My Pulse

Chapter 15: Quinn Keane

I awake with a start and for a brief moment have no clue where the fuck I am. As my heart settles in my chest I get up slowly and head to the bathroom. I hear something going on downstairs so I start to get ready faster than normal.

Everyone turns to me as I come down the stairs. The two FBI agents and my parents have a somewhat happy yet weary look on their face.

Then I hear it in the background the news saying "Cian O'Shea is believed to be among the bombing victims in London."

"Mom, what's going on?" I ask her.

"Honey, there was an explosion last night in London. The FBI thinks the O'Connors killed Cian O'Shea and some of his associates." My knees almost give out in shock and I try to brace myself. Cian dead? No, no he can't be.

The FBI agents are watching my reaction to this I think trying to snap myself out of this guilty pain spiral. Cian can't be dead, he can't be.

No matter how much I hate him I always thought I would see him again. I knew I would actually.

No one has ever made me feel like he has. He has made me hate with an intensity I didn't know I had. Just as he has made me burn with a passion that was never there. Cian showed me just how strong I really am and what I can take.

He showed me who I really am in some ways. With Cian there isn't butterflies when I am near him my entire fucking blood buzzes. To think I will never feel that feeling again or his lips crashing against mine.

"Quinn." My dad says pulling me out of my mental anguish.

"We aren't out of the woods yet." An FBI agent says, eyeing me suspiciously.

"If we know about Quinn so do the O'Connor's. We are having men deployed to protect this area. If anyone so much as touches down here we will know about it."

"So we still can't go home?" I ask defeated.

"No, I am sorry. Not until the threat from the O'Connor's is dealt with. Trust me you don't want them to get their hands on any of you." He says sternly.

"Are you sure he is dead?" I ask the agent.

"Cian?" He replies. I nod trying not to show any emotion. "We think so, there were four bodies found at the explosion site and he has not been spotted since."

"I see." Staring blankly at him, "I'm going to go up and take a shower." I tell them. I need to be alone to cry.

By the time I get to my room I'm fucking sobbing. These tears are for everything and everyone. For my life, my parents' lives, and Rory's that I have turned upside down. For the sheer madness of the past becoming my reality.

Most of all, for Cian though and I know that deep down. I shove that so fucking far down and don't admit it. I never can and don't have to now.

Cian is gone. He rushed into my life like a wildfire, all-consuming, with a possessive passion that drove me wild. Even as I stand here hating him I don't really.

I still want to know him just like I did when I first saw him in that coffee shop. I'm drawn to his darkness and I never understood why. Not until I found out the truth that is.

I wipe the fog off the mirror with my hand and stare back at a stranger. I've never felt so lost and destroyed at the same time.

I feel like I don't know who I am for the very first time in my life. "I am the great granddaughter of Seamus McNulty" I say out loud to myself in the mirror, willing myself to process the news.

Not so much as news more as a life shattering mind fuck. I stare at myself and see my blue eyes but they are darker. I don't even recognize myself. I can't fucking stand it a second longer.

In a split second decision my fist slams into the mirror. Putting all my pain and anguish behind it, it shatters into a million shards all around me. I look down at my fist now cut and dripping with blood and an FBI agent kicks down the door.