For exactly two seconds, I owned the moment.
Cillian's hand was warm in mine, his fingers still loose with surprise, and the look on his face was worth every stupid decision I'd ever made. His eyes narrowed, not with anger but with the slow recalibration of a man who'd walked into a room expecting one thing and found another.
Then his fingers tightened around mine. His free hand came to rest on my waist, drawing me closer, and the surprise melted into something far worse: amusement.
"You missed me," he repeated, low enough that only I could hear. His thumb traced a circle against my hip. "Say it again."
My stomach flipped. "Don't push it."
"You started this, Ava."
He was right. I had started this. And now I was standing on a public sidewalk, voluntarily pressed against a mafia heir, with my coworker watching through the window and my fake identity unraveling by the hour.
Through the café glass, I could see Elena frozen mid-pour, mouth open. Jason had stopped near the door, coffee in hand, staring. Good. That was the point. If everyone believed Cillian was mine, willingly mine, then Jason would stop digging and Elena would stop worrying and I could buy myself time.
All I had to do was be convincing.
"Come inside," I said, tugging his hand. "I'll make you a coffee."
"You're inviting me in." His head tilted. "Last night you ran from me."
"Last night was last night." I smiled up at him, bright and sweet. My cheeks ached. "Today I'm being a good girlfriend."
"Wife," he corrected.
"Let's not peak too early, babe."
The word babe left my mouth and immediately tried to crawl back in. His eyebrow rose a fraction. Something shifted behind his expression; a flicker of genuine entertainment that made him look younger and significantly more dangerous.
"Babe," he said, testing it. The accent wrapped around it in a way that made it sound like a different word entirely. "Is that what we're doing now?"
"Would you prefer sweetheart? Pumpkin? Love of my life and general nightmare?"
"I'd prefer you say it like you mean it."
I didn't have a comeback for that. His eyes held mine, green and steady, and for half a second the performance slipped and I was just Ava standing too close to a man who smelled like winter and bad decisions.
I pulled the café door open. "After you, darling."
He walked in. The café went quiet the way rooms do when something enters that doesn't belong. Elena set down the milk pitcher very carefully. Jason turned from the counter, coffee forgotten.
I led Cillian to the counter, still holding his hand, and smiled at Elena like this was the most normal morning of my life.
"Elena, this is Cillian. My boyfriend."
Elena's eyes went wide. She looked at Cillian, looked at me, looked at our hands, and mouthed what the fuck behind his shoulder.
"We've been long distance," I added, the lies building like a house of cards in a wind tunnel. "He surprised me last night. That's why I left my shift."
Cillian leaned against the counter beside me, perfectly at ease. "She's been difficult to pin down," he said to Elena, his voice warm, almost charming. So disorienting I nearly broke character.
Elena blinked. "I... yeah. She is. Hi. You're very..." She gestured vaguely at all of him. "Tall."
"Thank you," he said, as if that were a normal compliment.
Jason was still by the door. His jaw was tight. He looked from Cillian to me, then shook his head once and pushed through the door without a word.
Something pinched in my chest. I shoved it down and busied myself making Cillian a coffee. Black, because he seemed like the type.
"You know my order?" he asked.
"You don't strike me as a caramel latte person."
"And if I were?"
"Then I'd have serious questions about our compatibility."
That was when Lana burst through the café door, Elena grabbing her arm like she was trying to contain a small tornado. They skidded to a stop at the counter, Lana's eyes bouncing between my face, Cillian's hand resting on the counter near mine, and the general energy of the situation.
"Okay," Lana said. "What the actual hell. Last night he's your cousin. Today he's your boyfriend? What's tomorrow, Evie? Your tax accountant? Your parole officer?"
Elena leaned in, voice dropping to a sharp whisper. "You vanished from your shift, ghosted my texts, and now you're behind the counter making this man a drink like you've been doing it for years. Talk."
Cillian picked up his cup. Took a sip. Watched me over the rim with eyes that said go on, dig deeper. I'll wait.
