AN: All right, who loves ya? Told you I wouldn't leave it too long. :) But really, the response to this fic has been amazing and such a great motivator. I'm so glad you're enjoying reading it as much as I am writing it.
I'm doing some traveling in the next few weeks, so I probably won't be able to update again before the middle of June. As usual, thanks to cassiemortmain for the beta.
This picks up right where we left off.
It took a few seconds for what he'd just seen to come together in his mind. Even then, he felt almost dizzy with the effort of believing that what had happened was real; that what he was seeing now was real. Some part of him kept insisting that it couldn't be.
Declan stood facing away from the back entrance. A wedge of yellow light fell from the door to the front; it wasn't very bright, but in Tom's slow-motion vision it illuminated the scene as though it were on a stage. Without a doubt, that was his brother, standing over a very newly dead human being. He hadn't seen or heard Tom yet. He gave a dismissive grunt: That's that, then.
Tom's breath crouched in his throat for what felt like a century but was actually only a couple of seconds. He just had time to visualize his exit plan OK back up quietly don't let the door slam then run like fucking hell before he sensed the change in Dec's posture that meant he was caught. Declan whirled, the gun rising like a snake ready to strike.
Tom made a split-second decision that probably saved his life. Instead of trying to bolt, he stepped into the room, toward the light, with his hands up. "Dec, it's me, it's Tom!" The door clapped shut behind him and he nearly pissed his kecks.
But his instinct had been right: this was not his moment to die.
Declan lowered the gun a bit, though he kept the barrel facing Tom's general direction. He was nothing if not controlled. There was only a hint of shock in his voice when he said, "Tom. What the fuck are you doing here?" He shuffled sideways to the wall, and the room filled with cold bright light from a fluorescent strip mounted on the ceiling.
They both blinked. Tom's eyes flicked past Declan, where dark tributaries runnelled into little pools via the wrinkles in a plastic sheet laid down on the floor. The guy had been kneeling. A hood, most of which was dark with wet, covered his head. Tom looked away.
"Tom?" Declan prompted, serving as a reminder to Tom that he still had a gun pointed at him. "You picked a shite time to pop in on me at work, mate."
Tom sputtered a reflexive laugh, almost a cackle. Declan scowled, and Tom bit the insides of his cheeks until the rogue hilarity was under control. He couldn't think of anything to say that would simmer Dec down. His brain wasn't working terribly well, or rather it was working too well, zooming around corners like the cars in a F1 race, but none of the lines of thought seemed appropriate to speak aloud. "Sorry," he said finally. "Sorry. I came down here to…" he laughed again in disbelief. It seemed so ridiculous now. "I was going to give out to you for missing Ma's birthday dinner."
Declan stared hard at him for a long moment, then began to laugh: at first a grudging, rusty sound, then louder until he was practically roaring. Tom's legs, which he hadn't realized until then were unsteady, spilled him onto a packing carton a short backward stumble away. Declan's gun hand jerked at the sudden movement—even in the haze of relief, Tom didn't miss that—but then he walked over and perched on the next carton, still chortling.
"My big fucking brother," he said. He reached over and clapped Tom on the shoulder, shaking his head.
Tom said nothing. There wasn't anything to say, really: So how's business? You kill men often? Declan's laugh stopped like a tap turning off, his eyes narrowing. His grip tightened almost painfully on Tom's shoulder before he released it. Tom didn't dare glance down to see where the gun was. He didn't want to look at Declan, or the body of his associate. Former associate. He ended up putting his eyes into the corner of the room.
"So we've a bit of a situation here, brother," Declan said softly.
Tom swallowed and gave a short nod, still not looking at him. "I won't say anything to anyone." He meant it: whatever differences they'd had in the past, Dec was his brother. Judging by the corpse's style of dress, he'd been involved in the same sort of business as Declan, so Tom only felt a twinge of compunction at consigning him to an unmarked grave.
