There are moments in Belfast that never leave you. A shape in the fog. The sound of a name whispered through bone. The feeling of standing still while the world rolls on without you.
For Saoirse Tierney, it all began beneath a tree.
It had been four years, but the bark still carried the memory of her back, curved into it like prayer. The dock creaked nearby, a few steps past the tree, where summer shadows had once swallowed them whole. A blanket still lived in that memory—one they laid across the grass when they were just children trying to be more than the world would allow.
Now, she stood alone.
March hadn’t thawed yet, not properly. The wind snapped at the buttons of her coat, and the hem of her skirt tangled around her legs. CJ was tucked into her left side, thumb in his mouth, eyes half-lidded as he rocked on his little feet. Calen stood on her other side with her small arms crossed, eyes narrowed at a group of ducks that waddled too close.
“Come back here,” Saoirse murmured, gently guiding them with one hand. “Don’t go too near the edge.”
The twins didn’t answer, not with words. Calen grunted and turned her head. CJ whimpered softly but didn’t cry. They were nearly two now—talking in broken phrases at home, but too quiet around strangers, too shy in places they didn’t trust. Saoirse liked that about them.
Especially today.
This place wasn’t sacred anymore. It was dangerous now. The tree still stood. The dock still swayed. But the air had changed.
Her heart ached in her chest.
She remembered coming here with him. Fourteen and hiding everything. Fifteen and in love. Sixteen and ruined. The tree was where he’d held her face in his hands and told her he wanted forever. It was where she’d gone to cry after her da raised his hand and split her lip for the first time.
It was where she’d gone the night her waters broke too early, trembling, scared, bleeding.
She rubbed her fingers along the inside of her sleeve where the bruises used to be. They were long gone now. But the memory still lived in her skin.
Behind her, CJ sniffled. She bent and wiped his nose gently.
“You’re all right, mo chroí,” she whispered.
And then—
A sound.
Footsteps. Slow. Familiar. Ghostlike.
She straightened. Turned.
And there he was.
Cillian Devlin.
Taller than she remembered. Shoulders broader. Face leaner, sharper. His jaw had grown in harsh angles. His mouth looked like it hadn’t smiled in months. And his eyes—
Still the same.
Still that storm-grey blue, like water caught between ice and lightning.
Her throat tightened. The cold seeped into her bones, though the air hadn’t changed.
Cillian stopped just beyond the tree.
His eyes locked on hers. Then flicked, flicked—left, right—to the children at her sides. His hands dropped to his sides.
CJ made a soft sound. Calen turned halfway and blinked, clutching her mammy’s coat.
Saoirse’s body moved on instinct.
She walked right up to him and slapped him.
The sound cracked across the park.
He didn’t move. Didn’t block it. His head jerked to the side, then came back slowly.
Saoirse’s voice was low and cold. “Don’t you dare look at me like you belong here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t get to be sorry.”
“I didn’t know if—if I’d be welcome.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
Behind her, she heard Calen fuss—a little huff, a confused sound. CJ stayed quiet, buried in her coat. She glanced back briefly, just long enough to check they hadn’t moved, hadn’t stepped toward him.
They hadn’t.
Good.
Cillian looked like he’d been gut-punched. His gaze drifted toward the children again.
“Are they…?” he started, voice hoarse.
Saoirse cut him off before he could finish.
“Don’t speak to them.”
He blinked. “I wasn’t—I just…”
“You don’t get to ask.”
He nodded slowly. His lips pressed together.
“I just wanted to see you,” he whispered.
“Well, you have. Now leave.”
“I needed—”
“You need nothing from me.”
The silence stretched. A wind blew harder, rustling the trees above. CJ clutched tighter at her leg.
Cillian’s voice broke again, soft as fog.
“Are they okay?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“They’re mine.”
She flinched.
“Don’t say that.”
“I have a right—”
“You have nothing. You left before they were even born.”
“I was seventeen.”
“I was sixteen and pregnant.”
His breath caught.
“You don’t know what it was like,” he said quietly.
“No. You don’t. I stayed.”
Behind her, Calen gave a sharp little grunt. Saoirse turned and bent low, scooping her daughter into her arms. Calen clung to her neck, burying her head in the crook of her collar.
CJ waddled to her knee. She took his hand.
“Go,” she said to Cillian, voice tight.
He looked like he wanted to speak, to scream, to collapse. But he didn’t move.
