Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 54580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 218(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 273(@200wpm)___ 218(@250wpm)___ 182(@300wpm)
A part of her hoped he would storm across the street and yell at her, maybe get it out of his system and forgive her, but she knew better. Men like Olcan McNally didn’t cow down to weakness and deceit like hers. She should count herself lucky that he’d not hurt her and would hopefully prevent his brothers or another member of their extended family from exacting a price for her actions.
As the night got later and no one came, not him nor anyone else, she finished off the wine and grabbed another bottle. Spending much of the night lost in a burgundy haze and the sound of Thor snoring contently by her side. Right now, he was her only friend.
Eventually, she nodded off to sleep, oblivious to anything until the following morning when she awoke to the house alarm going off. She punched in the code and answered the phone, letting the techs know everything seemed in order. She could see Thor running around the backyard, so it had likely been set off by him going through the doggie door she’d forgotten to latch before going to bed. She’d have to leave it off so it didn’t do that after she left.
Her head roared as she took a shower and a handful of aspirin, trying to settle her head a bit. She noted that there was a bit of wine left in the last bottle from last night and poured it into a glass.
“Fuck it,” she said to the empty room around her, turning up the glass and finishing off the wine for breakfast. Hair of the dog and all that, she thought to herself.
After tending any last-minute details, she slipped out the front door with her bags just as the sun was coming up. She had been tempted to take the car they had left her and just leave it parked for them to find at the station, but she wanted to leave as little of a trail as possible. There was always the chance they’d report it stolen if they came home to find her gone and no way to get in touch with her.
Instead, she walked hurriedly down the block and made her way over several more to a bus stop a bit more out of the way, taking the first one that arrived, then walking to the nearest ATM. She was only allowed to withdraw five hundred dollars from her card, but it was enough to get her somewhere else.
She hailed a cab to Dorchester, calling her landlord on the way to give him a sob story about backing out of the lease with him. She felt bad about lying to him, but she was desperate. He agreed to give her the rent back but retained the deposit. It was more than she’d thought she’d get back, so she took it, asking if she could pick it up now.
Within the hour, she’d gotten all the money she could gather, including a paltry fifty bucks from a local pawn shop for the laptop and phone. That gave her a little more than twelve hundred dollars to put as much distance between herself and Boston as possible with enough left over to hopefully find a room to rent for a little while, until she could figure out what to do next.
Making her way back to the bus station, she bought a ticket to Pensacola, Florida. It was as good a place as any to get lost, and there would be plenty of warmth for quite a while longer. She was hoping that with the tourism that went on there, she could find a job waiting tables for tips or something like that, someplace that didn’t ask too many questions. The bus didn’t leave for another two hours, and she’d been able to go ahead and check her bag, so she decided to grab a cup of coffee and a bagel while she waited, ending up sitting in the very same little coffee shop she’d sat in when she first arrived here.
Her heart ached at the thought of going so far away from Olcan, and it undoubtedly showed as an elderly man looking in her direction smiled and nodded, walking over to her for a moment after he dropped his empty cup in a nearby bin.
“Whatever it is you’re running from, I hope you find peace,” he told her, turning to leave without waiting for a response.
Niamh marveled at him as he walked away. Was she that transparent?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Olcan
“YOU THINK SHE’S TELLING the truth now?” Ronan asked.
Olcan shrugged. He was still angry, and he still felt that wretched emptiness in his belly she’d left behind. He’d called Fergus last night but waited until this morning to call his other brothers and ask them over. His first concern had been to make sure Fergus was safe and aware that he might be in trouble. He’d expected his brother to be angry too, but Fergus was surprisingly calm about the whole thing.