He appears at the edge of the stage like an executioner. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t make a scene. He moves with the kind of intent that parts crowds. The dancer clocking him takes one look and decides he does not get hazard pay. He lifts his hands and backs off.
Pru sees Tiernan when his shadow cuts across her. She points at him and laughs. He does not laugh. He tosses the security rope aside, steps up onto the stage without permission from anyone, gets a hand around Pru’s waist, and flips her like she weighs nothing.
“Hey!” Pru yelps, legs kicking, fists beating his back. “Put me down!”
“No,” he says, voice calm enough to freeze beer. He swats her ass hard enough to make the front row gasp and then wraps an arm around her body like she’s a sack of stolen sugar. She shrieks and hits him again. He swats her again. “Time to shut up and be a good girl,” he says, every syllable too even.
The room loses its mind. Half cheering, half outrage, all attention on the two of them. Pru goes silent for a shocked second, then makes a furious noise that sounds a lot like surrender wearing a disguise. He steps off the stage like gravitybelongs to him, nods once at the MC like “thank you for your service,” and carries her toward a back hallway while she curses him in full paragraphs. He ignores it. The last thing I see is Pru grabbing the back of his shirt like she doesn’t want to fall and doesn’t intend to admit it.
Cayce reaches the catwalk, looks up, and holds both hands out. He doesn’t grab me, just waits for my decision.
“Careful,” he says. “One foot at a time.”
“I’m fine,” I say, which is the kind of lie that doesn’t matter. I set one foot on the lower rail, then the next on the metal support, then step down into his hands like a trust exercise.
He doesn’t pull me. He steadies me. When my heels hit the floor, the club disappears for a second and there’s only his breath and my stupid heart. I press my mouth near his ear because the room is still screaming for Pru and Tiernan and men in uniform.
“I liked it,” I say.
His hands tighten at my waist. “What.”
“When you called me your good girl,” I whisper. “I liked it. In the church.”
He goes still. Then he breathes out through his nose like he’s putting fire back where it belongs.
“Then,” he says, in a voice intended for me alone, “be one now. Let’s go home.”
13
CAYCE
Rafferty setsthe garment bag on the chair like it’s a body and not a suit, then steps out of the way so Tiernan can take over. That’s been the rhythm all morning—Rafferty moves the world around us and Tiernan arranges it so it won’t squeal.
Tiernan’s my best man. After Blackvine, he ran point on cleanup and on me. There’s no one else I want at my right hand today.
“Jacket last,” Tiernan says, flicking a hanger free.
Roisin nods. “Shirt open at the throat until we’ve finished with Nan, the photographer, and any aunts who need their blood sugar respected. Cuff links—use Pop’s.”
My brothers and Roisin move in and out of the suite like weather fronts—Tiernan quiet and efficient even when he’s laughing, Conall with a joke that lands soft for once, Niall pretending the flask he’s palming is for nerves and not tradition. Both the youngest boys are home for the wedding from college on the west coast, and I missed those little shits even if I don’t admit it.
I strip down to a shirt and stand by the window while Roisín sorts the pile. November has done that cold, blue thing it doeswhen it wants to be taken seriously. St. Brigid’s steeples cut a clean line into the sky. The front steps have been swept three times and will be swept twice more before we go down.
“Hands,” Roisín says, and I give them to her like I used to do when she checked for scraped knuckles after backyard fights. She turns them palm up. “Steady.”
“I slept,” I say.
“You never sleep. Don’t start lying on the day I have to deal with priests.”
She fastens Pop’s cuff links. They shine in the light, the tiny knot of gold he wore for every special event in our lives. She smooths my sleeves, then looks past me to the long mirror. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“No, you don’t,” I say, because it’s our script.
“You’re thinking of where a threat would stand if he wanted to make a point,” she says. “Save it. Tiernan and I already moved three men and their opinions to the back pews, and we replaced two ushers with ours.”
“Who’d you move?”
She lists two names I expected and one I didn’t. “The third had a new watch,” she says. “Expensive and borrowed. It smelled like a bribe.”