Declan was silent for a long while. When Tom finally looked up he found his brother's eyes on him, assessing. Dec had won the genetic lottery in their family as far as looks went: the girls compared him to a young George Clooney, or else the one—Henry somebody—who'd played Superman in the most recent film. But they mightn't have found him so charming just then. Tom had known Declan could be terrible, but he'd only really felt it once before that night. His cheeks were drawn in, his mouth a hard line. Tom had no doubt his life hung in the balance.
After a minute or two Declan's face became mobile again and he said, "I believe you."
People always talk about the massive rush of euphoria that follows the cheating of death. After tonight, Tom would know firsthand that it wasn't a tall tale. He couldn't stop the grin spreading across his face.
What Declan said next wiped it off. "I'll need you to help me with him." He spoke as casually as if asking for help moving house.
"What?"
He nodded toward the body. "We'll have to get rid of him." He rolled his eyes at Tom's expression. "Oh, come on, Tom. You saw me shoot him. I need some kind of assurance."
Tom's mouth fell open. "You think I'd give you up to the Garda? For that guy?" He flapped a hand at the body. "I'm your fecking brother!"
"You're an upstanding fecking citizen, is what you are." Declan shifted his weight backward on the crate and fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He offered it to Tom, who took one even though he hadn't smoked since his voice was still breaking. The first drag was astringent, aromatic with butane from the lighter; the next tasted exactly like dried burning leaves, but it steadied the minute trembling in his hands. They sat in silence and smoked the fags down to the filters.
Tom extinguished his under his shoe, took a deep breath of smoke-filled air, and said, "OK." As if he had a choice. His heart had started to pound, from the unfamiliar burst of nicotine or nerves or both. "How do we do this?"
"We roll him up in the plastic, chuck him in one of these—" Declan thumped the crate under him—"and he goes into the back of the company van. After that we bleach the floor in here, find him a final resting place, toddle off home for a couple of nice big whiskeys before bed, and never speak of this again."
Tom swallowed with some difficulty—the cigarette had sucked every drop of moisture from his mouth—and stood up. "Let's get on with it, then."
He thought disjointedly as he walked toward the body that it was entirely possible that this could be the defining event in the relationship between him and Declan, the thing that would finally put them on the same side. Secrets, after all, have a way of bringing people together.
Or dividing them forever.
-o-
"Tom?" Sybil interrupts. "Are you all right?"
He turns his head to look at her, but doesn't stop moving: he's been pacing around in the dirt like a madman since he came to the bit where he threw Declan out of his mother's flat. "I'm coming to it." He kicks a stone a few meters into the forest. It skitters through the underbrush and thwacks against a tree trunk.
"You look a bit green." She reaches out. "Come here." She's right, he probably does look upset. His eye sockets feel dry and tight, and his hair must be standing on end from all the times he's run his hands through it. Sybil's not exactly the picture of serenity herself, brow knit and eyes dark. Either she's caught some of his turmoil or she's got an inkling of what he's about to tell her. It's strange to see her so ruffled. Be careful what you wish for, he almost says, but instead shakes his head and begins to furrow a line with the heel of his boot. He watches it deepen in front of him, the rich dark earth piling up in hillocks on either side, and says, "He shot me. My brother."
The silence from her is more than an absence of sound or word: it's a void, the space left empty when someone's view of the world collapses in on itself. It's antimatter.
Tom knows exactly how she feels.
-o-
The packing of the body and the cleaning of the space went off just like Declan said. Of all the things that happened that night, that experience is the one that still gives Tom the heebie-jeebies when he thinks about it. He's not particularly squeamish, and there wasn't too much blood, but he'll never forget the limp dead weight of the corpse flopping over as he rolled it up. He was heartily glad that Declan had covered the bloke's face. Dec was completely matter-of-fact about the whole thing. He's done this before, a cool voice said in Tom's head, and though he'd known it was true the moment he walked into the room it was still difficult to believe. His brother, the cold-blooded killer. It was chilling how well it fit.
