When I reentered my apartment, I went straight into the kitchen and turned the kettle on. I didn’t want any tea, but it was an instinctive thing to do when I was stressed. A cup of tea usually solved everything, but not this. Nothing could resolve my newfound knowledge.
“Alannah?”
I gripped the edge of the countertops and squeezed my eyes shut.
“You need to leave, Damien.”
“I won’t,” he said, firmly. “I won’t have him fill your head with—”
“With lies?” I finished, turning to face him. “Please tell me it was all lies.”
Damien kept eye contact with me, but I now saw the truth in them. Morgan hadn’t lied about the things he had told me, though I wished to God that he had.
“We can’t come back from this,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t even be friends with the girls, not after this. Not after everythin’ you have all kept from me.”
“Alannah,” Damien said, his voice wavering. “Please. Don’t leave me.”
“What choice do I have?” I demanded. “You and your brothers have murdered people, Damien. Murdered!”
“It wasn’t like that, though.” He raised his voice. “You don’t understand our life, Alannah.”
“How could I when none of you told me anythin’ about it,” I exploded as tears fell from my eyes. “How can you expect me to even try to comprehend this when this mornin’ none of this was even a possibility in me mind! It wasn’t a possibility even in me nightmares!”
Damien said nothing; he only watched me, his pained expression cutting me in two.
“Christ, Damien,” I pressed my palm to my head. “How can this be real? How can you have all been involved in such … such horror? I hope I’m havin’ a nightmare because this is too much. I can’t take this … I can’t.”
“Alannah, I’m begging you—”
“I’m beggin’ you to leave,” I cut him off. “Damien, I’m goin’ to scream and cry, and I need to be on my own for it.”
“I can’t leave you,” he said, his voice helpless. “You’re my freckles. My world.”
“When I woke up this mornin’, me world started and ended with you too, but now? I feel like the man I knew is dead.”
Damien reared back as if I had slapped him, but before he could reply, I closed my eyes as voices and loud footsteps approached my apartment.
“Alannah?” Bronagh shouted. “Oh, God. Is she okay, Dominic?”
“She’s fine,” Nico answered. “No, actually, she’s not. She … she doesn’t want to see any of us.”
“What?” Keela asked. “Why?”
“She knows about everything.” Alec answered her. “Our past, what happened the night she was hurt in Darkness. Everything.”
“Oh, God,” Bronagh cried. “I need to see ’er.”
I pushed away from the counter, brushed by Damien, and stepped into the hall.
“What you need to do is leave, Bronagh.”
My once friend spun in my direction and when she tried to run for me, I stepped back and shook my head. Pain showcased itself on Bronagh’s face, but I refused to feel guilt for hurting her with my rejection. Her secrets hurt me way worse.
“Go home to your kids, all of you.”
Branna wasn’t with the girls, which didn’t surprise me since she had two newborns to look after.
“Aideen’s brothers are watchin' them, and Branna is with the twins,” Keela said as she gripped Alec’s arm. “We’re ’ere for you.”
No, they weren’t; they were here for themselves.
“Let us explain,” Bronagh begged. “Please, just let us explain.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“It’s not,” Ryder said, firmly. “You heard Morgan give you facts; now let us tell you the reasons behind it.”
“Is there a reason good enough for killin’ people?”
“Yes,” everyone answered in unison.
I lifted my hands to my face.
“I can’t hear any more,” I admitted. “Me head … I just can’t.”
“Alannah, please.”
This was Aideen.
“You have a lot of fuckin’ nerve, Aideen.”
No one spoke as I dropped my hands and glared at her.
“You made me feel like fuckin’ shite for not tellin’ you about Dante. You fed me that bullshit about how close we were, and that you were hurt I’d kept it from you when all the while you knew somethin’ about me life before I even knew you!”
Aideen had tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Alannah.”
I slapped her hands away when she reached for me. She gasped, pulled her hands to her chest, and stared at me with shocked eyes. I looked around the hallway at all the faces of people who I thought were my friends. My family.
“None of you are me friends.” I focused on Bronagh. “And you have broken me heart.”
Tears were sliding down her cheeks.
“Ye’dont understand,” she cried. “Ye’dont understand how what happened could mess with your head. What happened … I still have nightmares about it sometimes. Keela suffered a lot after what had happened to ’er, and Aideen and Branna nearly died, so I can only imagine what goes through their minds. We wanted to protect you from all of that.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make!” I bellowed. “It was none of your decision to keep what happened to me private.”
“Alannah—”
“Don’t!” I cut Damien off as he approached me from my right. “You’re worse than all of them.”
He blanched.
“I opened up to you and told you every secret I’d ever had, and you never told me the truth. Not once.”
“I wanted to protect you.”
My lower lip trembled.
“By lyin’ to me?”
He stepped forward, so I took a hefty step back.
“Stay away from me.”
“I can’t,” he answered, his eyes filled with hurt. “I love you, Alannah.”
I heard little gasps from the girls, and I could feel the intense stares of Damien’s brothers as he made his declaration, but I didn’t care. Not about any of it. Not about these people who lied to my face for years.
“If this is how you treat me when you love me,” I repeated, taking another step back. “I’d dread to see what you’d do if you hated me.”
“Alannah,” he said, softly. “Please don’t walk away from me.”
The pain in my chest hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt before.
“Please,” he begged. “Don’t leave me.”
“I can’t be near any of you right now,” I said. “I don't trust any of you, just like none of you trust me.”
“We do trust you, Alannah,” Nico pleaded. “We do.”
“But not enough to be honest with me?”
Silence.
“Exactly,” I said with a shake of my head. “You can all say it was to protect me, but it was only to protect yourselves and the monsters you are for not only committin’ such acts, lads, but you girls for standin’ by them and knowin’ what they’ve done, too.”
“Alannah—”
“I’m goin’ into me bedroom, and I’m lockin’ the door. I’m goin’ to force meself to go to sleep, and when I wake up, every one of you better be gone, and Damien, I mean that. I’ll call the guards otherwise, and you never know what I might say, ye’know, since I’m so untrustworthy.”
Damien grabbed me when I turned my back and began to walk away.
“You have to let us explain,” he begged. “You have to let me explain.”
“Right now, I can’t,” I said, fighting back tears. “I just need to be on me own. If I want you to explain, I will ask you all to explain, but for God’s sake, let me have time to process this.”
“If I let you go, you won’t come back to me. I know you won’t.”
“That’s a risk you’re goin’ to have to take because one way or the other, I’m puttin’ space between all of you and me. I don’t want to be near any of you. If you don’t respect me as a person to trust me with your secrets, then at least respect me decision to not want to be around you.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Damien said, kissing the side of my face, drawing a small cry from me. “When you want an explanation, I’ll tell your everything. I swear.”
He hugged me so tight, I thought I felt my bones crunch.
“I love you, freckles.”
The sad thing about all of this wasn’t that he told me he loved me after I found out such horror about his family; it was sad because even though I knew what horrendous acts were committed and how he lied to my face, I loved Damien, too. Despite all of that, I loved him with every fibre of my being … and if that wasn’t a travesty, then I didn’t know what was.