“Don’t come near them again,” she said. “You don’t get to look at them, talk to them, guess their names, or pretend this is something you earned.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“You’ve missed everything, Cillian. Everything. First steps. First fevers. First birthdays. You don’t know what Calen’s afraid of or how CJ curls up when he’s tired. You don’t know who they are.”
“I want to.”
She held CJ’s hand tighter.
“Well. Wanting doesn’t make you their father.”
She turned and walked away, CJ clinging to her hand, Calen curled against her shoulder. Her back stayed straight, her jaw set, but something deep in her chest ached like it always did when she was too close to Devlin Grove.
They passed the tree. She didn’t look at it. But she felt it.
That tree had seen everything.
The night it started, they were barely fifteen. Cillian had just turned that week. He’d asked her to sneak out with him—no plan, just stars, just the dock, just a blanket and the soft hush of the water brushing the wooden planks below. His family owned the land—Devlin Grove had been in the Devlin line for generations, a stretch of sacred, tangled forest and open grass along the river, tucked behind a crumbling wall just far enough from the city to feel like magic.
They carved their names into the tree that night.
S + C. Just once. Just them.
She remembered the way his hands trembled when he touched her. The way his voice cracked when he said he loved her and meant it like it was gospel. They’d kissed under the moon, pressed chest to chest, hearts hammering like war drums. And then they made love for the first time. It was soft. Clumsy. Brave.
And it didn’t stop.
For months, they’d stolen every hour they could—under the tree, behind Ma Devlin’s shed, on the roof of Tier’s old flat when everyone else was asleep. He’d whisper promises into her skin, and she’d believe every one.
Then came that night. The sky had split open with stars, and the moon hung low, thin and glowing—like it was watching.
She remembered the way Cillian looked at her. Like she was the only girl God had ever made. She remembered his fingers trailing over her hipbones, his lips between her breasts, the whisper of her name caught in his throat.
They didn’t use protection.
She’d told him the truth—her da was strict Catholic. Birth control wasn’t even a conversation. So they risked it, knowing what it meant, knowing what could happen.
They made love all night. Slow, reverent, like they were writing something eternal with their bodies. She could still feel it—how he moved inside her, how the moonlight poured over their skin, how her fingers curled in the grass when she knew, deep in her bones, that something had changed.
That was the night they made CJ and Calen.
She didn’t know it then. Not for another few weeks.
And by then—he was gone.
She woke up one morning, belly just starting to bloat with new life, and learned from a classmate that Cillian Devlin had gone to London. A modeling contract. Big future. No warning. No goodbye. No note.
She was three months along.
When her da found out, everything broke.
She still had dreams of that night. The blood. The floor. His boot as it came down toward her ribs. The cold tile. Her scream. Cal tearing through the hall. Tier punching their da so hard his nose exploded. Her legs wouldn't move. There was blood between them and something sharp in her belly, and she thought she was going to die.
Tier and Cal had carried her, arms shaking, clothes soaked in panic, down through the streets to Ma Devlin’s door.
Ma opened it before they even knocked.
Saoirse was barely conscious when she collapsed on the old woman’s floor, whispering, “Please… help… my babies…”
The rest was a blur.
The hospital. The fear. The machines. The whispers of “too early.” The slap of her da’s name on police forms.
She never saw Cillian again.
Until now.
He didn’t know how long he stood there after she left. Long enough for the clouds to shift. Long enough for the wind to bite.
The path she took curved down through the grove, past the dock, toward the old train shed that hadn’t worked in decades. He didn’t follow. He just stood, heart pounding, breath slow.
Three years gone.
And in three minutes, she’d shattered him.
Cillian turned away from the tree. His hand grazed the trunk as he passed, fingers brushing the old carving—S + C, worn but still there. Their secret. Their start.
His feet carried him to the dock without thought.
The boards groaned beneath his weight, the way they always had. He paused near the edge, where the river sloshed gently below, brown and slow-moving. The willow trees bowed along the bank. The old Devlin Grove signs were half-covered in moss.
Everything looked smaller now. Weary. But not dead.
He squatted near the railing, resting his hands on the post where they used to tie up the little rowboat his uncle gave them one summer. His eyes burned.
And then he saw it.
A small shape caught on a slat of the dock.
Faded fur. Worn thread.
A lion.
It was soft and slumped over, one ear slightly torn, the stitching along its mane loose like it had been kissed and chewed and loved for years. But he knew it in an instant.
It was hers.
The lion he won for Saoirse at the fair when they were twelve. She’d been cold, cheeks flushed from the wind, and he’d spent nearly all his tokens trying to hook it off the wall at the ring toss. She’d hugged it to her chest like it was treasure. Called it Roary. Slept with it every night.
