Now the taste of the wine was something other than bitter, something almost salty—as if by simply recalling her memories, Grace had somehow summoned sea water to flood her mouth. Her forehead pinched together as she fought the urge to swallow the sip of wine, taking a strange satisfaction in how even her tongue was beginning to function incorrectly after being introduced to wine.
“No hot cocoa for you tonight, Gracie?” A jovial voice called from behind her. Instinctively, she swallowed the wine in her mouth and opened her eyes—the speed of her reaction subliminally reminding her of a child being caught stealing a sweet snack before dinner. As she turned and she saw her brother, however, she felt the muscles in her back relax.
Mark had just the faintest, mustard-colored remnants of a healing bruise on his temple and over his left eyelid. In the flickering light of the crackling fire, the dark shapes almost looked like makeup, giving his left eye a sharper, more exaggerated slant to his eye. With the wry smile on his face, he looked more alive and excited, more like himself than he had in a long time.
Enjoying the casual tone in her brother’s voice, Grace smiled at him. Apart from her father, Mark had been one of the most violently anti-Kelly members of the Walsh family, opting to spit whenever he had to utter their name or look in their direction. But now, with rosy cheeks from the biting cold outside, Mark had arrived to a family event with all of them without complaint—and with a Kelly boy as well. “There you are,” she said to her brother. Her gaze shifted behind him as a figure moved out from behind Mark’s broad shoulders. Daniel Kelly, almost as red-faced as Mark, pulled a dark cap from his head, revealing his combed locks underneath. Grace offered him a friendly wave as he worked his way out of his jacket and towards the bar. He returned it with a curt nod. “I was wondering when you were going to get here.”
“I should’ve been here about an hour ago,” Mark said with a sheepish grin, tucking his hands into his back pockets as his eyes trailed Daniel across the bar, then lifted his eyes to look around the restaurant. “You know me when I find a good sledding hill.”
Grace laughed, shaking her head. “I remember all too well,” she said, arching her brows at Mark teasingly.
He gave her a light-hearted, questioning look that she dodged by lifting her glass to her lips. Although her lips remained shut, Grace recalled the times throughout her childhood when she had to walk home from school with her twin brother during the winter. Aside from the biting cold outside, Grace had learned to loathe the days of snowfall because of her brother’s inability to walk by a snow-covered hill and not launch himself down it. There were plenty of times the snow hadn’t even bothered to truly stick to the ground yet that Mark had chomped at the bit to go sledding, usually opting for a rubbish bin lid or discarded pizza box as his ride. Being the less impulsive out of the two siblings, Grace watched her brother injure himself over and over throughout the months leading up to the holidays, racking up the metaphorical punch cards that the doctors teased him about.
Mark scoffed at his sister. “Whatever,” he sneered at her lightheartedly before taking another glance around the party with a look somewhere between impressed and in pure disbelief. “Don’t get me wrong, this is cool,” he retrieved one of his hands from his pockets to swirl his hand in front of himself. “But it’s also so, uh, so—” he squinted his eyes as he tried to find the right words to describe the emotional theme of the room around them. There was an open, silent laughter on his face that widened his features, giving them a friendly, warm glow. His other hand rose from his pocket to rub at his hair, brushing the melting pieces of snow through his hair with his fingers, darkening the part in his hair.
Grace watched her brother flounder with a smile, deciding that his awkwardness with the situation was more of an admirable change of pace—a deliberate choice to try for the sake of her budding relationship with Kilian—than anything malicious. “Weird?” Grace offered, twirling her wine glass in between her fingers slowly. The thin column of glass spun, massaging the soft pads of her fingers as she watched a trace of relief wash over her brother’s face.
“A little,” he admitted, shrugging his shoulder sheepishly as he attempted an awkward wave towards a table where Rory sat with his younger sons. Grace followed Mark’s gaze over to the table, her eyes searching the faces of the dark-haired men as they drank together. In the center, Rory returned Mark’s wave before continuing to gesture to the men around him. His hand moved along the surface of the table that reminded Grace of a ship lost at sea, battling the waves as they grew larger and more violent. It was too loud for Grace to make out exactly what Rory was saying to make his sons laugh, but as her eyes shifted to the final Kelly boy, the one she’d traveled across the country with and had fallen for, she felt her heart squeeze in her chest. He looked younger with a smile on his face, especially the genuine, eager one that spread across his face after ingesting a little alcohol. His eyes were squinted slightly, lined with the buzz that only liquor and love could produce. “It’s just new still.”
Mark’s voice pulled Grace’s attention away from the shiny blush on Kilian’s cheeks and tip of his nose, away from the table of Kelly men roaring with laughter. She gave him a sympathetic smile. “I get it. We did go from not being able to be in the same room with them for long periods of time, to spending the holidays with them, I think you’re allowed a small grace period.” Grace placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze, sending her eyes back across the room to search for Kilian. His seat was empty.
