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“Can you watch them for a while?” I ask as she turns back to me.

“Yeah, of course.” Piper narrows her eyes. We’ve been best friends since we were babies—she knows me as well as she knows herself, which means she can see the panic I’m trying my best to hide. “What’s going on?”

I glance back toward Killian’s car, and she clocks it immediately.

“Who is that?”

My nails bite into my palms. “That’s Killian Michaelson. Dom’s thirty-three-year-old son.”

Piper smacks her hand to her mouth. “Shut up. He has a son?”

“He has three adult children and a wife, apparently.”

Her eyes widen, and she opens her arms to hug me. “Shit, Scar. I’m so sorry. Are you—?”

“I can’t, Pipes. Not right now. If I talk about it, if you hug me, I’m going to crumble.”

Piper doesn’t push me, just nods. “Okay. What’s he like? I assume you’re going to talk to him.”

“He seems fine. Just as surprised by me as I am by him. He was expecting a mistress, not two half-siblings. We’re going to go somewhere and figure everything out.”

“Are you sure he’s who he says he is? What if he’s a serial killer with a really elaborate made-up backstory?” Piper asks, and I wish I could say that she wasn’t serious, but Piper watches a lot of crime shows.

How do I explain that, despite his reason for coming here and the news he dropped on me, something about Killian just makes me trust him? Maybe it was the complete and utter shock on his face when he saw Caitlin, or the way he hid it so she wouldn’t notice when he introduced himself. Maybe it was the devastation in his eyes when I told him he also had a half-brother. Whatever it was, I can’t help believing he has good intentions. As for whether he’s who he says he is …

“I’m sure,” I reply with a sigh. “He has the eyes.”

I don’t have to explain further. Dom’s emerald eyes were one of the only things he passed down. He isn’t a bad-looking guy—when we met, I’d have sworn he was gorgeous, but disappointment after disappointment has ruined him for me. Killian doesn’t look like his dad, beyond the eyes. His mom must be a beautiful woman. He has floppy dark hair, the perfect amount of scruff, and a face so symmetrical that you might spot it in a gallery somewhere. His eyes, though the same color as his dad’s, are warmer. Deeper. More shocked—understandably, all things considered.

I promise to call Piper if I need her and muster the most reassuring smile I can for her when she closes her front door. I eye Killian’s rental car and take a deep, steadying breath. No part of me wants to walk over there or have the conversation we need to have. One benefit of living in a town this small is that everyone already knows everything about me—including how young I was when I got pregnant. They all spent years watching Dom let me and the kids down.

It’s easier to avoid thinking about it when I don’t have to talk about it. But Killian deserves the truth.

He jumps when I knock on the window. I can’t hear him through the glass, but I watch his lips move and then he taps the screen, hanging up a call. He gestures to the passenger seat and I round the Toyota, sliding into the car beside him.

“Sorry about that. I had to call my siblings and … Well, you know.” His cheeks flush.

“It’s all good.”

“The kids settled?” he asks, surprising me with how genuinely interested he sounds. I don’t know how to feel about that. I nod, and he clasps the steering wheel, staring out the windshield like he’s collecting himself for a moment before turning back to me. “All right. Where we headed?”

I direct him to Main Street, and he pulls up outside the diner when I point. He squints up at the aging sign as we get out of the car and huffs a laugh.

“Lucky Clover Diner. Shit, they really lean into the lucky thing here, huh?” His voice is almost too bright, like he’s trying really hard to sound calm and collected.

“They’re big on the ‘luckiest town in the Rockies’ thing,” I tell him and he scrunches up his nose.

“Is it true?”

I shrug. “We’ve had a surprising number of lotto winners.” I love my hometown, but I can’t say I’ve experienced much of the “luck” they claim is in the water. “Your dad used to say it was fate, since he was Irish. I always thought it was a little on the nose.” I don’t mention that, heavily pregnant at eighteen, I thought it was romantic. It’s embarrassing, looking back.

I cringe when I spot Cassandra milling about inside. She’s such a gossip. Maybe bringing Killian to my workplace for this conversation was a bad idea, but I don’t really know him, so it seemed sensible to do this in public. And there’s no public place in a town this small where your business won’t end up front-page news. Cassandra just works quickly.

“Hey, Scar, honey!” she calls loudly as we step into the diner and stamp our boots on the doormat. Every eye in the room turns our way. Great.

“Hey, Cassandra.”

She all but skips to us, her eyebrows touching her hairline as she takes in the man beside me.