He picked it up slowly, hands shaking.
There was a faint smell of lavender and woodsmoke in the fur—familiar and childlike. A new thread stitched into the tail. A tiny yellow ribbon tied awkwardly in a bow around its neck.
This wasn’t just any toy.
It was Calen’s now.
She’d passed it on.
Saoirse had kept it—held onto something he gave her when they were still only children—and given it to their daughter. She hadn’t thrown it out, hadn’t burned it, hadn’t buried it with the rest of him.
Calen had been holding it earlier. He hadn’t noticed. His chest tightened.
He looked back toward the path. They were long gone.
But this—
This was a sign.
A whisper from the past.
He pressed the lion to his chest and let his eyes close.
She hadn’t told him anything. Not their names. Not their birthdays. Not even their middle names.
But now he knew something for sure.
She remembered.
—
Cillian sat at the edge of the dock long after the lion teddy went slack in his hands.
His palms were soaked. His eyes burned. The wind clawed at the back of his hoodie, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t.
That lion had lived a full life since he last saw it.
He didn’t deserve to be the one holding it now.
The water below lapped against the posts. Somewhere upriver, a dog barked once. Then again. The world continued.
His had stopped.
She hadn’t even said their names. Wouldn’t let him speak to them. Wouldn’t give him a single thing—not a question, not a mercy. Just the slap. And the silence.
She had every right.
Cillian pushed himself to his feet, the lion still in his hand, and started walking.
His feet knew where to go before his heart did.
The gravel path curled up through the grove and back into the town centre, where the smell of chip grease and rain-on-brick meant you were getting close to Ma Devlin’s.
He hadn't eaten since the plane landed. Marley had tried to send food with him, bless her, but he’d been too nervous to touch it. Now his stomach twisted with grief more than hunger.
The bell above the shop door hadn’t changed. Still that same dull ding, like an old bicycle spoke. He paused on the step.
The smell hit him like memory: turmeric, vinegar, frying batter, fried onions. He’d once spent entire nights in here with Cal, dipping chips in curry sauce and laughing until they were both red in the face. Saoirse used to sit on the counter and steal sips from his cola.
That was before.
He opened the door.
The shop was empty—early afternoon lull. Only the flicker of the warmer lights above the chips, and the soft buzz of a radio tuned just off-station.
Then a voice from the kitchen.
“Two ticks—hang on now.”
He froze.
The curtain drew back. And there she was.
Ma Devlin.
She didn’t look surprised to see him. Her apron was flour-streaked, and her reading glasses sat halfway down her nose, but her gaze locked onto the lion teddy in his hand before it lifted to his face.
Cillian swallowed.
She didn’t speak for a moment. Just looked at him like she was weighing a soul.
“Hungry?” she said finally.
He blinked.
She reached for a tray. “Sit down, lad. You look like you’ve been run over by the whole bloody Troubles.”
He nearly collapsed into the chair.
She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t press. She just brought him a chip butty, a pot of curry sauce, and a glass of milk—like she had when he was fifteen and too thin from skipping school lunches.
He stared at the food but didn’t touch it.
“Didn’t think you’d come here first,” she said, soft. “Figured you’d be smart enough to call ahead.”
“I wasn’t.”
“No. You weren’t.”
He stared down at the table.
“She hates me.”
“She loved you more than breath. That doesn’t die easy.”
“She didn’t say a word. Just… took them. Walked away.”
Ma Devlin’s eyes narrowed gently. “She didn’t take them. She had them. Alone. In pain. With bruises. And not a word from the boy who said he’d marry her under the tree.”
His throat closed.
“She kept the lion,” he managed.
“I know. Washed it by hand every Sunday. Told Calen it was magic.”
Calen.
The name sliced through him like glass.
“She is mine.”
Ma Devlin gave a short nod. “Both of them are.”
“I don’t know them.”
“You don’t.”
He finally picked up a chip, but he couldn’t eat it. Just held it until his fingers trembled.
“I missed everything.”
“You chose to.”
He didn’t argue.
There was no defence.
The door opened behind him. Light footsteps. A gasp.
“Jesus, Mary, and—Cillian?!”
He turned—and suddenly his arms were full of Aoife.
His baby sister nearly tackled him off the chair, curly hair flying, arms like anchors around his neck.
“You’re here—you’re really here—I thought Marley was joking—I haven’t seen you in—” She pulled back and blinked at him, expression falling the moment she saw his eyes. “Wait. What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer.
