Five minutes. I'd asked for five minutes, and they'd been slipping through my fingers like water, each second a drop I couldn't hold. The lamp flickered. Declan's breath was warm against my neck, slow and even, his chest rising against my back. We were still tangled on the butcher's block, the wool blanket scratchy beneath my thighs, his arm heavy across my stomach, holding me like he thought I might dissolve if he let go.
I could feel him softening inside me, the slow pulse of his body against mine, and I wanted to stay here forever. Wanted to freeze this single moment and live inside it until the world outside forgot we existed.
"Siobhan." His voice was low, roughened with something I couldn't name. Not sleep. Something else.
"Mm."
His hand moved. Not the one on my stomach—the other one, the one tangled in my hair, trailing down my arm, his calluses catching on the fine hairs of my skin. I shivered. His fingers found my wrist, and I felt him pause, felt the slight tension in his body as he lifted my arm.
The rosary beads. Still wrapped there, the silver crucifix catching the lamplight, glinting like a small, silver secret.
He went still. Completely still, like he'd stopped breathing.
"Declan?" I tilted my head back, trying to read his face. The flickering light carved shadows across his jaw, deepened the hollows beneath his cheekbones. His eyes were fixed on the beads, on the cross that hung between my wrist and his fingers.
"Teach me."
The words landed in the silence like a stone dropped into still water. I blinked.
"What?"
He lifted my wrist closer, his thumb tracing the rough cord of the rosary, following the path of the beads. "What do you say when you pray with these?"
My heart stumbled. A Protestant asking to learn the rosary. In Belfast. In 1981. The absurdity of it almost made me laugh, but the look on his face stopped me—earnest, raw, open in a way I'd never seen him. Like he was standing at the edge of something and asking me to lead him across.
"I don't..." I swallowed. "I've never taught anyone. Not a—" I stopped myself before the word could slip. Not a Protestant.
"I know what I am." He said it gently, no edge in it. "I just want to know what you say. When you talk to your God."
Your God. As if there were two of them. As if the God I prayed to wasn't the same one he'd been raised to ignore. But that wasn't how it worked in this city—his God looked different from mine, wore different robes, sat in different pews, blessed different flags. And here he was, asking me to show him the words.
I turned in his arms, facing him. He moved with me, still inside me, and I felt the shift of his body, the way his breath caught as I moved. His hand stayed on my wrist, the rosary still caught between his fingers.
"You start with a cross." I lifted my free hand, touched my forehead. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."
His eyes followed my hand. "Then what?"
I looked down at the beads. "Then the Apostles' Creed." I started reciting it, the words automatic, worn smooth by years of repetition. He listened, his thumb still tracing the beads, and when I finished, I looked up at him.
"Then the Our Father." I touched the first bead. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."
I felt him shift. A small movement, almost imperceptible, but I felt it—the way his hips pressed forward slightly, the way he hardened again inside me. I stopped mid-sentence, my breath catching.
"Don't stop." His voice was rough, barely a whisper. "Keep going."
I stared at him. His gray eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, and there was something in them I couldn't name—reverence, hunger, a blend of both that made my chest ache.
"Thy kingdom come," I continued, my voice shaking now, "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." He moved with the rhythm of the words, a slow, shallow thrust that matched the cadence of the prayer. "Give us this day our daily bread—" Another movement. Deeper. "—and forgive us our trespasses—" My voice cracked. "—as we forgive those who trespass against us."
"Keep going." His hand found my hip, his fingers pressing into the flesh there. "Please."
"And lead us not into temptation—" The word caught in my throat. Temptation. This. Him. The way the sacred syllables blurred into the profane rhythm of his body inside mine. "—but deliver us from evil. Amen."
He didn't stop. His hips moved in that same slow, deliberate rhythm, and I realized—he was timing it to the words. Each thrust was a beat, each pause a breath, and I was the prayer he was learning by heart.
"The Hail Mary," I said, my voice barely audible. "That's next."
"Show me."
I touched the next bead. "Hail Mary, full of grace—" A slow push. "—the Lord is with thee." A pause. A held breath. "Blessed art thou among women—" He thrust deeper, and I gasped. "—and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus."
