Page 69 of Unreasonably Yours


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“I could use a wonder.” Despite the warm tea, I shiver.

Cillian shifts a bit, holding out an arm. “Come here.” It doesn't take any convincing for me to cuddle up to his warmth.

Once I'm settled, blanket wrapped around us both, my back fitting easily against his broad chest, he holds his mug next to mine. “To wonders.”

I can't help the broad smile that bursts across my face. “Sláinte.”

We slip into an easy quiet. He hums along with the music for a few bars, the vibration soothing, before he begins to sing.

“Are you sure you're not some kind of man-siren?” I ask, the record spinning into silence. I'd been holding his free hand, studying the ink on his knuckles. He wore rings so often I rarely saw the words—Hell Bent—spelled out across his fingers.

He snorts, “That's giving me too much credit.”

“It's not.” I shift a bit to be able to look at him. “I saw you on stage, remember? You sing and people can't help but listen.”

He rolls his eyes.

“False humility isn't a good look on anyone.”

“It's not humility.” He takes my empty mug in his freehand, setting them both on the windowsill behind the couch. “I know where I stand is all.”

“Did you ever want to do more with it? Really pursue something?” I feel him tense behind me. Rather than push him for more, I offer something of myself. “I never let my art be plan A. That was a path for people with a safety net. So it always got pushed to the back burner. A show here, a mural gig there, but never something I let myself commit to.” I pause. “I think that's why it was easy to let David convince me it didn't matter.”

“I'll say it again, he's an idiot. Your work is stunning.”

I shrug, letting the back of my head fall onto his shoulder. “Stunning isn't enough.”

“Neither is being able to carry a tune.”

“Oh, come off it. You're good with instruments, you've got stage presence, that voice, you could've... I don't know.”

“Been a rockstar?” He asks with a hint of levity.

“Why not?”

“Maybe in a different life.”

“Scholarship domino?”

“Yeah.” He sighs as I tangle our fingers together. “Maybe the version of me who did the Berklee thing would've tried to make a career of it.”

After a few beats, I nudge, “But?”

“But, first month of senior year, Lucy and I got caught with some other kids stealing a car.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah,” he laces his fingers between mine. “My uncle helped us dodge the felony, but it still cost me that full ride. And being a dumb kid, I thought it was the end of the world.” He takes a moment before continuing. “I decided to drop out, get my GED, and enlist.”

My stomach twists. I move my back against the couchwhile still being in Cillian's lap, needing to take him in. “Wait, how old were you?”

“Seventeen,” he says.

“You were a baby.” A lump rises in my throat.

He huffs something too sad to be a laugh. “My mom would agree. But no one could tell me that, and my cousin—who I thought was the coolest motherfucker I'd ever met—was in the army...” He swallows hard, “Joey told me it would be the easiest way to get outta Boston and get my degree.” His gaze shifts down to our entangled hands. “And I believed him like the dumb kid I was.”

Since meeting Cillian, I'd struggled to understand how someone like him ended up in a war zone. Not only because he didn't look the part, but there was a gentleness to him, something at the core of who he was that didn't align with 'soldier' to me. Now I understood.