Soon—though not nearly soon enough—the crate was in the back of the van. Declan drove for a long time, past the outer ring road, turning off the M3 at a point seemingly chosen at random. He was perfectly at ease, humming along with Led Zeppelin on the radio. Tom drummed his fingers on the armrest and prayed they wouldn't get pulled over.
They'd been crisscrossing the countryside for half an hour before Declan pulled off to the side of the road. Tom looked around, nonplussed. They were on a narrow dirt lane and there wasn't anyone about, but it still seemed like a pretty exposed place to hide a body. But he didn't say anything, and Declan offered no explanation. He got out of the van, and Tom followed.
It happened in the space of an eyeblink. He rounded the back of the van, and a bull charged through his right shoulder.
Confusion hit before anything else. It was like when you're in the middle of a tense passage in a book and you accidentally turn three pages instead of one: it takes a second for you to catch up to the fact that you're further ahead than you thought.
Almost instantly, the pain blasted that away, a white-hot flare radiating out from Tom's chest. It wiped all thought from his head. For a few seconds he couldn't even see. Afterward, he could never quite call up in his mind what it actually felt like, except for the metallic taste of blood welling up in his mouth from where he'd bitten his tongue when he hit the a time—a minute, a year—the pain grew less intense, if not exactly bearable. It occurred to Tom that maybe this meant he was dying. Huh, he thought. So this is how it happens. That was just fine with him.
Declan, who'd been temporarily relegated to the far background, floated into Tom's field of vision. Tom groped in his mind to remember why he was there; then the recollection blew apart his false calm. The gun was still in Declan's left hand, and Tom had never been more sure of anything than he was of the fact that his brother was going to shoot him again. At the same time, it was intolerable that he should. Tom scooted away on his back, using his feet to push himself along in the dirt. The movement shot a fresh spike of agony through him and he yelled, his head thudding back onto the road. He was shaking uncontrollably. Just fucking do it, he said, but the words were only in his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his teeth, and waited for the low-pitched thwup that would end his life.
Instead he heard the creak and slam of the driver's door opening and closing, the roar of the engine coming to life. As Declan peeled off, the tires kicked a stinging rain of dirt and pebbles into Tom's face. He coughed, whimpering at the pain it brought. It was an overcast night, utterly black. He lay there hardly sure whether his eyes were closed or open, hearing but not really registering the noises of a country night, so different to the ones you get in the city.
He could feel the life ebbing out of him. Blood soaked the back of his T-shirt, making the fabric stiff and tacky as it dried. He'd stopped shaking a little while after Declan left, but soon he began to shiver with a terrible, bone-deep chill. His mobile was in his back pocket. It would probably be a good idea to call someone, but it seemed like far too much effort. Some part of his brain yammered No! No, this is not how it happens! There's still time! Get your arse up, you useless cunt! But it felt like a barely remembered voice from the past.
Then the world exploded in light.
-o-
Sybil is silent for a long time.
"Golly," she says finally. "And I thought my sisters had a difficult relationship."
The attempt at levity falls flat, but Tom gives a weak chuckle anyway. "Wait 'til you hear what he said to me when he visited me in hospital."
Her head comes up; she's been studying her hands, which twist together in her lap. "Someone rescued you, then?"
"I wouldn't be here if they hadn't."
He doesn't remember much about the ride or his arrival at the hospital: just a blur of pain and indistinct voices and needles of white light stabbing his eyelids, the torturous struggle between life and death. Not that he can take any of the credit for his survival: he couldn't even muster the strength to get his mobile out of his pocket. He still doesn't know who it was that found him on the side of the road. It's one of his great regrets that he never got to thank them, or at least pay for their upholstery.
