Owen

Frustrated and exhausted, I dump my bags in the foyer of my house and walk to the kitchen to get a beer, my chest feeling just as empty as the way I found Bree’s apartment.

She’s gone.

The superintendent didn’t even have a forwarding address for her.

Disappointment, loss, and an ache I can’t even explain winds through me. I rough my hands across my face, trying to sort out what I’m feeling, and what I’m going to do.

Can’t let her go. That’s all I know. Have to find her.

God, I’m in so deep.

I frown when I hear music coming from down the hall.

Cillian and the guys have a key to the place, but I didn’t see any of their cars out front.

My chest begins to thump wildly when I recognize the melody being played on the baby grand, and the soft voice that accompanies it.

Bree.

It isn’t possible. Is it?

I suck in a breath when I see her.

Dark hair tumbles down her back in waves, her eyes closed as she croons out the love song we created together. “Found the lost pieces of my heart. You’d carried them in your pocket all these years.” She compensates with her left hand, to play the notes her right can’t. “…I’m coming home.”

“Bree…” Words escape me.

Slowly, she turns on the bench, her blue eyes meeting mine.

“Hi,” she says softly.

Adrenaline rushes through my veins, and I have to hold myself back from stalking towards her and diving my fingers into the mess of dark waves that roll across her shoulders and down her back.

So damn beautiful.

The kind of beauty that could leave a man desperate, and make him do things he never thought he’d do. Make promises he never thought he’d make.

“Ye’re here,” I say, my voice like gravel.

“I am.” A smile pulls at her lips. “Is that okay?”

“Yes,” I breath out. I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather her be, except in my bed. Naked. With me on top of her.

Her blue eyes blink up at me expectantly, pulling me in, sucking me in deeper.

Go to her, asshole, my brain screams. But I’m still a little in shock that she’s sitting there. Worried that if I make the wrong move, say the wrong thing, she’ll leave again.

“How long ye staying?” I rub the back of my neck, needing to do something with my hands, wanting desperately for them to be on her. The need to touch and consume every inch of her body is overpowering.

She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, a sliver of doubt slicing across her features. “For good. Agnus said I can stay with her until I find a place of my own. But…”

There are a million questions in that one word. A hundred promises.

But…

I move towards her. “But what?”

“I thought…” She looks up at me, her expression vulnerable. “…maybe…”

I place a palm on her cheek, using my thumb to tilt her chin up to me, and I feel her tremble. “Ye thought what?”

“That we could…try…the something you were talking about.”

I close my eyes, trying to gain some control over the wave of emotions that pull at me.

“Unless you don’t want to.”

“I just spent fourteen of the last twenty-four hours on a plane to find ye. Trust me when I tell ye, I want to.”

“No promises,” she says. “I’m not asking for forever. Just for right now.”

I pull her up, wrapping my arms around her. “Ye belong here. With me. Tell me what ye want, Bree, and I’ll make sure ye have it. Everything.” I kiss her, my lips lingering, tasting. “Anything.”

A smile plays on her mouth, and she brings her fingertips to my chest, her palm covering my heart. “I want this.”

Her desperate hands fist in my shirt.

“It’s yers. Every damaged piece of it.” I drop my forehead to hers, my fingers gliding through her hair.

She sucks in a shaky breath. “Then, I have everything I want.”

And so do I.