"It's... a long story," I managed.
"Summarize," Lana said.
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Cillian set down the cup. "We're married," he said.
The silence that followed could have been heard from space.
"Have been for about six months," he continued, smooth as anything, his arm sliding around my waist and pulling me against his side like it was reflex. "She wanted to keep it quiet while she finished her semester."
Lana's mouth was doing something extraordinary. Opening and closing with no sound, like a fish that had just received devastating news.
"Six months?" Elena whispered. "Evie. You said he was a cousin."
"The cousin thing was a misunderstanding," I said, my voice climbing into a register only dogs should hear. "He's European. The family terms are different. It's cultural."
What am I saying. What am I literally saying right now.
Cillian's thumb stroked my hip, slow and deliberate. A prompt. Keep going, little wife. Entertain me.
"Right, honey?" I said, turning to him with a smile so wide it should have come with a dental warning.
He looked down at me. The amusement in his eyes had deepened into something almost fond, which was terrifying because I couldn't tell if he was performing or if he'd somehow started enjoying this. His lips brushed my temple, featherlight and devastating.
"Of course, darling." To the girls: "She didn't want to jinx our anniversary trip."
"Paris," I added, because my mouth apparently had a death wish. "Next month. Very romantic. He planned the whole thing."
Elena frowned. "Evie, you're terrified of flying."
"Conquered it for love," I said, the words physically hurting me as they left my body. What other cringe line am I supposed to say? My beloved? My sun and stars? My personal crime lord?
Cillian glanced at me, something sharpening behind the performance. "Afraid of flying," he said, his voice light but his eyes anything but, "and yet you managed to fly across an ocean to get away from your husband."
The word husband landed like a dart.
I laughed, too loud, too bright. "That's the thing about love, isn't it? Makes you do crazy things." I patted his chest. "Like marrying someone who brings up embarrassing stories in public."
Lana eyed Cillian's suit, then his face, then the hand on my waist. Some of the suspicion softened into something reluctantly impressed. "He does look like a husband. The terrifying kind."
"Overprotective," Cillian said mildly. "But hers."
The word hers did something to my ribcage that I refused to examine.
Elena pointed at me. "We need details later. All of them. The wedding, the secret, everything."
"Promise," I lied.
They retreated to the other end of the counter, throwing backward glances and whispering furiously. I caught the words "secret husband" and "holy shit" and "do you think he's rich" before they rounded the corner.
Cillian waited until they were out of earshot. His thumb resumed that slow stroke on my waist.
"Paris," he murmured. "Noted."
"Don't get ideas," I muttered, finally stepping out of his arm. My skin tingled where he'd held me. "Now they think I'm in a secret whirlwind marriage and conquering phobias for romance."
"You grabbed my hand first."
"A moment of insanity."
"You called me darling."
"A moment of severe insanity."
His mouth curved, slow and real, and for one unguarded second he looked like the boy in that photograph. The one with sunshine in his smile and a mother's hand on his arm.
Then my phone buzzed in my apron pocket.
I pulled it out. Unknown number.
Unknown:Cute couple. Does your husband know you're performing, or is he in on the joke?
The café, the warmth, the stupid glow of whatever this had been, it all drained out of me in one cold rush. Someone was here. Not yesterday, not last night. Right now. Watching the sidewalk, the window, the whole act.
Cillian read it over my shoulder. I felt the exact moment his body changed beside me. The ease left his posture like a switch had been flipped. His hand, still resting at the small of my back, went rigid.
When I looked up, the man who had been teasing me about Paris was gone. In his place was something older and far less patient, jaw set, eyes scanning the street through the window with the calm, systematic focus of someone who knew exactly how to find a person who didn't want to be found.
"It seems," he said, voice quiet and precise, "that someone else is very interested in my wife."
The word wife landed differently this time. Something heavier, wrapped in iron.
And for the first time, I didn't correct him.