off him so she could see the tree in its entirety. She’d seen it before, of course, but it was different now. Now there was time to truly see it. She traced the twisted branches that tangled from the trunk and over his shoulder. “Oak?”
“Good eye. It’s family. Strong and rooted deeply.”
That sounded sweet, but she stopped on the scar bisecting the tree. “And this? Did this come before or after the tattoo?”
He hesitated, and she once again wondered if it was his father that had hurt him. From everything she’d learned of Seamus O’Malley in recent weeks, she didn’t doubt he was capable of it. But…to raise a hand to his son? Let alone what must have been a blade? It took a special kind of monster to deal out that kind of violence. She curled her hands into fists, trying to quell the sudden anger coursing through her system. You don’t hurt the helpless and innocent. You just don’t. For someone who supposedly held family above all things to do it…She wanted to hurt that man. She wanted to hurt him badly. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, I want to.” He covered her hand with his own. “My father isn’t a good man. He didn’t like the fact that I mouthed off to him when I was thirteen, so he decided the best way to deal with my attitude was this.” A shadow passed over his face. “It was just one cut, and not a deep one at that, but I never forgot. That’s the other side of family. It can be strong enough to stand in the face of any enemy that arises, or it can be the rot that eats away at your insides, weakening you until you’re little more than a shell. Both tattoo and scar are reminders of that.”
Oh, Teague. She kissed the scar, because there was nothing else to do. If a time machine existed to allow her to save him from the hurts he’d experienced at the hands of the man whose one purpose in life should have been to protect him, she would have taken it in a heartbeat. But it didn’t.
There was nothing she could change but the future, and even that wasn’t a sure thing.
“The ones on my knuckles are my siblings.” He waited for her to look up before he pointed to each in turn. “Aiden, Carrigan, me, Cillian, Sloan, Devlin, Keira.”
Her gaze landed on the one representing him. A flame. She knew that specific flame. She’d seen it before. “Saint Jude?”
He grinned. “Yeah.”
Which meant the other symbols represented saints as well. She touched each in turn. It was such a different way to go about representing a family that he obviously had very conflicting feelings about. But he loved them. That couldn’t be any clearer. She stopped on his bare ring finger. “This one?”
“Well, angel, I left that one blank because I figured someday I might meet a woman I cared about enough to marry.” He rolled back on top of her, grinning. “That one’s yours.”
Mine. She kissed him, the riot of emotions in her chest only getting worse. She loved him so much it hurt to breathe. He took the kiss deeper, his hands sliding over her skin in a way designed to make her lose her mind. As he slipped a finger inside her, she had one last thought before pleasure bore her away.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe things really will be okay.
Chapter Eighteen
The phone ringing brought Teague out of a delicious dream about being wrapped around Callie. He opened his eyes and smiled because the dream wasn’t far off from reality. She was curled up against his side, her head pillowed on his shoulder. He touched her hair, smoothing it back, marveling that she was his wife. It had been an impulsive move, but he didn’t regret it in the least.
The phone rang again, snapping him out of it. He reached blindly for the nightstand and answered without looking at the screen. “What?”
“Where the hell are you?”
Aiden. He almost snapped that it was none of his brother’s fucking business, but the panic in Aiden’s tone gave him pause. “My apartment. What’s going on?”
“Get your ass back here now. Carrigan’s gone.”
For one breathless moment, Teague thought he meant dead. Then the actual words penetrated through the fear. “Gone.”
“That fucking piece of shit Halloran has her.” Aiden paused, and when he spoke again, he sounded forcibly less panicked. “He said we have twenty-four hours to