“I thought you wanted this trip to be a private moment?” Lily raised a brow then dipped, fishing a shiny black rock with white speckles out of the waves.
“This is a private moment,” he countered. “I’m taking these for me.”
“Well, be sure to text me a still shot for my PictureIt. That’s a gorgeous sunrise.”
“You’re gorgeouser.”
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and Lily padded barefoot across the sand, dropping to her knees before him. “That’s not a real word.”
Kieran slid his phone into the pocket of his hoodie and took a slow sip of his water. “Are you calling me a liar?”
She held his gaze over the bottle. “You’re a liar, Mr. Sullivan.”
His warm palm curled around the back of her neck and tugged her into a kiss. There was no burning hunger or simmering ache. Instead, his kiss was tender. Patient. As calm as the quiet waves caressing the shore.
“You’re in a good mood this morning.” She dropped onto her bottom before him in the sand and took the water bottle.
A contented smile warmed his face. “It’s good to be away. And nice to have my family all in one place. I don’t see Shauna enough ever since she and Stephanie moved to Michigan.”
That was fair, and not something Lily’d ever had to worry about given her own lack of family ties. But his family all in one place? “Is anyone else coming to the wedding? Cousins? Grandparents?”
He shook his head. “There aren’t any. Daideo left his family behind in Ireland when he brought my dad to the States. And Mom’s family disowned her ’cause of all the addiction and shit.”
Oh.Lily frowned and took a slow sip of water. All that potential for family, and the blood relatives that should have been had turned their backs on the Sullivan kids. Still, there was something to be said for having siblings. Someone to spend your whole life with. Someone who knew your life story without needing to be told. Natalia was the closest she had to that.
“Shauna reminds me of you.” Lily had met the brides the night before. Shauna was most similar to Kieran. Deep browneyes and matching brown hair. Her personality was somewhere between Kieran’s and Maeve’s—short and sarcastic but far more open to smiling than Lily knew the fighter to be. Of all her siblings, she seemed closest with Danny, who she’d spent a solid minute hugging when they all arrived Friday evening.
Kieran faked a shudder. “Christ, I hope not. Kid’s a lot smarter than I am. A better person, too.”
“Didn’t you basically raise her? I mean, she asked you to walk her down the aisle.”
He shrugged and gestured for her to pass the water. “I don’t know if I’d call it raising. I kept them all alive.”
Yes, they’d all relied on Kieran. The longer she knew him, the more that became clear. “When we were on our hike…”
She trailed off and his eyes snapped to hers, watching as if searching for a hidden strike. She reached forward and took his hand in hers, tracing the rough calluses on his palm. “Danny mentioned something about the State and your father. You gave up your fighting career for them, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘giving up.’” He winced. “Okay, I said that to Danny when I was being an ass. But it wasn’t a choice. I did it in a heartbeat, and I’d do it again. I’d give up the world for my siblings.”
Lily brushed the dried sand from her feet and tugged on her socks and trainers. “What happened?”
He glanced down before turning his attention toward the lake. “You want the short version or the long?”
“I mean, I’m not ready to run another mile yet, so I guess the long.”
That earned a smile out of him. “We both know you can whoop my ass in cardio.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She picked his hand up once more and brought his knuckles to her lips. “Your past isn’t gonna scare me off.”
“It’s not that. I’m just not proud of it.”
She gave him another kiss for encouragement, and Kieran sighed.
“There’s thirteen years between me and Danny. I was an accident when my parents were young. I used to think they had Maeve two years later to sort of prove they were a real family, and I wasn’t a mistake. But it sucked. A lot of punishment. Not a lot of affection or food. Five years after Maeve came Shauna, and I didn’t know it then, but I have my theories because of how I know Danny came to be that Shauna was Dad’s apology to Mom for his first affair.” Kieran picked at a loose thread at the end of his hoodie sleeve. “Turns out babies don’t actually fix relationships when you’ve got every other fucking problem under the sun. I started getting between Dad and the kids when I was about seven.” He tapped the scar that split his eyebrow. “I got this when I was eight from dear ol’ Dad.”
A cold chill dropped through Lily and pooled as dread in her belly. “Eight?” And it had left a permanent scar. How deep must the cut have been when it first happened? How wide? Did he get stitches?
“It is what it is.” He continued on, undeterred. “I started wrestling in middle school and got into MMA in high school. I got a cheap car and started training with Neal. And I guess you know the rest. I got kicked out at eighteen. Went to live with Neal.” He stood and brushed the sand from his shorts. “Ready to get that last mile in?”
