OUR LITTLE SECRET

Part 36

For the next few weeks, Cillian stayed at your house most nights, even with his son Max and, soon enough, you found a routine that seemed to work for you both. Cillian had been asking you to move in with him but, after all that had happened in the past, you were not quite ready for that yet.

Your decision to want your own space was somewhat upsetting for Cillian who saw it as another sign that you didn't trust him fully.

You had explained to him that you loved him and that you simply needed your own space to figure things out.

He had reluctantly agreed, respecting your wishes even though he knew that living apart would not be easy for either of you.

The fact that Cillian was not living with you full-time, made him want to make the most out of every free moment that he had with you and it made him crave your presence in a way that he hadn't before.

He became even more intentional about wanting to spend every available second with you, making it a priority to be present and engaged in your lives together, whether it was cooking dinner for the both of you, taking turns rocking Mara to sleep, or simply cuddling on the couch watching a movie together.

Of course, on occasion, you were intimate too but this time, you took things slower, exploring each other's bodies in ways that were both familiar and new. There was no longer a power dynamic between you in bed and having sex with each other was almost a rare treat these days seeing that Mara was a terrible sleeper.

She seemed to sense when you and Cillian wanted to be intimate and would wake up just then, refusing to go back to sleep.

For you, this did not matter so much as sex was not always on your radar but for Cillian the lack of intimacy seemed to be much more difficult to accept.

Unbeknownst to you, this had a lot to do with the fact that he was much older than you and, in the back of his mind, he was constantly worried that, one day, you would want to be with someone your own age. He feared that you would grow tired of him, as he had grown tired of his first wife, and that he would lose you just as she had lost him.

Of course, none of this was ever spoken aloud between the two of you. Cillian had never been one to vocalize his fears, and you had never been one to question his love for you. Instead, you continued on in your routine, laughing and loving one another as if everything in your relationship was perfect.

But it wasn't.

Far from it, in fact. Beneath the surface of laughter and love, there were simmering tensions and unspoken fears that threatened to boil over at any moment especially when the tabloids had yet another field day, discussing your somewhat inappropriate relationship with one another.

The press loved to speculate about the nature of your relationship and whether or not it was appropriate considering Cillian's recent separation from his wife and the fact that you were his brother's stepdaughter and, whilst you laughed it off these days, Cillian couldn't help but feel a sense of unease.

At times, you couldn't help but feel that Cillian's career was at stake, and that his reputation was taking a hit because of it. And yet, Cillian did not seem to want to talk about it. He wanted to bury his head in the sand and pretend that everything was perfect, that the two of you were blissfully happy.

But you could see the tension in his shoulders, the way he clenched his jaw when he read a particularly vicious article. You knew that he was hurting, but you didn't know how to help him and, it wasn't until he came home from his sister's birthday, apologizing to you for something you never thought he would do, that you had your first fight since Mara was born.