I had to stay awake until I could trace the feeling of Declan’s arms around me in my head. I had to stay awake until I could recall from memory exactly the way his fingers looked intertwined with mine on the pillow in the soft moonlight. Until I could memorize the rhythm of his gentle, peaceful breathing against the nape of my neck, until I could count precisely how many hairs along my arms each exhale raised, etched into my mind so I wouldn’t forget how his body next to mine made me feel each night—safe.

  Until then I was determined not to sleep, because I wasn’t sure how many more nights I would have. I knew it wasn’t much. But I hadn’t known that tonight would be the last.

  Declan mumbled something in his sleep and stirred slightly against me as I stretched a hand to silence my cell phone. I could have had a few more hours of blissful pretending if I hadn’t happened to glance at the screen.

  Miley: The media found out.

  My blood ran cold as I frantically read and reread her words, hoping, praying, begging that I somehow got something wrong in my tiredness. But there they were: undeniable in black and white.

  I wanted to throw my cell phone across the room. I wanted it to shatter against the wall. I wanted it to fall onto the floor in a million pieces I could never manage to fit back together.

  But I had to look. I had to see. I had to know.

  My fingers trembled in the harsh blue glare of the screen. I typed my name into the search bar, my thumb hesitating over the “Enter” button. I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on Declan’s strong arms around me one last time. Everything was about to change.

  But for that one moment, he was still mine. I could still believe we had a future of morning hikes through sun-filled mist and evenings beneath the cherry trees with nothing but a bottle of wine between us. I could still imagine, for just that moment, that this impossibility could still be possible.

  I opened my eyes and pressed “Enter” and the world was again righted: up was again up, down was again down, and the impossible was again as it always was, as it always would be...impossible.

  The media found out.

  The past I tried so hard to run from stared me straight in the face. I could look away from the screen. I could look out the window at the tops of the softly swaying trees. I could even turn around and look at Declan’s sleeping face. But all I would see, no matter where I turned, was those headlines flashing brighter, brighter, brighter.

  The Dark Truth About Gallagher’s Bright Light

  The Delta of Gallagher’s River Isn’t So Pure After All

  We Know All the Dirty Secrets of Gallagher’s New Fuck Buddy and They’re Juicy!

  I scrolled through the articles, one after the next, even though it was nothing I didn’t already know. It was my story, after all: Orphaned at a young age, River always found a way to get herself in trouble. At the age of sixteen, she ran away from her orphanage and did whatever it took to earn a buck, bouncing from city to city. No attachments, no strings, no commitment. No family, no education, no money. A nobody. An absolute nobody.

  “River?”

  Behind me I felt Declan shift. I quickly wiped the gathering tears from my eyes as I heard him push himself up onto his elbow, his hand rubbing up and down my arm.

  “River, baby, what is it?” he whispered. “Why are you awake?”

  I turned over my cell phone onto the pillow, plunging us back into darkness to hide my face. Even the moon, knowing like I did that it was finally the end, had moved on from us, replaced by dark, heavy clouds in the night sky.

  “Nothing,” I answered, keeping my voice soft to hide the tightness swelling in my throat. “I was just checking the time. You can go back to sleep.”

  Sensing Declan’s eyes searching my face in the dim light, I kept perfectly still so the tears at the tips of my eyelashes like dewdrops on blades of grass would not fall onto my cheek. I would leave in the morning, when it was easier, when I didn’t have to face him. I just had to get through these next few moments.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked, his thumb tracing comforting circles on the back of my hand.

  “Of course.”

  Declan hesitated a few moments longer, but then he whispered “okay” and rested his head back on the pillow.

  I made it. That was it. I made it. He was going back to sleep now. I resisted the urge to sigh in relief as the tears came hot and fast and most importantly, silently. I let them fall.

  I was intending to let them fall till morning when I would leave only a wet pillow behind me, but suddenly Declan pushed himself up behind me.

