Saoirse let out a squeal and ran for her uncle, throwing her arms around his legs. “Kiki!”
“Hey, Trouble.” He scooped her into his arms and settled her on his hip. “Are you being a good eater for your mam?”
“No.” She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Mammy gave me peas.”
“Peas are good for you.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Ah, well, maybe I’ll eat your share and give mine to Lily. We haven’t eaten yet.”
The little girl’s gaze swung to Lily, and her toothy grin stretched further. “Hi, Lily!”
Saoirse was the resident greeter at the gym, and she’d taken to giving Lily hugs every morning when she arrived for work.
“Lily’s here?” Danny stood from the table, leaning so he could see around Kieran’s broad shoulders. A grimace crossed the boy’s features, and he dropped his sandwich back to his plate. “Shit, what happened to your face?”
Kieran sidestepped, blocking her in the hallway and shielding her from Danny’s view. “None of your business. Finish your dinner.”
It was no wonder these two bickered nonstop. Kieran couldn’t even treat Danny like the adult he clearly longed to be.
She stepped around Kieran and met Danny’s bewildered stare. “About a year ago, I ran away from my fiancé and came to Chicago. He showed up at the gym today, and as you can see, our conversation was not very pleasant.”
The boy’s blue eyes widened, and pink tinged the tips of his ears. He tore his gaze from Lily to his older brother. “Did you kick his ass, Kier?”
Kieran eased into the kitchen and set Saoirse down beside her mother. “Sebastián did.”
“Good man,” whispered Maeve. She hadn’t spoken before then, but her gaze met Lily’s. A sort of sad understanding sank into those misty blues. “Those look like nail marks. Have you cleaned them yet? We have antiseptic pads in the first aid kit.”
“I took a shower, and Seb did some first aid.” What had begun as a burning pain now only ached.
“Danny.” Kieran’s voice was quiet and even. “Why don’t you show Lily around? I want to catch up with Maeve.”
Right. He needed space to make a plan. Kieran—the fixer.
Danny hopped up, more than happy to be excused from dinner, and jerked his head toward the hall. “Come on, I’ll give you the tour.”
With one last lingering glance toward Kieran, Lily followed the youngest Sullivan sibling back through the living room and up the rounded staircase to the second floor. First was Danny’s room. A quick peek inside with his permission revealed a twin bed surrounded by hand-sketched drawings, a desk cluttered with books as well as basketball trophies, a dresser topped with body sprays, and a TV wall-mounted in front of a beanbag chair.
It was the perfect teenage-angst room. Lily would have given anything for one just like it when she was Danny’s age.
Next was the bathroom, small but clean—probably Kieran’s doing. Then Shauna’s old room.
“This one’s empty if you need, like, space or whatever.” Danny swung open the door, and Lily stepped into a cocoon of warmth. Bright, sunshine-yellow walls greeted her. Someone had painted a mural on the left wall—a prairie filled with dancing butterflies and bumblebees. Bison grazed near a pond in the background, and rows of purple coneflowers, black-eyed Susans and wild indigo dotted the wall with color.
She shuffled inside, her jaw slack. “Holy hell.”
Danny leaned in the doorway—a miniature Kieran through and through. “Shauna painted it after we moved in. Creative outlet and all.”
Their sister did this? Eyes wide, Lily spun and took in the rest of the room. Not much was left behind. There wasn’t adesk or a dresser in this room. Where a TV had once been mounted, only the holes remained. She must have taken most of her belongings when she left. But the mural stayed—a scene of peace and serenity for a teen girl who’d lived through far too much trauma.
“She’s very talented.”
He hummed an agreement. “Yeah, she’s a tattoo artist now. She did all of Kieran’s.”
Yes, Kieran had told her. She’d admired his tattoos on more than one occasion. They were incredibly well done. Nothing like the practical prison ink Vovik had on his chest. Comparatively, Vovik’s tattoos resembled the graffiti scratched into the tables of a seventh-grade shop class.
Vovik.