Her gaze dropped to the lion in his hand. Her face changed.
“Oh God.”
“Yeah.”
“She saw you?”
“She slapped me.”
“Oh, Cill…”
“I deserved it.”
Aoife sat down across from him, eyes big and wet. “You see them?”
He shook his head. “I don’t even know their names.”
Aoife’s voice wobbled. “She’s been through hell. She’s not the same girl we grew up with. But she’s still… Saoirse. She still wears that ring on the chain. I saw it last week. She hides it under her jumper, but it’s still there.”
Cillian closed his eyes.
“You think I’ve lost her?”
“I think you better not give up.”
“I don’t even know how to begin.”
“You start with showing up. Then you show up again. And again. Until she lets you breathe next to her without wanting to scream.”
He nodded once, eyes stinging.
“You were always her safe place,” Aoife whispered. “Now you need to earn being theirs.”
He didn’t answer.
The door chimed again.
And this time, fate came in swinging.
Cillian turned.
Tier. And Cal.
Saoirse’s brothers.
Both stared at him like they’d just spotted a live grenade on the counter.
Tier was the first to speak. “You’ve got some balls.”
Cal didn’t say a word. Just stepped forward, fists already curled.
Ma Devlin didn’t flinch. “Not in my shop, boys.”
“He left her to bleed,” Tier hissed, stepping closer. “He left our girl with a belly full of Devlin blood and a father with a death grip.”
Cillian stood.
“I know.”
“You don’t know half of it,” Cal growled. “You didn’t see the look on her face when she thought they weren’t going to make it.”
“I—”
“No. You don’t speak,” Tier snapped. “You listen.”
Cillian didn’t argue. He held their rage like penance.
“She never asked for anything,” Tier said, voice cracking. “Not once. Never blamed you. Never even said your name. But she broke because of you.”
“I’m here now.”
Cal stepped close. Nose to nose.
“Too fucking late.”
Aoife rose between them. “That’s enough!”
Tier blinked at her.
She glared back. “He’s my brother.”
Tier pointed a sharp finger. “And she’s our sister. And those kids—they’re everything.”
The silence after was sharp and bitter.
Cillian didn’t move.
“I won’t fight you,” he said quietly. “But I’ll fight for them.”
Cal’s eyes narrowed. “You better.”
And then they left.
No punch. No forgiveness.
Just a warning.
The door shut behind Tier and Cal with a gust of wind and something heavier.
Cillian stayed standing, the lion still clutched in one hand, his other pressed to the table as if the wood could stop the spinning in his chest.
Aoife hadn’t moved. Her arms were folded now, but her eyes were gentler than they had any right to be.
“You okay?” she asked.
He huffed something like a laugh. “Not remotely.”
She reached out, brushed the crease in his sleeve. “Then maybe now’s the time to brace yourself.”
He looked at her, wary. “For what?”
Aoife stepped back and sighed. “Because I’ve got something to tell you, and I don’t think you’re gonna like it.”
He waited.
“I didn’t tell you sooner because… well, because you left, and everything went to hell, and we didn’t know where you were half the time. And honestly, I thought you’d never come back.”
He sat again slowly, heart pounding.
Aoife looked guilty now. “I’m engaged.”
His brows lifted. “What? Who?”
“Cal.”
He blinked. “Cal Tierney?”
Saoirse’s twin brother.
“Yes.”
“You’re engaged… to Cal?”
She nodded quickly. “Since last year.”
He rubbed his temples. “Jesus, Aoife.”
“We’ve been together a while. We didn’t tell anyone at first, then everything with the twins and Star and Declan and the rest—just... it didn’t feel like the time.”
His voice was flat. “You’re living with them?”
Aoife winced. “Yes. Actually, everyone lives there.”
“What do you mean everyone?”
“Tier. Cal. Me. Luc.”
He stared. “Luc? My Luc?”
“Your stylist, yes. His husband, actually.”
“You’re telling me my stylist is married to Saoirse’s brother?”
“Tier, yeah.”
Cillian stared at her like the ceiling might cave in.
“And Star?”
Aoife’s face softened. “Upstairs flat. Her and the twins. They've always been there. Since the day she left the hospital.”
He swallowed hard.
Aoife sat beside him again. “It's not what you think. It’s not some group plot to cut you out. It just happened. Tier was there. Cal gave up school to take care of them. Ma funded it all at first, made sure Star had a place to heal.”
Cillian’s head dropped forward. “I’ve missed everything.”