  “Nope,” he said, his voice loud in the silence. “Nope, I’m not going to make it easy. If you want to push me away, I’m going to make it hell on you. That’s a promise, River.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Declan, please, everything’s fi—”

  “Don’t say fine,” he interrupted. “Something is wrong. Something’s been wrong since our dinner on the terrace.”

  “Everything’s fine,” I insisted. It was all I could say, all I knew how to say.

  Declan tried to pull me over to look at him, but I resisted his touch. “River, please,” he begged. “Why are you pushing me away?”

  “I’m not!” I cried. “Let’s just go back to sleep.” I couldn’t look into his eyes and say goodbye. I just couldn’t. Not even in the dark.

  “River, you’re worth holding onto,” Declan said. “I won’t let you push me away. You’re worth holding onto with everything I have and mo—”

  “I’m not!” I shouted, sitting up, yanking my phone screen up, illumining the tension between us with blue light.

  Declan stared in surprise at my tear-stained cheeks as I grabbed his hand and slammed my phone into his palm. “I’m not,” I said.

  Weariness crashed down on my shoulders like a boulder as Declan lowered his eyes to my screen. I wanted to sleep. I just wanted to close my eyes and dream of a world where Declan wasn’t realising what he should have realised from the very start.

  “I don’t deserve you,” I whispered. “Everyone knows it. The media knows it. Seamus knows it. I know it. It’s about time you know it as well.”

  Declan was silent as his thumb moved over the screen, over my secrets laid bare for the world to pore over.

  “You deserve someone like Giselle,” I said, remembering what Seamus told me on the terrace. “I was just a distraction.”

  Still Declan said nothing.

  “Someone from your world,” I continued. “Someone from the world of the rich, the world of the famous, the world of the successful. Not someone from the gutters.” I sighed and bit back the tears, feeling embarrassed, ashamed, pitiful, absolutely pitiful.

  “You’re Declan Gallagher,” I sniffed. “You deserve better than…” I swallowed. “Everyone knows it now.”

  Declan’s fingers typed something on my phone and without a word he handed it over to me. I frowned in confusion, but he pushed my cell phone into my hand. I blinked away the tears until the text on the screen was clear enough to read.

  “My life hasn’t always been fast cars and expensive suits,” he said as I read. “I’m more than well accustomed to the gutters.”

  I looked up from the phone, the tips of my fingers so numb I could barely hold it. “This is true?” I whispered.

  Declan nodded. “All of it.”

  The phone fell between us, quickly forgotten, as I pulled him into a tight, if shaky, hug. We clung to each other as if we’d been apart for years and were just reunited again.

  “I tried to hide it, too, River.” Declan’s voice against my hair was thick with emotion, and I could feel his heart fluttering against mine. “I tried to hide the fact that my mother always struggled with drugs. I tried to hide the truth that my father abused her, and then me, when I tried to defend her. I tried to hide the memory of constant bruises because of my father’s fist and a constant grumbling stomach because there was no food on the table.”

  I squeezed Declan closer to me.

  “I wanted to hide from them, River,” he continued. “But I don’t want to hide from you.” Declan’s fingers dug deeper into the flesh of my back. “There’s something the media doesn’t know,” he said so quietly I could barely hear him.

  With my cheek against his chest, I waited.

  “My mother,” he whispered, “she died in my arms of an overdose.”

  “Declan—”

  “I want you to know,” he interrupted, clearing his throat. “I want you to know that if anyone is undeserving, River, it’s me.”

  I shook my head against his chest. “No, no, don’t say that.”

  “We’re more alike than you think,” he whispered with a sad smile.

  “How can you stand it?” I asked, leaning back and holding him away from me so I could see his face. “How can you stand them knowing everything? Your past being thrown back in your face again and again? Their constant judgement, as if they know, as if they have even the slightest clue what it’s like?” Anger filled my voice as my fingers shook. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all. I found tears filling my eyes again.