His fingers tightened on my hip, and I felt him pulse inside me, felt the way his body was responding to the words, to the rhythm, to the sound of my voice speaking something sacred while he moved in me.
"Holy Mary," I whispered, "Mother of God—"
He pressed his forehead to mine. His breath was hot against my lips.
"—pray for us sinners—"
"Keep going." His voice was broken, a prayer in itself.
"—now and at the hour of our death. Amen."
The word hung between us. Amen. So be it. And it felt like a promise, a surrender, a seal on something neither of us had the words for.
He kissed me. Not the hungry, desperate kisses of before, but something slower, deeper—a kiss that tasted like reverence. His hand cupped my jaw, his thumb tracing the line of my cheekbone, and when he pulled back, his eyes were wet.
"I don't know all the words," he said, his voice barely a thread. "But I know—" He stopped. Swallowed. "I know what I feel when I'm inside you. And it feels like—" He shook his head, looking for a word that didn't exist. "It feels like I'm finally somewhere I belong."
I didn't speak. Couldn't. The lump in my throat was too thick, the tears threatening too close. I just pulled him closer, wrapped my legs around his waist, and let him move.
He moved slowly at first, still holding my wrist, still touching the beads. The crucifix caught the light with each motion, flashing silver against the dark wood of the block, a small, glinting witness to something we had no name for. His hand found my center, his thumb pressing exactly where I needed him, and I cried out—not a word, just a sound, a prayer of a different kind.
"Show me how you pray," I whispered against his mouth. "With your body. With this."
He understood. He shifted, pulling me on top of him, and I straddled his hips on the butcher's block, my knees pressing into the wood, the rosary still tangled around my wrist. He looked up at me, his hands on my thighs, and there was something in his eyes I'd never seen before.
Worship.
He kissed my collarbone. The hollow of my throat. The space between my breasts. Each kiss slow, deliberate, like he was tracing a rosary across my skin. His lips moved lower, finding the freckles scattered across my ribs, and I arched into him, my fingers in his hair, the beads clicking softly as I moved.
"This is how I pray," he said against my stomach. "Every time I touch you. Every time I—" He kissed the curve of my hip. "I don't know the words for it. But I know it's holy."
I guided him up, pulled him into a kiss, and felt him enter me again, deeper this time, and I rode him on the butcher's block like he was an altar and I was the offering. The lamp flickered. The beads clicked. His hands found my hips, and he moved with me, each stroke a word, each breath a line, and when I came, it was with a cry that could have been his name or could have been a prayer—I couldn't tell anymore. There was no difference.
He followed, his body tensing beneath me, his hands gripping my thighs, and he said my name like it was the only word he knew: "Siobhan. Siobhan. Siobhan."
Afterward, we lay tangled again, the blanket half-off, the lamp burning low. His hand found my wrist, lifted it, and he pressed a kiss to the crucifix. A long, quiet kiss.
"Thank you," he said.
"For what?"
"For teaching me." He smiled, small and sad. "I don't think I'll remember all the words. But I'll remember this."
I touched his face, traced the line of his jaw, the hollow of his cheek. "I'll teach you again."
He caught my hand, pressed a kiss to my palm. "We don't have time."
I knew what he meant. The shop opened in hours. The world outside was waiting, sharp-toothed and patient. But for now, in this moment, we had this.
I closed my eyes. Felt his heart beating against my chest. Felt the rosary still wrapped around my wrist, the crucifix warm from his kiss.
"One more minute," I whispered.
He didn't argue. Just held me tighter.
The lamp flickered once, twice, and the shadows swayed around us like a congregation bowing their heads in prayer.
The silence after the lamp's flicker was heavier than before, a weight that pressed against my chest, against the space where his heartbeat met mine. The shadows settled back into stillness, and I could feel the seconds passing, each one a small death, each one bringing morning closer.
His hand found my wrist again, his thumb tracing the rosary beads where they lay against my skin. The crucifix was cool now, the warmth of his kiss fading, and I watched his face in the dim light—the hollows beneath his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the way his eyes stayed fixed on the beads as if they held an answer he couldn't find.
"What happens when morning comes?" His voice was barely a breath, a whisper against my hair, and I felt the question settle into the space between us like a stone dropped into still water.
