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“Yes. My mom. And she’s sick, so I’d really appreciate if you could, you know, stop sleeping with my dad so he’ll stay home and be with her.” There’s really no polite way of saying it, but I still wince as the words fall out, harsher than I want them to.

Scarlett’s eyes fly open. “I’m not sleeping with him. Not for years. It’s … It’s complicated.” She pinches the spot between her brows, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the picture of someone so tense. Her voice is somewhere between desperate and panicked, and the sudden change in her demeanor is enough to give me whiplash.

“What do you—?”

“Mama!”

A flurry of tiny footsteps sound, and a girl runs up beside Scarlett, grabbing her arm.

“I can’t find my Frozen T-shirt!”

“It’s in the laundry pile, Cait. You wore it to Grandma and Grandpa’s, remember?” Scarlett’s voice softens as she talks to the girl. Her daughter.

Her daughter, who sighs and turns her attention to me, damn near stopping my heart in my chest.

There’s no mistaking where those emerald eyes came from. Christ.

“Hi,” she says, leaning against Scarlett. Her mom wraps an arm around her shoulders. “I’m Caitlin. I’m eight—and two months.”

I swallow. Eight years old. It all clicks into place: the date my dad bought the house, Scarlett’s “it’s complicated”.

Complicated doesn’t scratch the surface.

“Hi. I’m Killian,” I answer her—my half-sister. Jesus. “I’m thirty-three. And a half,” I add, for lack of anything else to say.

Caitlin’s eyes widen as she stares up at her mom. “He sounds like Daddy.” Daddy.

There’s a flash of something that looks like pain in Scarlett’s eyes, but it’s gone as soon as it appears.

It confirms what I already knew: I have a half-sibling I had no idea about. A half-sibling he fucking hid from us.

She mostly looks like Scarlett, other than her eyes, but I recognize my dad’s dimples—the same dimples he passed on to my brother Ronan. Her brown hair is tied back in two messy pigtails, with a red bow in one and a green bow in the other. She looks healthy, well-cared for. And very much related to me.

I can’t believe I missed the first eight years of her life.

“He sure does. Hey, can you get your shoes on and help your brother with his? I’m taking you to Aunt Piper’s for a while.”

Brother. Is he my dad’s too?

I take a second to look away, sucking in a deep, freezing breath as Caitlin runs off. This is a lot to process. I was already pissed off at my dad when I came here. This is so much worse than I expected.

When I turn back, Scarlett is watching me.

“Brother? Is he …?”

“Yes. James is four.”

Eight and four. Shit, she barely looks old enough to have a four-year-old, let alone an eight-year-old.

Scarlett worries her lower lip with her teeth, before pushing off the doorframe and straightening her spine. “Look, I understand this is a shock—it is for me too. But I don’t want them mixed up in any of this. As far as they know, their dad shows up once, maybe twice a year, and calls a couple times a week. They don’t need to know the messy shit.”

“Of course,” I agree, but my mind sticks on “once or twice a year”. Where the hell is he the rest of the time? Has he just left her to raise the kids alone?

I’m three years older than Ronan, and six years older than our sister Fallon, but we’ve always been close. It’s been us against the world for as long as I can remember—us, and our mom. She tried to include Dad, but him not being around isn’t a new thing, and he’s never showed much interest in me, Ronan, or Fallon even when he is around.

Finding out these kids exist and we didn’t know for so long is going to kill them. And my mom … Fuck. This is the last thing she needs right now.

Scarlett nods toward a white house across the street, covered in Christmas lights, with a blow-up Santa and two half-fallen snowmen in the yard. “My best friend lives across the street. Just give me five minutes to leave the kids with her, and we can go somewhere to talk.”