I swung my legs off the bed. “You’d know if I was. There’d be vomit involved.”
Mac laughed at that, his fingers trailing over my flank as I stood. “Where are you going?”
“To clean up.”
“And then what?”
I threw a heated look back over my shoulder. “Depends what your stamina is like.”
“I’ve never had any complaints.”
Chapter Twenty
Hey! Can you come to Cillian’s ASAP? I need your help with something.
I read the message from Mac three times, struggling to make sense of it. We’d spent a lot of time together over the last few days, both in bed and out of it, and with today being Saturday, it had surprised me to wake and discover him gone without so much as a note. And now this. Was there some sort of drama with Finn and Cillian?
What’s going on?When ten minutes passed with no response, I resigned myself to going over there, if only to satisfy my curiosity. Mac still hadn’t had his reconciliation dinner with his brother, the date they’d penciled in not working for either of them when it had arrived. Despite that, I got the impression they were getting along much better. Although it was hard to tell how much of that was because Mac was here far more than he was there.
I hadn’t gone to visit my father in hospital again, deciding his recuperation would be much quicker without the release ofcortisol us being in the same room always seemed to engender. I had, however, kept tabs on his recovery by calling the hospital every day. On day three, a cheery nurse had informed me he’d discharged himself. To go where, I didn’t know. I just hoped it wasn’t back to the squat where he had to climb in through the window. He might have survived one fall, but the chances weren’t good for him surviving a second. Unfortunately, as I hadn’t asked him for any information about where he’d been staying, I had no way of checking.
Forgoing a cab—and the dreaded spleen stealing bus—I walked to Finn and Cillian’s flat, checking my phone every few minutes in case Mac got back to me. He didn’t, my message to him remaining unread.
What if he’d called me over there to tell me he was going back to London? Just because he’d shown no previous signs of wanting to leave Paris, didn’t mean he hadn’t decided it was for the best. Cormac King was impulsive; he’d admitted that himself. But why summon me to another place to tell me, though? Back-up from his brother? Back-up for what? If he thought I’d react to the news with anything but a forced nonchalance, he didn’t know me very well. I’d put on the world’s best front, even if it was a million miles from the way I really felt.
I was no closer to an answer by the time I stood outside the flat, having already rung the doorbell. The door swung open straightaway, almost like Mac had been standing right by it waiting for my arrival. “You took your time,” he said, tugging me inside and closing the door in my wake. I followed him into the living room, a silent and standing Cillian and Finn doing nothing to ease the sick feeling in my gut that something was badly wrong. “What, no greeting?” I said to Finn. “Did we fall out over something and someone forget to tell me?”
His only response was to stare at his feet. I knew guilt when I saw it and that was one hundred percent I-can’t-look-at-you-right-now guilt. Cillian fared better, at least meeting my gaze. But his body language was more off than I’d ever seen it, even than the day he’d turned up at Finn’s door to win him back.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why is everyone acting weird?”
Mac cleared his throat. “Can I talk to him alone?”
Instead of arguing that he wasn’t about to be dismissed from his own living room, Cillian left without a word, Finn almost tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to follow. With only one person left in the room, I turned to Mac for an explanation, catching him casting a concerned glance toward the spare bedroom, the door closed.
“Who’s in there?” I demanded.
Ignoring my question, Mac waved a hand toward the sofa. “Why don’t we sit?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared him down. “I’m fine where I am, thanks.” My voice was icy. Whatever this was, and I hadn’t worked that out yet, I didn’t like it. “Is it your ex? Is she in there?”
“No! Of course not.”
If he wasn’t going to answer me, there was an easy way of finding out. I started toward the door, Mac stepping in the way and planting a hand on my chest to push me back a few steps. “I need to talk to you first.”
“So talk. Because all you’re doing at the moment is being weird. You all are.”
“Yeah, I know.” Mac ran a hand through his hair. “Finn and Cillian aren’t sure this was the right thing to do. Especially Finn. He took a lot of talking around, and if it all goes tits up, I’m going to be copping a lot of flak from him. He really cares about you.”
“And you don’t?” It was a funny question to ask the man who I’d gone to bed with only the night before, the two of us sharing the latest of many orgasms.
“Of course I care. This comes from a place of caring.”
“This? When do you tell me whatthisis?”
“When you sit down and listen to me.”
Our gazes clashed, but I refused to move toward the sofa.