I didn't answer at first. I couldn't. The words were too heavy, too real, too much like admitting that this—the warmth of his body, the smell of him, the way his fingers traced the beads—couldn't last. I pressed my face into the hollow of his neck, breathing him in, trying to memorize the scent of sawdust and sweat and something that was just him.
"I don't know," I whispered back. "I go home. I lie to my mother. I pretend I don't have sawdust in my hair and a Protestant's heat still warm between my thighs."
His arm tightened around me. "And me?"
"You go back to your brother's house. You pretend you were working late. You wash the smell of me off your hands."
"I don't want to." His voice cracked on the last word, and I felt his chest hitch, a breath that didn't quite make it out. "I don't want to wash you off. I want to carry you with me. I want to walk through the city with your scent on my skin and let them all know."
I lifted my head, looked at him in the fading lamplight. His eyes were wet, the gray of them darker than I'd ever seen, and I reached up to touch his face, my thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone, the same way he'd touched mine.
"You can't," I said softly. "You know you can't."
"I know." He turned his head, pressed a kiss to my palm. "I know. But I want to. I want to walk down the Falls Road holding your hand and see who dares to stop us."
I laughed, a broken thing that caught in my throat. "They'd kill us before we reached the corner."
"Maybe." He looked at me, and there was something fierce in his eyes, something that burned through the sadness. "But at least we'd be together."
The words hit me like a blow to the chest, and I felt tears prick at my eyes, hot and sudden. I blinked them back, refused to let them fall, refused to give the morning that victory. "Don't talk like that."
"Like what?"
"Like dying is romantic. Like a bullet in the street is a better ending than—" I stopped, swallowed. "Than a life where we have to hide."
He was quiet for a long moment. The lamp flickered, and I watched the shadows move across his face, watched the war in his eyes—the need to protect, the need to possess, the need to keep me safe even if it meant letting me go.
"I don't want a bullet," he said finally. "I want you. I want to wake up next to you. I want to make you breakfast and watch you drink your tea and argue about nothing. I want to grow old and grey and still find you in the dark."
The tears won. They slipped down my cheeks, silent and hot, and I let them fall. "I want that too."
"Then we run." His voice was sudden, urgent, his hands finding my face, cupping it, forcing me to look at him. "We leave tonight. Now. We take nothing. We go south, to the Republic, where they don't care what church you pray in. We start over."
I stared at him, the words hanging in the air between us, heavy and impossible. "We have nothing. No money. No plan. And my mother—"
"Your mother who loved a Protestant boy once. She'd understand."
"She'd tell me I'm a fool." I reached up, covered his hands with mine. "She'd tell me I'm repeating her mistakes, that I'll end up alone and broken like she did."
"I won't leave you." His voice broke again, and he pressed his forehead to mine, his breath warm against my lips. "I won't. I swear it on anything you want. On your rosary. On the cross. On my mother's grave. I won't leave you, Siobhan."
I closed my eyes, let myself feel the weight of his words, the heat of his body, the steady beat of his heart against my chest. For a moment, I let myself believe it. Let myself imagine a world where we could walk hand in hand down a street without fear, where I could introduce him to my mother, where we could build a life that didn't require hiding in back rooms and lying to everyone we loved.
Then I opened my eyes, and the lamp was still burning low, and the shadows were still waiting, and the morning was still coming.
"I can't," I whispered. "Not tonight. Not like this. I need—" I stopped, searching for the right word. "I need to say goodbye to my mother. I need to pack my grandmother's rosary. I need to do it properly, not like a thief in the night."
He didn't pull away. His hands stayed on my face, his forehead pressed to mine, and I felt his breath hitch, felt the fight drain out of him. "Promise me," he said, his voice barely audible. "Promise me we will. One day. When the time is right."
"I promise." The words came out before I could stop them, and I meant them with every cell of my body. "I promise you, Declan. One day. When the time is right."
He kissed me then, soft and slow, a kiss that tasted of salt and sorrow and the faint, sweet hope of a promise we both knew might never come. His lips moved against mine, and I felt the tears on his cheeks, felt the way his hands trembled as they cradled my face, and I kissed him back like I was memorizing the shape of him, the taste of him, the way he breathed my name when he pulled away.