Aoife touched his hand. “The kids—CJ and Calen—they’ve got three uncles and a lion teddy. They’re loved. Safe. But… they don’t know you.”
He nodded numbly. “She wouldn’t even say their names.”
“She will. But it’ll take time.”
He looked over. “What do they call me?”
Aoife winced again. “You sure you want to know?”
“Tell me.”
“…The Telly Man.”
He blinked. “The what?”
“You’ve been on billboards since they were babies. Luc’s got clips of your old ads. CJ used to point at them and say ‘Nana’s man!’ because Ma always said you were her favorite.”
Cillian choked on air. “You’re telling me my kids know me as some… some TV lad?”
“And Nana’s TV Boy, sometimes,” she added helpfully. “Calen started that.”
He leaned back, eyes shut. “Christ.”
Aoife laughed softly. “It’s not the worst start. They don’t hate you. They just think you live in the telly.”
“I did live in the telly,” he muttered.
“And now you’re home.”
He opened his eyes.
“You have a lot to fix, Cill,” Aoife said gently. “But you’re here now. Don’t run this time.”
He nodded slowly, holding the lion to his chest once more.
“I won’t.”
Cillian stepped out of the curry shop with the lion teddy pressed to his ribs and the taste of old vinegar still clinging to his mouth.
Aoife had offered to walk him back. He’d waved her off gently.
“I just need some air,” he told her.
She’d believed him.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth: he wasn’t walking for air—he was walking because if he didn’t keep moving, he’d drown in his own chest.
The streets were wet. Not raining, but heavy with it. Belfast had a way of always being slightly damp, like the sky couldn’t quite finish crying.
He walked without direction. Past the chapel. Down the narrow stretch behind the market stalls where he once kissed Saoirse against the alley wall, her skirt still smelling of her Ma’s laundry soap. Every corner hurt.
He should’ve gone back to the Grove. He should’ve slept. Or prayed. Or crawled.
Instead, he walked into O’Shea’s.
The pub hadn’t changed. Same old brown leather seats, darts board hanging lopsided, the smell of cheap whiskey and old men’s cologne lingering in the wood.
He ordered a pint.
Then another.
By the third, the pain began to blur just enough to make it worse.
He sat alone at the back, lion teddy folded beside him, as the Friday crowd started to thicken. Laughter. Pints. Slaps on the back. He didn’t see anyone he knew. That was both a blessing and a curse.
Until he did.
A shadow fell across his table. A heavy frame. The smell of stale beer and something more sour.
“Look who’s back.”
Cillian looked up slowly.
Niall.
Declan’s older brother.
The last time Cillian saw him, Niall was being dragged out of a club in the Cathedral Quarter for throwing a bottle at someone who made a Catholic joke. The Tierneys had never spoken of him with anything but disgust.
Now, he grinned like he’d found fresh meat.
“Didn’t think you’d show your face in this part of town again.”
Cillian stayed still. “Don’t want trouble.”
“Oh, I’m not here for trouble.” Niall leaned closer. “I’m here for justice.”
Cillian’s jaw tightened.
“She’s a traitor,” Niall said. “Your girl. Your little Catholic princess. Thinkin’ she’s too good for the rest of us. Doin’ what she did.”
“Shut up.”
“You abandoned her. We didn’t.”
Cillian rose halfway from his seat.
Niall laughed. “I see you’ve still got your da’s temper.”
“You don’t get to talk about my family.”
“Oh, don’t I? You Devlins think you’re untouchable. But the Grove doesn’t belong to you anymore. That girl—she doesn’t belong to you either.”
Cillian moved before he could stop himself.
The pint glass crashed to the floor as his fist met Niall’s jaw.
The crowd jolted. A woman screamed. Chairs scraped back.
Niall roared, blood from his lip, and lunged.
Cillian ducked the first punch. Landed another. The second hit was sloppier—rage over rhythm.
Then Niall grabbed him by the collar and drove him backwards into the bar.
Pain flared through his back. He heard something crack. Couldn’t tell if it was the wood or a rib.
Fists flew. He didn’t feel them. Not really.
Then—
A blur. A crash.
A voice: “Get off him!”
Arms pulled Niall back. Cillian collapsed against the wall, panting, blood dripping from his lip.
Tier.
Tier had Niall by the jacket, wild-eyed, curls bouncing, eyes blazing.
“You lay a hand on him again and I’ll snap every bone in your hand,” Tier snarled.
Then a second body lunged in—Cal—and drove Niall backward with one punch that made half the pub wince.