When he woke again, hours or days later, Tom's first sight was of his mother slumped in the chair next to the bed. Abject relief washed over him, the raw emotion of the child who wakes screaming to find his mammy's cool hand on his brow, her voice cooing that it was only a dream. He shifted, made some sound, and she snapped to attention. "Tommy!" She hadn't called him that in years. "You're awake." You're alive, her shadowed eyes said, and it was plain that she was still having trouble convincing herself that it was true. She coughed. "Are you in any pain?"
He wasn't. Or rather, the narcotic cloud he floated on made it so any physical sensation felt like it was happening to someone else. Things had jumbled up again in his mind. He hadn't a clue why he was in hospital, doped to the gills, but that sure had been a strange dream.
They were in a double room, but the other bed was unoccupied. Ma glanced toward the door and spoke in a low voice. "There's a detective outside. He said he wanted to speak with you when you woke up."
Detective. The people who solve murders. The word brought every detail rushing back. Tom closed his eyes, fighting a wave of nausea. "Son?" Ma quavered, a thousand miles away. "Son, are you all right?" He opened his eyes and she was holding a basin under his chin. He waved it away with his left hand; the right was bound to his middle with a sling, over a mountain of bandages.
"I'm grand, Ma." In that moment he knew two things: one, that she didn't know Declan was the one who'd shot him, and two, that she never could. "Detective, you said?"
She nodded, looking down as if she were ashamed. "On account of the nature of your injury, like." She gestured vaguely at Tom's chest. "He wants to get a statement from you, see if you know anything about the one who did it." She leaned closer. "What were you doing out there? Last I remember you were safe in my front room."
He thought fast, which was surprisingly effortless, but also dangerous: in his state he was liable to decide that telling her he'd been kidnapped by a leprechaun was a perfectly sound idea. In the end he took refuge in ignorance. "I don't remember much after we got home that night." He furrowed his brow what he hoped was a convincing show of regret: Ma was not the most critical audience he'd have to face.
She narrowed her eyes, thinking. "Did you go out? I remember I thought I heard the door closing."
He shook his head. "Dunno, Ma. Sorry."
She shook hers too. "Ahh, never mind, I probably dreamed it. I should let you have your rest." Her eyes went flinty. "But I'll tell you, I've never been on the Garda's side like I am now. We'll get this bastard, son."
Tom sputtered a laugh. "Ma!" Language, he almost said.
She lowered her eyes, nearly bashful. "Well, he fecked about with my boy, didn't he?"
The interview with the guard, a Detective Sergeant Diarmuid Ripley, went as well as could be expected. He seemed to believe Tom's line about not remembering anything after arriving home from the restaurant; at any rate, he nodded sagely and said that trauma victims had been known to blank out on the last couple of hours before the incident. Tom had seen enough procedurals on TV to know that Ripley wasn't necessarily taking what he said at face value. He figured this was only the beginning of an ordeal of police interviews, clicking through screen after screen of mug shots, vaguely shaking his head at line-ups.
After Ripley left, Tom told his mother to go home and get some sleep. The doctor had seen him before the detective and pronounced him in stable condition, so she didn't have much justification to stay. "I'll be back tomorrow with your breakfast," she said. "The food in this place'll kill ye."
Between the drugs and the exhaustion of injury and healing, Tom was out in minutes. It was difficult to get any decent sleep: every footstep and voice echoed in the corridor, and people came in to check on him at what seemed like fifteen minute intervals. But he managed to remain in a state of relative unconsciousness for several hours.
It must have been some fundamental shift in the room's energy that pulled him awake. One second he was in a deep sleep and the next he was completely lucid and utterly terrified. It was like that dream where you know it's a dream but you can't wake up: the monster slavers at your heels, the ground rushes up to meet you. Your murderous younger brother sits quietly in the same chair your mother occupied hours earlier, close enough to put his hands around your throat.
Tom's heart seemed to seize in his chest. "Jaysus," he gasped, recoiling, and hissed again in the first real pain he'd felt since waking that afternoon. A morphine drip couldn't touch this.