"One more minute," I said, the same words I'd said before, but this time they felt different—heavier, more desperate, like we were trying to hold back the tide with our bare hands.
"One more," he agreed, and he pulled me closer, wrapped his arms around me, pressed his lips to my hair.
The lamp flickered one last time, and somewhere in the distance, I heard the first sounds of the city waking—a milk float rattling over cobblestones, a dog barking, the faint hum of an engine that could be a car or a truck or a death squad on its morning patrol. The morning was coming, whether we were ready or not.
I closed my eyes and held him tighter, feeling the rosary beads dig into my wrist, feeling his heart beat against mine, feeling the impossible weight of everything we were asking the world to forgive.
"Teach me one more prayer," he whispered against my hair.
I smiled, a small, broken thing. "I don't think I have any left."
"Then teach me yours. The one you say when you're scared."
I thought for a moment, searching the dark corners of my memory for the words that had carried me through nights like this, through the fear and the doubt and the desperate hope that somehow, somehow, it would all be worth it in the end.
"Hail, Holy Queen," I began, my voice soft and trembling, "Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope."
I felt him shift, felt his hand find mine, his fingers lacing through mine, the rosary beads pressing into both our palms.
"To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve," I continued, the words coming easier now, a rhythm I'd known since childhood. "To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears."
His thumb traced a circle on the back of my hand, and I felt the prayer settle into my bones, felt the ancient words wrap around us like a blanket, a shield against the morning that was already creeping through the cracks in the door.
"Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us," I whispered, "and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus."
I paused, the final words catching in my throat. "O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary."
Amen, he said with me, the word a shared breath, a seal on something we couldn't name but both felt—a hope so fragile it threatened to shatter at the slightest touch, a love so fierce it burned through the darkness like a candle in a bombed-out church.
We lay there, tangled together on the cold wooden block, the blanket half-off, the lamp dead now, the first grey light of dawn seeping through the cracks in the door. The world was waking up outside, sharp-toothed and patient, ready to tear us apart the moment we stepped back into it.
But for one more minute—one more blessed, impossible, stolen minute—we held each other, and the morning waited.
And maybe, I thought, as I felt his lips press a kiss to my forehead, maybe that was enough. Maybe the love was the prayer, and the prayer was the love, and neither of them could be killed by a bullet or a morning or a world that didn't understand.
Maybe that was the only thing that mattered.
The sound cut through the grey dawn like a gunshot. The milk float's engine coughed and died somewhere close, and then the knock came—three sharp raps against the butcher's shop door, hard enough to rattle the hinges.
I went rigid in Declan's arms, my breath catching, my heart slamming against my ribs so hard I was sure whoever stood outside could hear it. The rosary beads pressed into my wrist, sharp and cold, and I felt his body tense around mine, felt the shift from warmth to alertness, from lover to protector.
"Don't move," he whispered, his lips barely brushing my ear. His hand found my mouth, covering it, and I felt his other hand reach for something—his trousers, the ones he'd folded so carefully, the ones with the pocketknife he'd shown me once, the one he said he carried for whittling.
I didn't believe him then. I didn't believe him now.
Another knock, harder this time, and a voice—male, rough, with the flat accent of the Shankill Road. "Morrow. I know you're in there. Open the door."
Declan's hand tightened against my mouth, and I felt his breath go still, felt the fight-or-flight calculation happening in the muscles of his chest, in the way his jaw pressed against my hair. He didn't move. Neither did I.
The voice came again, impatient. "Morrow, you daft cunt. Your brother sent me. Said to tell you your da's had another turn. The hospital rang. You need to come home."
The words took a second to register, to untangle themselves from the fear. His father. Hospital. Another turn. I felt Declan's body shift, felt the tension change from defensive to something else—something raw and frightened and utterly human.
He pulled his hand away from my mouth, slowly, carefully, and I heard him exhale a breath he'd been holding since the first knock.
"It's my father's friend," he whispered, his voice hoarse. "From the Shankill. He's not—he wouldn't—"
"He wouldn't what?" I whispered back, my voice shaking.