  Declan smiled gently and reached over to tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear. “I use it as a reminder,” he said softly.

  I wiped at my tears in frustration, because they were betraying my weakness. “A reminder?”

  As the next tear began to trail down my cheek, I reached up to push it away, but Declan caught my wrist.

  “Let it fall,” he whispered. “Let it fall.”

  This brought even more tears and I sagged forward against Declan’s strong, steady chest as I cried and cried and couldn’t stop.

  “It’s a reminder that there are types of people in the world,” he continued. “There’s the type that criticize and judge and stare from the shadows. They’re scared, frightened, weak people.” Declan’s fingers carded through my hair and he spoke softly against the crown of my head. “But then there’s another type. The type that dare to step into the light and fight, love, laugh, breathe, cry, sing, live. These are the brave, the bold, the strong, no matter how weak the world makes them seem.”

  Declan gently lifted my chin so my shining eyes met his, so I couldn’t turn away from him.

  “I’m not with you because you’re from the world of diamonds,” he said. “I’m with you because you’re from the world of mud and darkness, deep, deep darkness, and yet you’re strong enough to shine brighter than any of their silly stones.”

  I stared up into his eyes, barely able to believe what he was saying. “But Declan, everyone knows.”

  “So let them know, River.” Declan laughed. “Let them know you’re strong, stronger than they’ll ever be. Let them know you live, truly live. Do not shy away from that truth. Let them know. Shout it in their goddamn faces.” He paused with his hands on either side of my face, his thumbs moving over my cheekbones as he smiled. “Show those fuckers what it means to shine.”

  Declan’s lips sealed off any further protest from me as he pulled me into a deep, passionate kiss. His fingers tangled into my hair and tugged slightly as his tongue twisted against mine.

  I surprised myself when a growl escaped my lips.

  I was strong.

  I clawed at Declan’s back and he groaned in response.

  I wasn’t going to watch life go by from the sidelines.

  I pressed my chest tight against his.

  I was going to take what I wanted, no matter what anyone had to say about it.

  I pulled Declan down with me to the sheets.

  And he followed.

  River

  The first thud shook the aged wooden floorboards beneath my sneakers in the hallway just outside the gym.

  The second thundering boom shook dust from the gold chandeliers above my head and created ripples in the peppermint tea I held cupped between my palms.

  The third crash seized my heart, but not because of the volume of the sound itself, it was because of what came after it—a roar.

  A roar of pure agony.

  My fallen teacup shattered on the shaking wooden floorboards behind me as I sprinted beneath the quivering chandeliers toward the gym. I flung the doors open and stopped dead in my tracks just behind Seamus, who clutched at his hair at the sight before us.

  It was as if a tornado tore through the gym. Tornado Gallagher.

  Half the cage was ripped down and lay in a mangled mess on the floor. A treadmill was overturned, a window was shattered, and one of several punching bags lay on the ground covered in drywall from where the thick metal chain had been wrenched from the ceiling. In the midst of the wreckage, Declan stalked back and forth like a caged animal.

  His face was red. His eyes were wide and unseeing as his chest heaved in ragged, uneven breaths. His shoulders were slumped forward, making him appear more beast than man as he lifted a fifty-pound kettlebell over his head and slammed it repeatedly against the concrete floor, which shattered as if it were glass. The kettlebell seemed to weigh nothing when Declan tossed it to the side, but when it slammed into the towel stand, the wooden shelves exploded from the force. Declan was a dangerous man when in complete control of himself, but he was deadly when he lost even an ounce of that control.

  From the guttural raw, unrestrained, blood-chilling roar that ripped through his throat, I knew he’d lost control so completely, so utterly, so wholly that he might never be able to gain it back. That noise alone shook me more than the weight rack toppling over beneath his rippling muscles and rattling the very floor beneath my feet.

  “What happened?” I asked as I hovered in the doorway, half in, half out.

