Ryan Reign (New York Ruthless #4)(43)

My mum was always a spiritual woman. She was born and raised a Catholic, but she believed in a different kind of God and heaven than the one the priest used to lecture us about every Sunday. She believed in reincarnation and souls being bound together for eternities. I used to listen to her stories about witchcraft and fate, but I never believed in them. But maybe she was right. For some reason, Jessie was bound to us long before we even met her. Maybe it was always meant to be that she would be ours. Maybe Paul and Patrick Ryan were truly put on this earth to test us all, and to bring us all together?

I glance down at my empty glass and shake my head. Surely I’ve had far too much to drink if I’m entertaining such ridiculous notions. There is something about a full moon that brings out my mother’s side of the family in me. Our Aunt Em is a card-carrying Pagan and has always been a believer in all things mystical too.

My thoughts drift to Jessie again. I heard her and Conor in the shower earlier, and for the first time in my life I was jealous of my little brother. Knowing that he was the only one who could give her what she needed sliced through my heart like a blade. She has been polite to me since we got her back, but she can barely stand to look at me. I watched Mikey and Liam with her earlier and it made me as hard as iron. They are so relaxed with her. Their relationship is easy in a way that mine and hers will never be. I thought our time here in Ireland would make us stronger, but I fucked it up completely, and now I wonder if she will ever look at me the same way again.

The sound of the sliding door behind me makes my head snap around. I am on high alert having taken my eye off the ball once already and I will never let it happen again. She must have turned on a light and it illuminates her silhouette as she walks toward me with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

“What are you doing out here?” she asks with a frown as she reaches me.

“Drinking.” I hold up my now empty glass as proof.

“You should never drink alone, Shane Ryan,” she says with a tilt of her head. “So scooch up.”

“What?”

“It’s so chilly out here. I don’t want to sit on one of those cold ass chairs. So scoot.”

These lounge chairs aren’t built for two, but I shuffle over as much as I can and she squeezes in beside me. Lying on her side with her leg draped over mine, she wraps an arm and half the blanket around me and presses her head against my chest. I look down at her and frown because this doesn’t seem like she’s pissed at me, but if she’s not, then she fucking should be.

“That moon is beautiful,” she says with a soft sigh that I feel in my groin.

“Sure is.”

“It reminds me of that night by the lake. Do you remember?”

How could I forget it. It was the night I finally admitted my feelings for her. It was the night she promised she would never leave us. I suppose we have both made promises that we couldn’t keep. I promised her she would be safe with me. I swore that I would never let him hurt her, yet I handed her straight to him. “Of course I do. It seems like a lifetime ago.”

“I think about it all the time.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I think you should build that place out on the lake as soon as we get back.”

“You do?” I look down at her.

“Hmm. So we can have a place just like this when we need to get away from the city.”

I wrap my arms around her and we sit in silence for a while.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” she whispers.

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” I lie.

“Well it certainly feels like it. Does what he did bother you?”

I look down at her with a scowl on my face. “Of course it fucking bothers me, Jessie. I hate what that evil fucker did to you.”

“I don’t mean like that,” she stammers. “I mean…when I was with your brothers earlier, I was hoping you might…”

Fuck! She thinks that I don’t want her. I don’t even know what to say in response to that but she fills the silence with another question.

“Why were you drinking out here alone?”

“I just wanted some time to think.”

“About?”

“About everything.”

“Are you okay?” She looks up at me with those beautiful blue eyes and my heart almost bursts out of my chest. After everything she’s been through, everything I let happen to her, she asks if I’m okay.

“No,” I say. The whiskey must be some kind of truth serum because I should tell her everything is fine and send her back to bed.

“Shane,” she says with a sigh as she rests her warm hand on my cheek. “Please don’t blame yourself for what happened.”

“I should never have let him anywhere near you. He got to you because of me and that’s a fact, Jessie. There is no escaping that.”

“No!” She shifts her position so she can look into my eyes. “He got to me because that is what he does. You didn’t even know who he was. How could you have predicted that?”

“I made you a promise that he would never hurt you again!” I snarl at her although the only person I am angry with right now is myself.

“And I love that you made that promise, Shane, but don’t you see it’s one that you can never keep.” She shakes her head. “Nobody can.”