"He wouldn't lie about this." Declan's hand found mine, squeezed once, hard. "He's a bastard, but he's not—he wouldn't use my da to—"
"Morrow!" The voice again, closer now, pressed against the wood of the door. "I'm not fucking about. Your ma's at the hospital, she's crying, she needs you. Get your Protestant arse out here now."
I felt Declan move, felt him start to disentangle himself from me, and I grabbed his arm, my fingers digging into his skin. "You can't just—what if it's a trap? What if your brother—"
"It's not." His voice was quiet, certain, and when he looked at me, his eyes were the color of a storm cloud, full of something I couldn't name. "My da's been sick for months. He's been dying slowly, and I've been pretending he isn't, because if I don't pretend, then it's real, and I can't—"
His voice cracked, and he stopped, pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, and I watched him breathe, watched him pull himself together piece by piece, the way a man does when he's been taught his whole life that tears are a weakness he can't afford.
"Go," I said, the word coming out before I could think about what it meant. "Go. I'll be fine. I'll wait—"
"You can't wait here." He was already pulling on his trousers, his movements quick and efficient, the same hands that had traced my skin now buttoning his fly, tucking in his shirt, transforming back into the man the world saw. "The shop opens in two hours. The butcher will be here by seven. You need to leave before—"
"I know." I sat up, clutching the blanket to my chest, feeling the cold air bite my skin where his body had been warm. "I know. I'll go out the back, the way I came. No one will see me."
He stopped, half-dressed, and looked at me. The grey light caught his face, caught the lines around his eyes, the stubble on his jaw, the way his mouth was set in a thin, hard line that didn't quite hide the tremor in his lower lip.
"Siobhan." He said my name like it was a prayer, like it was the only word that mattered. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." I forced a smile, felt it crack at the edges. "Your father needs you. That's—that's where you should be."
He crossed the room in two steps, dropped to his knees in front of me, and took my face in his hands. His palms were rough, callused, warm against my cheeks, and he kissed me like he was trying to memorize the shape of my mouth, like he was afraid he might never taste it again.
"Wait for me," he said against my lips. "Please. Wait for me."
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and he kissed me again, harder this time, desperate and hungry and full of all the words we didn't have time to say.
The knock came again, three sharp raps, and a curse. "Morrow, for fuck's sake—"
"I'm coming!" Declan's voice was sharp, commanding, the voice of a man who was used to being obeyed. He pulled away from me, grabbed his jacket from the floor, and paused at the door, his hand on the handle.
He looked back at me, and in that moment, in the grey dawn light, with his hair disheveled and his eyes red-rimmed and his shirt buttoned crooked, he looked younger than I'd ever seen him. He looked scared.
"Thursday," he said. "Same time. I'll be here."
"Thursday," I repeated, the word a promise I wasn't sure either of us could keep.
He opened the door a crack, slipped through, and I heard his voice, low and calm, exchanging words with the man outside. A curse, a laugh, the sound of footsteps receding. Then the milk float's engine coughed back to life, and the sound faded into the distance, swallowed by the waking city.
I sat alone on the butcher's block, the blanket wrapped around my shoulders, the cold seeping into my bones. The lamp was dead. The room was grey. The air still smelled of him—sweat and sawdust and something warmer, something that had been mine for a few hours.
I dressed slowly, my fingers clumsy with the buttons of my cardigan, my stockings wrinkled and damp. I found my rosary on the floor, picked it up, and pressed the crucifix to my lips. It was still warm from his kiss.
The back door opened without a sound, and I stepped out into the alley, into the cold Belfast morning, into a world that didn't know what I'd done or who I'd been in the dark. The sky was the pale blue of a healing bruise, and the streets were empty, and I walked home with his taste still on my tongue and his promise still echoing in my chest.
Thursday, he'd said. Thursday.
I didn't know if Thursday would ever come. I didn't know if we'd survive that long. But I held the word in my heart like a candle in a storm, and I kept walking, one foot in front of the other, toward a home that didn't know I'd been gone, toward a mother who was probably already awake, already worried, already waiting for me to come back with lies on my lips and a secret burning in my chest.
The morning was here. The world was waking up, sharp-toothed and patient, ready to tear us apart.
But we had Thursday.
And maybe that was enough.