  Seamus turned to me and his eyes widened in a sort of panic at the realisation that I was standing there.

  A normal person would run. A normal person wouldn’t even stay long enough to ask what happened, what went wrong. A normal person would immediately know that this was not a safe place and run, run, run.

  A stubborn ass like me would want to stay.

  A stubborn ass like me, and me alone, would want to get closer.

  Closer to him.

  The moment I took a step forward, Seamus rushed toward me and stood in my path. “No, no, no,” he said quickly as he shook his head. “You can’t be here. You need to leave. Now.”

  I tried to step around him to get to Declan, but Seamus easily blocked my path and held up his hands. “Leave, River,” he said. “I’m serious.”

  “What’s going on?” I demanded over the sound of more equipment crashing.

  “River, please just go,” Seamus insisted. “It’s not safe for you.”

  I levelled a glare at him and jutted my chin up toward him. “Tell me.”

  Seamus sighed and dragged his fingers through his wiry red hair. “I knew it would be bad when I told him,” he started, glancing at Declan’s continued rampage over his shoulder. “But I didn’t know it would be this bad. Fuck, he’s out of his mind. He’s out of his goddamn mind.”

  “Tell him what?”

  The floor shook again and the windows rattled as a loud thud echoed throughout the gym. Declan roared again and I thought my heart would break at his obvious pain.

  “Seamus, tell me what is wrong,” I demanded. “Tell me now.”

  “His title,” Seamus finally admitted. “It’s his title, okay? They stripped it from him.”

  My stomach dropped. Declan’s MMA title meant everything to him, everything.

  “How?” I asked. “He hasn’t lost.”

  Seamus scratched impatiently at his fiery red beard, then after checking nervously again over his shoulder, he answered, “Yeah, well he’s hasn’t won lately either.” When he saw my confusion, he sighed loudly and explained, “You can’t keep the title if you don’t win. You can’t win if you don’t fight. And, as you know, Declan can’t fight, so…”

  I nodded numbly. A question hit me like a bolt of lightning and my eyes darted up to Seamus’s. “That means someone else now has the title,” I said, barely daring to utter the words aloud.

  Seamus lifted his eyebrows and crossed his arms over his chest. “Indeed it does.”

  I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to hear the answer I already knew, I already feared. It was like a train barrelling toward me on the tracks—looking away wouldn’t change the inevitability of it crashing into me. “Who?” I whispered.

  Seamus sighed. “Who do you think?”

  “Dominic.”

  Declan’s greatest rival. Stealing his wife wasn’t enough. Stealing his health, his strength, his body wasn’t enough. The thief wanted Declan’s title. And now he had it.

  He had it all.

  I craned my neck around Seamus just enough to watch as Declan hurled a dumbbell across the room. It crashed into the stationary bike, toppling it over as easily as a feather in a fierce gust of wind. I stared at the warped frame and it didn’t take much imagination to predict the effect the impact of the dumbbell would have had on bone versus metal, and yet I spoke without hesitation. “I need to get to him.”

  I stepped forward.

  Seamus grabbed my shoulders and shook me so I was forced to peel my eyes off of Declan and focus on him instead. “River, you’re not thinking straight,” he said, earnestly trying to get through to me. “He will hurt you. He will hurt you.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  Seamus spit out a dark laugh. “Don’t be foolish, girl. He’ll rip you in two should you get within arm’s reach.”

  But I wasn’t trying to get within arm’s reach. I was trying to get much, much closer. I needed to touch him, I needed to hold him, I needed to wrap my arms around him and guide him back to me, the beating of my heart his path in the dark.

  “He won’t hurt me,” I repeated. I pushed his hands from my shoulders.

  “I’m not allowing you to go near him,” Seamus growled, grabbing my wrist. “It’s not safe.” He tried to drag me back toward the door, but I wrenched my hand free again.

  “I’m not asking!” I snapped back. “He needs me. And I’m going to him.”

 

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