She Has His Eyes, and He’s Marrying My Stepsister Chapter 07

Chapter 7: Under His Roof

Killian’s house wasn’t a house. It was a glass fortress on a hill with a gate, cameras, and two security guards who called

mama’am.

Ivy pressed her face against the window as we pulled in. “Mommy. Is this a castle?”

“It’s just a house, baby.”

“It’s a castle,” Killian said from the driver’s seat. “And there’s a room upstairs with a princess bed. If you want it.”

Ivy gasped like he’d offered her the moon.

He’d had the room done in one day. Pale yellow walls. A canopy bed. A whole shelf of stuffed ducks.

Ivy screamed. Then she ran across the room and hugged his legs.

Killian froze like he’d been shot. Slowly, carefully, his big hand came down to rest on her curls.

I had to leave the room before I started crying.

The days after that felt like a dream I didn’t trust.

Killian worked from home. Every morning, he made Ivy pancakes shaped like ducks. They were terrible. She ate every single one. Every night, he read her a bedtime story, and when she asked for “the voices,” he did them. Badly.

I stood in the doorway one night and watched him tuck her in. She grabbed his finger before he could leave.

“Killian?”

“Yeah, little bird?”

“Are you gonna live with us forever?”

He looked at me over her head. I couldn’t read his face.

“I’d like that,” he said quietly. “If your mom lets me.”

At midnight, I couldn’t sleep. I went down to the kitchen in an old T-shirt and found him there, shirtless, drinking whiskey

in the dark.

I should have turned around, I didn’t.

“Can’t sleep either?” I asked.

“I keep thinking about the five years.” He set down the glass. “I came back, Wren. Did you know that?”

My heart stopped. “What?”

“Eight months after I left. I flew back without telling anyone. I went to your mother’s house. Sloane answered the door.” His jaw clenched. “She said you’d moved in with a guy. That you were pregnant with his baby. That you’d asked her to tell me never to contact you again.”

“That’s not-”

didn’t believe her. So I drove to the address she gave me.” His eyes went dark. “And I saw you. Big and round and glowing. Laughing with a man carrying grocery bags into your apartment.”

I covered my mouth. “That was Maya’s brother. He helped me move a crib.”

Killian laughed, low and bitter. “I sat in my car for three hours. Then I flew back to London and didn’t speak to atone for a month.”

He’d been there. He’d been right there. And she’d ripped us apart twice.

I didn’t decide to walk toward him. My feet just did it.

He stood up. We were close now. So close I could feel the heat coming off his skin.

“Wren,” he warned softly.

“I know.”

“I’m still engaged.”

“I know.”

His hand came up and touched my cheek, so gentle it hurt. His forehead dropped to mine. His breath shook.

“I never stopped,” he whispered. “Not for one day.”

He leaned in. My eyes fluttered closed.

The front door beeped.

Footsteps clicked across the marble. Sharp, confident heels.

“Sweetheart? I let myself in with my key.”

We jumped apart. Sloane stood in the kitchen doorway in a cream coat, holding a garment bag. She looked at me in my T-shirt. At Killian’s bare chest. And she smiled like a snake.

“Oh, didn’t you tell her, baby?” she purred, hanging the garment bag on a chair. “We moved the wedding up. It’s in two weeks,”