I stop in the doorway and stare at him, waiting to see how he’s feeling.

“I want to go home,” he mutters lowly without looking at me.

“Of course,” I reply, my lip quivering as I try to hide the fact that I’m barely holding it together.

Carefully, I cross the room and climb into the bed to face him. When my head hits the pillow, his eyes meet mine. The restraint I was carrying until this moment is gone.

My face crumples, and my tears fall. “I’m so sorry,” I sob.

He reaches for me, dragging me against his body as he tries to quiet my cries. “Stop, Sylvie. You don’t need to apologize. I just wasn’t ready.”

“I knew you weren’t ready,” I cry. “I knew it, and I tried to push you anyway. I thought you could handle it.”

“Shhh…” he whispers with his lips in my hair. “You had no idea, mo ghràidh.”

“Have you ever had that before?” I whisper, carefully wiping my tears as I pull away to stare into his eyes.

I see the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallows the heavy weight of emotion in his throat. “After my parents died, yes.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper again.

He touches my cheek, but his face doesn’t have the same animation it had yesterday. It’s dull and tired, and I cry again at the memory of his smile on the beach.

“It’s okay.”

It’s not okay , I think to myself. None of this is okay. Nothing his family is doing or what I’ve done is okay, but he’s toughing it out. He’s surviving the only way he knows how.

I just wish I could help him more, but I can’t if I don’t understand.

So very gently, I brush back the hair in his face. “What happened…to bring them on?”

He looks uncomfortable as he swallows again. “My parents were always really hard on me. My father was a very strict man, and he had so many expectations for me and the kind of man I was supposed to be. I always did as I was told, and I always made him proud.”

“That sounds like a lot of pressure,” I whisper, touching his hand.

He nods. “On the night of the car wreck, I was leaving the house to pick up Anna from my aunt’s house. My parents had been out at a party. It was dark, and the roads were slick. I remember seeing their headlights and briefly wondering if that was them. They swerved toward me so fast there was nothing I could do. We collided, and they both died on impact.”

I let out a gasp, gripping his arm tighter as tears pour over my lashes. “Oh my God , Killian.”

“I found them. I didn’t have a phone on me. I had to wait with them, with a concussion, until a car drove down that long empty road and found us.”

I squeeze my eyes closed and let the sobs rack through me.

“That wasn’t your fault. You have to know that,” I reply through my cries. “Please, Killian. Tell me you know that.”

His eyes are wet with dark circles around them. He looks so tired and in pain. But he does eventually nod. “I know it’s not. It was an accident. My father had a lot of alcohol in his system, and the swerve marks were still on the road, but it didn’t stop my family from treating me differently. As if I could have saved them. As if I wouldn’t have given my own life just to see that night end any other way.”

I squeeze him tighter. “Don’t say that. They died, and that was terrible, but it wasn’t your fault, Killian. And you didn’t deserve to live your entire life with that sort of pain.”

Then, his eyes focus on my face for a moment. “I thought for a while I was really getting over it. I thought I could finally move on. Having you has helped, Sylvie.”

“We can get you even more help,” I reply, nestling closer. “Whatever you need, we can do this together.”

With one more brave swallow and nod of his head, he pulls me into his arms.

For a while, I convince myself this could work.

Deep down, I know that nothing else matters. Not really. Not the contract or the money or even the house. Eventually, everything around us will cease to exist, and while I’ve spent my entire life numbing the pain of being agonizingly unloved, as I hold Killian in my arms now, I realize something more profound.

The world outside this room is cosmic and too massive to comprehend.

But the world that exists between him and me is more so. The love we share is infinite.