“Enough!” the bartender roared.
Niall was hauled out the door by two others, swearing, bleeding, already promising revenge.
Cillian slumped, dizzy.
Tier turned on him, furious. “You idiot.”
Cal grabbed him by the shoulder. “Are you trying to make this harder? She just saw you for the first time in three years and you end up brawling in a bar?”
Cillian shook his head, breath ragged. Blood ran down from a cut near his eye. “I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to fight.”
“Could’ve fooled us!” Tier shouted.
“They insulted her,” Cillian bit out. His voice cracked. “They talked about her like she was dirt. Like she was nothing.”
He looked up, jaw clenched, eyes burning through the haze of blood and whiskey.
“I don’t care if she never forgives me. I don’t care if she hates me for the rest of my life. But I’m not going to stand there and let anyone talk down on her. Not now. Not ever.”
Tier froze.
Cal exhaled slowly.
Silence hovered for a beat too long before Cal reached down and hauled him upright again.
“You’re still a bloody idiot,” Cal muttered.
“But not a coward,” Tier added, voice lower now.
Cillian didn’t reply. He just let them walk him out into the rain, the lion teddy still tucked against his ribs like a memory he hadn’t earned the right to hold.
The fluorescent light above the hospital bed flickered once, then steadied.
Cillian blinked up at the ceiling, the stale antiseptic air burning the inside of his nose. His ribs ached like fire. Every breath was a small war.
A nurse had wrapped them tight—two were cracked, one fractured. He’d needed X-rays, painkillers, and a tetanus shot for the gash on his shoulder. He’d refused stitches for his lip. Said he wanted to feel it.
He sat now in a thin hospital gown, the lion teddy on the bed beside him, its matted fur spotted with something darker—probably blood or old beer. His hoodie was folded in the chair. His pride had vanished somewhere between the bar floor and the ambulance.
The nurse had been polite, efficient.
Right until she looked down at the form and blinked.
“Wait a tick—” she said, eyes narrowing. “You’re the telly lad.”
He blinked.
She grinned. “You’re Nana’s TV Boy, aren’t you? My niece has that old perfume ad saved on her phone. You’re in the bathtub. That’s you.”
He didn’t respond. Just leaned back against the pillow and let the world spin.
She didn’t press.
She left quietly, muttering something about fetching the doctor.
Cillian lay there, heart thudding against the pressure bandage. His hand drifted over his ribs.
Saoirse had once sat in this hospital with broken ribs too.
He remembered Cal telling him—his voice shaking as he’d stood in Ma Devlin’s hall, fists still bloodied, eyes wet.
“She’s bruised up bad,” Cal had said. “Her da did it when he found out.”
Cillian hadn’t gone to the hospital then.
Hadn’t shown up.
He was seventeen and scared and selfish.
She’d been sixteen and broken and still fought to carry two lives inside her.
And now he was here, lying in a hospital bed with busted ribs from trying to defend her honour in a pub three years too late.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
The door creaked open.
Tier appeared first, curls damp from the rain, hoodie slung low over his brows. Cal followed behind, arms crossed, jaw set like stone.
Neither spoke at first.
“You look like shite,” Tier said finally.
Cillian smiled weakly. “You should see the other lad.”
Cal grunted and dropped into the chair beside him. “Heard it took both of us to drag you off.”
“I didn’t even feel it,” Cillian muttered. “Didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You nearly smashed your ribs through your own spine,” Tier added.
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, you weren’t,” Cal snapped. “And if the papers had caught you swinging at Declan’s brother, this whole thing would be ten times worse.”
Cillian’s head dropped back against the pillow. The lion teddy rested at his side like a forgotten relic.
“She won’t even look at me,” he said hoarsely. “But that doesn’t change who she is.”
Tier stayed silent, arms folded.
Cillian’s voice thickened. “She carried them through hell. Took the beatings. Faced her father. Nearly died for them. And still brought two perfect lives into this world. Anyone who dares talk down on that—on her—doesn’t deserve to breathe her name.”
Cal’s jaw flexed.
“I don’t care if she never lets me close again,” Cillian added. “But I’ll never be the kind of man who stands by and lets someone shame the woman who saved my whole damn bloodline.”
A beat of silence passed.
Tier leaned against the wall and stared at him for a long, unreadable moment.
“Then start acting like someone worth their fight,” he said.
Cillian didn’t reply. He just reached for the lion teddy again, curling his fingers around the fraying mane.
Outside, the rain had finally stopped.
But inside, everything still felt like drowning.