Kieran shook his head. “You don’t have to keep apologizing. I appreciate it, but I figured someone would find out eventually. You and Atticus aren’t so bad.” He gave her a lopsided smile that made her heart stutter.
“And Kai.” Sammie looked down at her hands. She was unconsciously picking at her nails again, and her thumb was bleeding. Fuck. She grabbed a napkin and tried to hide what she’d done, but Kieran’s perceptive gaze followed her. “Kai knows too,” she continued.
Kieran laughed. “So Atticus truly is just bad at secrets?”
That loosened something in Sammie’s chest, the fact that he could laugh any of this off. “I’m not really any better.”
“Is that so?”
“I can be bribed, though, and that’s not really his style.”
A bigger laugh escaped him, and Sammie fought back her own grin. This was better, the easy back and forth.
“A bribe?” Kieran leaned back in his seat, resting an arm on the booth. Sammie could still feel the weight of that arm around her shoulders. “Is that what we’re doing here? Are you going to blackmail me?”
His questions tugged at her guilt again, but he was still smiling, so Sammie pushed on. “Not exactly. I’ve just got questions.” Questions. One of them was big, something she hadn’t even let herself put into words in her own head yet. A question she wasn’t sure she was brave enough to ask.
“Well,” Kieran said, still leaning back so casually, still watching her with that unreadable gaze, a tiny smirk playing across his lips. “Shoot.”
Sammie hesitated, mulling over her options. If they were diving right in, she might as well start in the deep end.
“Is it scary, putting yourself out there like that?”
She’d somewhat expected him to laugh off the question, maybe put on an air of bravado. But, well, that wasn’t reallyKieran. Instead, several quiet seconds spread out between them as he gave his answer some thought.
“It was, at first.” He twirled the salt shaker again, this time one-handed. She could still see a scar between two of his fingers from where the skin had torn when they were in high school. A block gone wrong, but he’d given Atticus a bloody high-five right there on the court when it had earned them the win.
“Not knowing what to do, but wanting to try something,” he continued. “That’s always scary. But it got easier the more I did it, and it wasn’t long before I found the enjoyment in it that I’d hoped for.”
Sammie liked that. She liked hearing that he’d eventually felt comfortable with putting himself out there in such a way. Especially considering the direction she wanted her questions to head.
“But you never told anyone?”
Another shrug, another twirl of the salt shaker. “My ex knew.” Sammie had known Kieran had an ex out in Seattle. She’d never done anythingcrazy, like look up the woman’s online profiles to learn everything she could about her.
Atticus had, though. And he’d given Sammie the CliffNotes version of everything he’d seen.
“And she was…” Sammie paused. She didn’t want to pry. But hadn’t she already blown past that point when she’d asked Kieran to meet with her about all this? “She was okay with it?”
Kieran chuckled. “It was her idea. Her sister had started making good money this way, and she got it into her head that we needed to try it out. In the beginning, I was just going along with it to support her, but I started… enjoying myself after a while.”
The words were soinnocentleaving his lips, paired with the sweet, nostalgic expression he wore. Unfortunately, Sammie’sbrain zipped right back to the images she’d seen of himenjoying himself, and her cheeks flamed red.
She hid behind her glass of water, gulping it in an attempt tonotlook like a sex-brained moron. Another question came to her as she carefully sat the glass back down.
“But you two broke up.” Well, not so much a question, more a blurted statement that did nothing to dull the heat warming her face.
“We did.”
“And you kept going on your own.”
“I did.”
Ah, so he was waiting for Sammie to figure out where she was going with this.
“And you still work alone?”
Kieran gave that one some thought. “For the most part, yes.” He opened his mouth to continue, Sammie’s heart thumping in her chest as she waited for the rest of his answer, when their waffles finally arrived. The server placed their food down, topped off Sammie’s water, asked if they needed anything else, all of which took only a matter of seconds but felt like a lifetime.