Declan raised his hands, palms held out in the universal gesture of peace. "Howya, brother." Tom eyed him with suspicion. If he could slip in unnoticed in the middle of the night, there was nothing that said he hadn't brought some means of finishing what he'd started. "Don't worry," he said, "I'm not gonna hurt ye." Tom had his doubts—it was clear enough that Declan had meant for him to bleed to death out on that road—but kept silent. "I'll admit I acted rashly. You know what they say: when you're a hammer…" he spread his hands further out, shrugging.
Everything looks like a nail. Tom swallowed. "Is that what you call an apology?" His voice came out rusty.
"Are you goin' to apologize, so?" Declan's voice cracked whiplike against the beeping of the machines that monitored Tom's heartbeat, the flow of blood in his veins. Hallmarks of the life that could be gone in a moment. "You barged into something you knew nothing about, which was none of your business. You could've completely fucked me. Are you fuckin' sorry?" He stood and leaned forward until they were practically nose to nose. "Well, are ya?"
Tom fought the urge to shrink back. He won't do anything in a hospital room, surrounded by people. "Yeah," he said. "I am." It was true: he wished he'd never set foot in that back room. He wished he'd let Dec spiral into his inevitable flameout, free of any intervention.
That was good enough to mollify him. He stepped back. "So."
"So."
"Heard the detective was in to see you today. What'd you tell him?"
Tom shook his head. "Nothing."
"Good. Make sure you keep it that way."
Wrath boiled up, hot and sullen, but he slammed it down. "I'm not stupid." The word spattered out like acid.
"I know. You always were the brainy one, weren't you? Uni and all that."
The anger bubbled up again at the mocking note in Declan's voice. "Fuck you."
"Ah, c'mon now, I'm only messing." He sat down, smiling. Clearly he was enjoying this. "The question now is, how can we reduce the unpleasantness for all concerned? I imagine it wasn't much fun, coming up with bullshit for that guard today." He waited for Tom to shake his head. "There'll be more where he came from, you know. And as for myself, I don't much like having to constantly be looking over my shoulder."
Tom couldn't hold back a bitter smile. "You're worried about getting caught for attempted murder, are you?"
Declan shrugged. "Well, you're still around to talk, aren't ye? And there's more for you to talk about than what happened out on that lane." He looked at Tom hard, leaving him in no doubt as to his status: he was a loose end and Dec meant to tie him up, one way or the other. "I think," he said, "the best thing would be for you to emigrate."
Tom let out a harsh bark of a laugh, wincing as it made his right side flare. "Do ye not see the state I'm in? I can hardly even get out of bed." He snapped his mouth shut before he could add something stupid like Thanks to you. Declan's temper was not easily roused, but there was no sense poking at him.
"I don't mean tomorrow," Declan said. "Rest. Recover. Tell the police you didn't see the guy's face, you don't remember what happened... whatever, I don't care, but for fuck's sake keep it simple and keep it straight in your head. They'll latch on to any inconsistency like a cat with a feckin' mouse, and that's something I learned the hard way." He smiled ruefully, before his face stiffened into that stony expression that had so chilled Tom before. "And Tom, I'll say this straight out so there's no misunderstanding. I will kill you if you tell them anything else."
Tom nodded. "I know." He was beginning to see the sense in Declan's idea. Certainly he'd no desire to sit across the table from him next Christmas. "And if I say no? If I won't leave?"
Declan lowered his gaze, shaking his head. "Best not to think about that." He looked at Tom directly. "I'm doing this because you're my brother. I wouldn't do it for anyone else, and I won't do it for you twice. It's for your own good, really." He gave a chilly smile; he must have been thinking of some of the harsher discipline Tom had meted out when they were kids. "I don't mind where you go, as long as it's far away. Not England, sorry."
"One thing, though. Ma. I've been taking care of her. Kieran helps, but—"
Declan waved a hand. "I'll do my part there; consider it my penance." His mouth twisted.
"Not only money. She's getting older, she needs someone to look in on her at least every couple of days." Tom hated like hell to throw Ma and Declan together, but there was no one else. She'd never move to Swindon.
