Page 29 of Colin (The Doherty Mafia)
She was pretty darn incredible.
It had been two hours of us in the car together. Brendan was dozing by now and Aidan had slipped low down in the seat as he spoke to Leah on the phone.
Marley had gone silent since she told us about the vows. I noticed she wasn’t being her usual chirpy self. But she was so close to me that I wanted to touch her, so I moved my hand over to her lap, gently grazing her thighs with my fingers.
She looked over at me and our eyes met.
“Are you okay?” I asked in a whisper. I didn’t suspect Aidan of overhearing our conversation—he seemed pretty involved in his chat with Leah.
Marley nodded. The look on her face seemed a little faraway.
“There’s something on your mind,” I remarked and she said nothing for a while.
“I’m just thinking about my life back in Las Vegas, you know?” she eventually admitted.
“Your job?”
She nodded. She’d been angry, confused, panicked before—but I hadn’t seen her like this yet. Looking sad.
I curled my hand over her knee and gave it a squeeze. She rewarded me with a smile.
“You don’t have to think about that for a while, not when you’re in New York.”
“And what happens after that?” she asked.
I didn’t know how to answer that question. I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I didn’t have anything to offer her.
She wasn’t actually my wife. She wasn’t my responsibility.
“You don’t have to answer that. It was rhetorical. I’m not expecting you to come up with a solution,” she said.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You just need a break,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sure I will.”
Marley threw a look over her shoulder at my brothers in the back. Brendan was still asleep. Aidan wasn’t even looking at us while he spoke to Leah, but had a big silly grin on his face.
“You have a pretty cool family,” Marley said.
I kept my eyes on the road, but my hand was still on her legs, tracing the shape of her thighs. I liked it there.
“Yeah, they’re all right.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are?” she asked.
“Lucky about what?”
“To have brothers you’re so close with. To have a strong connection with your family. It’s pretty plain to me that you guys had a solid childhood together.”
I drew my hand away. She had no idea what we had to endure.
She didn’t know that our mother was murdered in our house while the rest of us slept. The only thing we had now was each other.
“Yeah, something like that,” I replied.
“Whoever you really end up marrying, sober, will be a lucky girl to be a part of this family,” she continued.
I didn’t want to look at her now. I didn’t want her to see how that fucked with my head.
She didn’t know that I wasn’t going to marry anybody else.
This was as close to a real marriage I was ever going to get.
Seventeen
Marley
Five hours after we left Las Vegas, we were in Colin’s bachelor pad.
There was no other phrase for it.
It was a loft-style apartment with absolutely minimum decor or furniture. It seemed to be a place where he crashed when he had nowhere else to go.
Hopefully, it was also a place where he kept his important documents because I was hoping to find them.
We’d dropped Brendan and Aidan off first to their respective homes, and now we were alone together.
“Your brothers seemed to take the news well,” I said, throwing myself into the big leather couch in the middle of the loft. As it turned out—it was pretty comfy.
Aidan grabbed two cans of beer from his fridge and threw one in my direction. I caught it and he gave me a victorious grin.
“Yeah, I was pretty surprised too. I guess they’re not really taking it seriously, which is for the best,” he said.
“They’re expecting me to hang around for a few days and then make a smooth exit from your life,” I added.
Colin sat down on the coffee table across from me. It was a sturdy glass-top table, but I was nervous about it cracking under his hefty muscular weight. I knew exactly what that body was capable of.
I felt a tug between my legs. We were alone again. We hadn’t made out in a couple of hours. I had withdrawal symptoms.
It was like I was addicted to him.
He watched me closely.
“Look, Marley, I don’t want to give you any false hopes. This is fun. I like having you around…” he said.
“You like fucking me.” I completed the sentence for him.
He smirked.
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
I popped open the can and took a big gulp. I definitely needed the drink.
“What you’re trying to say is that you don’t want me getting too comfortable here. I get it.”
Colin drank too.
“I don’t usually have chicks around here. I don’t bring them back to my place, and those who I do are asked to leave soon after.”
