Destroy Me - Ella Sheridan Page 0,39
it.” He turned to Deacon. “What do you think?”
Deacon growled at his friend. “Now you ask? Dickhead.” He sighed. “I think we have a resource. We need to use it.”
“We need her, Fionn,” Mack added.
After a long moment of silence, Fionn gave Lyse a nod. “Let’s see what’s on your mind then.”
Chapter Sixteen
He was a great fecking liar.
He hadn’t lashed out automatically, because he’d been after being a bastard. He’d lashed out because, God help him, he couldn’t stand the way Lyse looked at Deacon a minute longer. Like he was a hero. Like he wore gold and earned every ounce of it.
She didn’t look at Fionn that way. No, she looked at him like he’d stomped her kitten to death. And feck it, but when he looked himself in the mirror, he felt exactly the same about the man staring back at him.
Right now she seemed to be deciding if she was going to kick him in the balls or not. Hopefully not. He liked his balls the way they were, thank you very much.
“I need to get my computer set up,” she said, deliberately turning away from him. “You have a desktop, Mack?”
“I do.” Mack took a plate from the stack near the stove and began to pile it high while they discussed specs Fionn only listened to with half an ear. He was too busy watching Lyse’s lips and remembering last night.
“I could use your setup to expand my laptop’s capability,” Lyse was saying.
“And we can jack in with what we brought and get your security system up to speed,” Deacon said.
“I have a security system,” Mack protested.
“Not like this one.” King grinned. “We have a few little toys you might like to play with, Mack.”
Lyse’s toys. Deacon had always been a willing guinea pig when it came to security.
Mack hefted a plate that must weigh three pounds given what it was holding. “I’ll show you where to set up.”
They left Fionn alone with his mam. She was watching the door, her back to him, but he could read the tension in the lines of her body. When he stood to gather the dishes from the table, she turned her piercing green eyes, so like his own, on him.
He recognized that look—his mam was none too happy with him. For a moment he was back in primary school, his mam staring him down as he tried to talk his way out of some bit of trouble he’d gotten into. She’d never let him get away with it, not then. He had a feeling she wouldn’t now either, though what she was upset about…
He knew what she was upset about. Shame washed through him all over again.
Clearing his throat, he approached the sink with his load. “I’ll be working on these.”
Siobhan didn’t say a word. He could feel her stare, sense her walking up beside him, though the hard spray of water into the sink covered her footsteps. She’d always been a quiet woman; he came by that skill naturally. She’d been after sneaking up on a body more than once in his childhood, another reason he hadn’t pulled the wool over her eyes much as a boy. From the corner of his eye he watched as she leaned a hip against the cabinet, but she didn’t speak. Not right away.
“Do you know how long it took before I forgave your father for what he did?” she asked.
That she had forgiven him at all was a miracle. His father had been a great liar as well, another skill Fionn came by naturally. “No.”
Siobhan sighed, her body relaxing as she watched him load dishes into the soapy water. “Far too long, really. I spent so many years consumed by anger, by betrayal. It ate me up inside. I could never be happy that way, Fionn, and I finally realized that I didn’t want to be living without being happy. I wasn’t going to let him take that away from me.”
Fionn wasn’t sure he could be as generous; in fact he knew he couldn’t. Anger still smoldered inside him when he thought of all his father’s death had cost them, not the least of which was the illusion of trust. He’d trusted his father implicitly.
Look where that had gotten them.
His mam moved beside him to rinse the dishes he washed, and stack them in the drying rack. “There was more to it than that, of course,” she said. “By then I’d met Mack, and I didn’t want to put my