"Not to worry. If I can't do, I'll send someone. Every couple of days." Declan jerked his chin down as if adding it to his mental to-do list. Tom imagined some tracksuit turning up at Ma's door, telling her I've come to hang that shelf for ye, Missus Branson and he almost laughed. "And I know I don't need to tell you to come up with a good reason for leaving. Say you've got wind of an unmissable business opportunity in Hong Kong."
Tom gave him a hard look. "Or that the sight of an Irish country lane on a cloudy night gives me bad dreams."
Declan cocked his head, arching a mildly amused brow. "Whatever you like. Have you got any money? I can front you some to get started if you need it."
I don't want your fucking money. "I'm grand."
"Good." He stood up and adjusted the drape of the legs on his trousers. "I'll look in on you once you're out of hospital, then." His tone held no threat. It didn't need to.
When he was at the door, Tom said, "Declan." He couldn't help it, even though he knew he should let him leave and feel lucky to be shut of him. "It's not you I'm doing this for."
A shadow of a smile fell onto Declan's face. "I know, brother." He opened the door silently and went out.
Tom didn't sleep again that night.
Maybe he should have resisted, told Dec he'd die before he'd run away. Supposedly his ancestry imparted a long and storied tradition of attachment to his homeland, but in truth he felt more attached to his life. He had no doubt Declan could (and would) follow through on his threats, should he balk at leaving or cooperate with the police.
There was plenty else to keep him wakeful. Whether Declan would come through on his promise to support their mother was an open question, but not one Tom could afford to dwell on. Kieran would do what he could from across the water. And then there was the matter of where to go. Far away, Declan had said. Not England. Tom had some savings, but he had to assume that he'd be wherever he went for the long term, which meant finding steady work. Weeks later, after he'd settled on a destination and a feasible source of income, he would swing between trepidation and giddy anticipation; that first night, still half in shock, he could barely stand to think about it.
Nor was he equal to facing the layers of deeper meaning in the situation. His brother had tried to kill him. He would not hesitate to do it again. No matter how much bad blood they'd had between them, that hurt like hell.
Later, more than once, Tom told himself that there was nothing he could have done to prevent Declan's indifference to him or disregard for the rules of society. Some people are just bad. But the fact is that he was the main male figure in Dec's life while he was growing up, and it was impossible to shake the feeling that he could have tried harder. He could have done so much better.
He thinks sometimes that maybe he should've given Declan a good thumping that day in the alley. He'd given him a few already; they were brothers, after all. If not that, he should have gone home and called a doctor. Rung the police.
But he hadn't done any of those things. Instead he'd yelled at Declan to go on home in a voice that sounded reedy and nervous to his own ears, and Declan had slunk off with a look on his face halfway between smug and terrified.
Tom couldn't kill the cat. When he went back a few days later, it was gone.
-o-
By the time he's finished talking, the afternoon is shading into evening. Some time ago he slumped down beside Sybil again. She's holding his hand. Bathed in the warm sunset light, her solemn face takes on the rosy perfection of the subject of a Renaissance painting, inward-focused and almost holy in its loveliness.
Neither of them speaks for a long while. Tom is almost afraid to wonder what Sybil is thinking. She strokes the back of his hand, a steady soothing motion, and he tries to let himself be soothed.
"I'm so sorry," she says finally. "I'm so very sorry." Her voice is heavy. "I thought—I knew since you wouldn't talk about it, it must be bad, but your own brother—" She clears her throat. "Jesus, Tom."
Her head's down, brow deeply furrowed. Tom wants to reach up and smooth her forehead. "Well, don't feel too bad. I'm alive, at least." She looks up and he gives her a crooked smile.
She draws her lower lip between her teeth. "Does he know where you are?"
