8. Keaton （Skee）
Keaton (Skee)
By the time Rachel decides everyone is doing birthday shots, I’m already regretting leaving the office.
Not because the bar is bad.
The place is actually decent in that aggressively loud kind of way where old rock music shakes the walls hard enough to rattle the beer signs and half the people inside look capable of either rebuilding an engine or starting a felony before midnight.
It’s the people part I object to. Too many bodies. Too much noise. Too many opportunities for someone sticky to breathe near me.
Across the booth, Rachel points accusingly at me with a tequila shot balanced between her fingers. “If you even think about pretending that’s water, I’ll fight you.”
I glance down at the clear liquid in front of me. “Seems dramatic.”
“You’re dramatic.” She slurs her words.
“I’m literally sitting still.” I lift my glass.
“Emotionally,” she clarifies.
Wheels loses his mind laughing beside her while Sloane rolls her eyes hard enough to qualify as a medical emergency.
“You know,” Sloane says while sipping her drink, “watching all of you interact explains why Rachel drinks.”
“Rude,” Rachel gasps.
“Accurate,” Bullet mutters from the end of the booth without looking up from his beer.
That alone makes everyone pause. Because Bullet talking voluntarily is statistically significant.
Rachel points at him. “See? Elias gets it.”
Bullet takes another drink calmly. “I said accurate. Not healthy.”
“Still counts.”
The entire table erupts again while I shake my head and reopen the laptop sitting beside my beer.
“You brought your computer to a bar?” Sloane asks flatly.
“I bring it everywhere.”
“That’s deeply concerning.” Sloane states like I care how she feels.
“It’s called efficiency.”
“It’s called emotional avoidance,” Rachel corrects.
I ignore her on principle. Mostly because she’s annoyingly close to being right lately.
The Gallagher estate feed glows quietly across the corner of my screen while conversation swirls around me. Upstairs hallway. Kitchen. Exterior gates.
Maeve crossed through the west hallway fourteen minutes ago carrying tea and disappeared into the guest bathroom for exactly six minutes before reemerging.
I know this because apparently my brain now catalogs her movements automatically whether I want it to or not. That should concern me more than it does.
“What are you glaring at?” Matt asks from beside Rachel.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” Wheels says. “That’s his serial killer face.”
“I don’t have a serial killer face.”
“You absolutely have a serial killer face,” Sloane informs me.
“Thank you, Sloane,” Rachel says proudly. “Finally someone else sees it.”
I lean back against the booth with a sigh. “For the record, this feels incredibly targeted.”
“Probably because you keep staring at your laptop like it owes you money,” Wheels says.
My eyes flick briefly back toward the screen before I can stop myself.
Unfortunately, Rachel notices. Because Rachel notices everything.
Her expression shifts almost imperceptibly while the others continue arguing about whether Matt cheated during darts three weeks ago.
I dislike whatever thought just formed in her head.
She says nothing though. Just watches me for one second too long before taking another sip of her drink.
Dangerous woman.
The bartender changes songs overhead, the opening guitar riff from Burn It To the Ground roaring through the speakers loud enough to shake the damn table while half the bar cheers drunkenly.
Wheels stands. “OH NOW WE’RE TALKING.”
“Sit down,” Matt says without looking up.
“No.” He starts throwing his hands in the air.
“Ray.”
“I was born for this moment.” He yells above the crowd.
“You were born because your parents made mistakes.” Sloane snorts so violently into her drink she nearly chokes.
And despite myself—I laugh. A real one too. Small. Brief. Still real.
Rachel’s eyes snap toward me so fast it’s almost aggressive. “Oh my God.”
I narrow mine. “Don’t.”
“You laughed.”
“I do that sometimes.” I try to downplay it but she isn’t having it.
“Not voluntarily.”
“Pretty sure laughter is always voluntary.”
“No,” Bullet says calmly from the end of the booth. “Sometimes it’s fear-based.”
“That’s fair,” Matt agrees.
The table dissolves again while I shake my head and glance back toward the laptop screen automatically.
Maeve’s upstairs reading now. Curled sideways near the library window with one of the estate blankets pulled over her legs while rain streaks softly across the glass behind her. Something strange tightens beneath my ribs. Not lust. Not obsession.
Something worse. Familiarity.