“You know,” Mark said, holding onto Grace’s shoulder with a tight arm. “I don’t think I got a chance to tell you how proud I am of you since you got back.” He pulled away, obviously uncomfortable with maintaining the hug while complimenting his sister on a job well done.
Grace looked up at her twin brother, her mouth falling open in a flash of shock before she recovered and gave him a smile. “Thanks, Mark,” she laughed, trying to follow his direction of restraining the obvious emotions they were both feeling in that moment. “That means a lot.”
As she stepped back from Mark’s side-hug, Grace felt a familiar, warm hand wrap around her side. Already knowing who the hand belonged to, she turned to face Kilian with a tender smile spreading across her face. Her eyes lifted to look into his, staring at him with a dreamy look in her eyes. “Hey,” she greeted him, trying to hide her giddiness from Mark. Even if he was comfortable with the idea of Kilian and his family being around—and during the holidays, no less—Grace didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.
As if reading her mind, Kilian whispered a greeting to her before lifting his gaze. His brows arched as he acknowledged Mark, extending his free arm to shake his hand. “Hey, man, good to see you again.”
Looking down at Kilian’s hand for a brief pause, Mark jumped with realization and scrambled to adjust his jacket in his arms. Fumbling with the fabric, he freed his hand and took Kilian’s. “You too, thanks.”
As the men settled back into their respective places on either side of Grace, an awkward silence passed over the three of them. At the same time, the song playing overhead began to play out, gradually fading into the background—Grace couldn’t help but crack a smile. As she began laughing to herself, the two men began chuckling; the tension melting away piece by piece, like an arctic island chipping away in the rising heat.
“I’m just gonna get a drink,” Mark said, excusing himself as he started walking backwards to the bar. “You two good?” he asked, using his two forefingers to point at both of them.
Kilian nodded as Grace lifted up her glass of wine, watching her brother turn around and transform his pointing into two thumbs-up gestures.
“How’s your dad?” Grace asked, looking up at Kilian now that they had a moment to themselves. She kept her voice quiet, sending a look over her shoulder to make sure his mother wasn’t close enough to hear them talking about her husband. Things had been tense between Kilian and his father ever since their return and had been gradually moving back to normal, but it was a slow process. As much as Grace wanted to defend Kilian and, by extension, her relationship with him, she couldn’t deny that his father had a right to be upset. Rory thought his family had been betrayed by hers, and since Grace had also been someone who let a feud she didn’t fully comprehend dictate her actions and words, she didn’t have any room to decide Rory was overreacting. Shocked by her own emotional maturity in the moment, Grace watched Kilian’s face to make sure he wasn’t trying to conceal the way he was really feeling—a behavior he’d learned from growing up with an emotionally distant father.
His eyes landed on her face for a moment before shifting over to look at the table he’d been using with the other men in his family. “He’s good, I think.” Kilian licked his lips, leaving a small bead of moisture on his bottom lip that Grace’s eyes were drawn to. She watched as his lips formed his next words, letting her eyes drift up to his eyes. “He called your dad Peter finally, so that’s a start.”
They shared a quiet laugh, curling into each other. Grace raised her glass to her lips, pausing when she saw that Kilian was still looking at her, his face morphing into an expression she’d never seen before.
“I wanna show you something,” Kilian said as he took a hold of Grace’s hand, leading her towards the office his father used after his longest days. Kilian opened the door, gesturing for her to enter before him.
Stepping inside the dark room, Grace placed her glass on the desk and turned around, a quizzical smirk on her lips. “What’s going on?” Watching Kilian close the door behind him, she was reminded of the day she’d found him rifling through her father’s office—the day she always thought of as the beginning of their relationship, even if they hadn’t fallen for each other until well after that. It’d been the day they had become tied together, forced to work as a team even though they were resistant—and how grateful she was for that day now.
Kilian met her at the desk wordlessly, taking her hand delicately, holding it up in the air like a ballroom dancer leading his partner into a waltz for the first time. He took her around the desk, showing her the book—the one they’d crossed the entire country to find, only to discover that it had belonged to his family all along. As grateful as she was to see the relic in great condition now, there was a twinge of sadness in Grace’s smile when she looked upon it.
“You did a great job restoring the cover,” Grace noted, running her finger along the small tears in the spine that had existed before the book had fallen into their possession. Even now, she wondered if her great-grandfather had made any of these markings himself.
“Thank you,” Kilian said, staring at her as she regarded the book. “I was thinking…”
Grace looked up at him, her fingers lingering on the spine for a moment before drifting onto the desk.
“I think the book should belong in both families,” Kilian said, stepping back from the desk to let her view the book closer.
The cover was glowing in the light, the title glittering against the indigo paper. Grace’s brow knitted together as she looked down at the book, suddenly imagining it comically torn in half, or traded back-and-forth like the child with separated parents. “Oh, yeah? How do you suppose we’re going to do that?”