"Sort of. I mean, I haven't given anyone back home my exact address, though I'm sure it wouldn't be much work to find out. But I know what you're getting at. I don't think he'd bother to travel clear around the world if I didn't piss him off, but I've still kept under the radar as much as I can, as you've seen." Tom stands, holding out his hand. He's grown tired of being here, with that heavy story hanging about.
They walk back to the campsite, but despite the failing light and the mosquitoes that have begun to come out, being in the tent's the last thing he needs. He's not hungry, either, though he feels emptier than he ever has before and his head buzzes like it does when he's coming down with flu. He and Sybil clean up what's left of the meal she started, and then she goes into the tent. She comes out a few minutes later with two rucksacks, stuffed full, but when she hands Tom one it weighs almost nothing.
"Blankets," she explains. "I thought we might go for a walk."
They hike the trail they took yesterday afternoon. It's full dark by now but he keeps his torch switched off, following Sybil's up ahead and thinking of nothing except where to place his feet. At the lookout, the dark gives way to the rising half-moon and a glittering sweep of stars, the scenery painted in shades of silver and grey. She lays out her blanket, and they sit side by side on it. Tom spreads the second blanket over their laps. Her fingers in his are soft and cool; after a little while, they're soft and warm. They lie back and look at the stars. You can't just look at one of them; your gaze will always be drawn to the one beyond it and the one beyond that, until finally you give up and let your eyes go unfocused. They seem so close together, when really they're millions of miles apart.
They don't speak for a long time.
At first it's a comfort, the silence. Sybil is a solid presence next to him; they don't need to talk. But then Tom starts wondering where her head is, if it's as far away from his as he fears. "So what do you think?" His voice comes out sounding full of pebbles.
Her hand tightens around his, a brief squeeze. "I don't know what to think." When she speaks again the words come out haltingly. "What happened to you is awful. I can't even begin to imagine."
He couldn't bear it if Sybil thought the things he's thought of himself at various points during the last two years. But he has to know. "I suppose I could have handled it better."
"I don't see how."
"I could have… not run away." That's the crux of it. On the good days, he truly believes it was the only thing he could have done. Other times he's gutless, to have abandoned his mother to the tender mercies of her criminal son. To say nothing of the person whose fate remains unknown to his loved ones, if he's got any.
Sybil rolls halfway over so she's propped up on Tom's chest, looking down into his face. The moonlight glints sideways into her eyes. "You ran away from a—sorry, I know he's your brother, but he sounds like a psychopath—who'd tried to kill you. That's the most rational course of action I can think of in that situation."
He says it straight out. "So you don't think I'm a coward, then."
"No! God, no." She gives an incredulous chuckle and flops over onto her back. "It might be horrible of me to say, but I'm rather glad you were a bystander, instead of being… involved in that sort of thing on a regular basis."
"Well, I did help dump a body."
"At gunpoint." Abruptly she rolls onto him again. "Tom, I've seen a lot of gunshot wounds. And do you know what? Almost none of those patients were doing anything remotely heroic when they got them. It's not like on TV, where the random customer in the bank wrestles the gun away from the robber and saves the day. You did what anyone else would have done, during that night and after it."
He still wishes he'd had the courage to do something different. Maybe she can sense it, because she leans over and kisses him. "You deserve to be happy," she murmurs.
Her mouth is soft on his, but it's wet and open and it starts a fire in his lower belly. Her hand on his shoulder makes his whole body tingle. He would have thought fucking was the last thing he'd want tonight, but suddenly he wants nothing more than to be inside her. He wrenches her closer with an abruptness that makes her gasp and then moan as his tongue thrusts into her mouth. They roll together so he's over her, her hands pulling the blanket tight against the chill as he kisses her throat. He can feel the past receding into the fragrance of her hair, the soft throb of her pulse against his lips. His hands are inside her shirt and he presses lightly into her ribs, solid under the silken skin: Sybil is here, he is here, this is where they are, together. Nothing else matters; except the future. As long as it's with her.
She holds him tight, and he wonders how he ever could have thought she would abandon him.