Like my brain recognizes her now in ways I don’t fully understand yet.
“What the hell are you even looking at?” The voice slurs from somewhere too close to my shoulder.
I glance up. Drunk. Mid-thirties maybe. Red-faced. Sweating whiskey fumes and bad decisions while leaning halfway into our booth.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Nothing that concerns you,” I tell him evenly.
The guy squints at the laptop screen anyway. And unfortunately—Maeve’s face is still visible in the corner feed.
The drunk’s expression changes. “Well now,” he laughs loudly. “That’s creepy as shit.”
Every muscle in my body stills instantly. Beside me, Matt goes quiet too. Bad sign.
“You spying on girls, man?” the drunk continues, louder now. “Jesus Christ. You some kinda freak?”
“Walk away,” Bullet says calmly from the end of the booth.
The guy ignores him completely. Mistake. He reaches for the edge of my laptop screen with sloppy fingers.
And that was the exact moment the night turned into a bad Quentin Tarantino film.
Everything after that happens fast. The drunk grabs the screen. I grab his wrist. Hard enough to make something pop.
He screams.
Wheels stands so violently the entire table rattles backward while nearby bar patrons start shouting. Somebody swings from somewhere to my left. Matt catches the guy mid-punch and slams him into a wall hard enough to crack drywall while Rachel yells something deeply threatening over the music.
Sloane doesn’t even look surprised. Interesting woman.
The drunk jerks against my grip again, still screaming while beer spills across the booth.
“You touched my computer,” I explain calmly.
Like that justifies anything currently happening. To be fair—it absolutely does.
Another guy charges toward us from the bar.
Bullet stands. That’s it. That’s the horrifying part. No anger. No shouting. The man simply takes one look at Elias Mercer unfolding himself to full height with that cold sniper stare and immediately rethinks every life decision that led him here tonight.
Smartest person in the building honestly.
Wheels, meanwhile, is having the time of his life.
“Oh we’re fighting fighting?” he yells over the music while shoving someone backward into a pool table. “SAY LESS.”
“Raymond!” Rachel screams.
“I’m bonding!” He yells as he takes a guy’s head and slams it against his knee.
Matt finally grabs the back of my shirt before I can break the drunk’s wrist entirely. “Enough,” he snaps.
I blink once. Look down. Huh. Apparently somewhere during the chaos I stood up without consciously deciding to.
Interesting.
The drunk stumbles backward clutching his wrist while security barrels toward us from the opposite side of the bar.
“Out,” Matt orders.
Wheels points toward the bartender on the way out. “Your mozzarella sticks sucked!”
“They were great!” Sloane yells back.
Rain slams into us the second we hit the parking lot, all cold air and adrenaline and leftover violence while Rachel laughs hard enough she has to brace herself against Matt’s truck.
“You people are feral,” Sloane says between breaths.
“Correct,” Bullet replies.
Wheels points dramatically at me. “This psycho started it.”
“He touched my laptop.”
“You looked ready to commit murder.” Matt says as he wraps his arm around Rachel’s shoulder.
“He interrupted my work.”
Rachel wipes rainwater from beneath her eyes while still laughing. “Keaton, honey, normal people don’t assault strangers over computers.”
“That feels inaccurate.”
Matt stares at me for a long moment. “What exactly was on that screen?”
The question comes too casually. Dangerous.
I slide the laptop bag higher onto my shoulder carefully. “Security feeds.”
“Mhmm.”
Rachel watches me the same way she watches thunderstorms rolling toward the house. Like she knows something’s coming before everyone else does.
I decide I dislike that look too.
Wheels is still arguing with Sloane about mozzarella sticks when I finally pull the laptop back out in the passenger seat of my car.
Pure instinct. The Gallagher feed reconnects instantly.
And there she is.
Maeve sits curled sideways in the library beneath soft yellow light, knees pulled loosely to her chest while her forehead rests against them like she’s trying to disappear quietly enough the world might forget she exists for a little while.
The chaos from the parking lot fades instantly into silence. Something settles low and heavy beneath my ribs while I stare at the screen.
Then Rachel’s voice cuts through the rain beside me. Soft this time. Careful.
“Are you okay, Keaton?”
And for the first time in weeks—I genuinely don’t know how to answer her.