Chapter Eleven
Danny tore up the path, blazing ahead of Lily faster than she could keep up. He’d be taller than Kieran one day. Less broad and more angular, but taller. Good. Maybe with a little height, he wouldn’t feel so small.
She jogged to catch up with the boy, leaving Kieran behind with his hands thrust in his pockets and his face twisted in a scowl.
“You okay?” Lily fell into step beside Danny and gripped the straps of her bag, praying she’d secured her ring light properly in her rush to follow the teen.
“I’ll be a lot better in a year.” Moisture glistened in the corners of his eyes, but Danny swiped it away and cast his gaze to the dirt.
“What happens next year?”
“I’ll be sixteen. I’ll get emancipated, and Kieran won’t be able to say shit to me.” His voice was thick with emotion but determined. He didn’t stutter or second-guess. He’d probably had this idea long before their fight today.
Lily hummed and kept her focus ahead, watching for ruts in the path as well as providing an illusion of privacy for Danny’s emotions. “Not a bad idea, especially if you don’t like his rules. What’s your plan for a job? Where will you live?”
“Anywhere’s better than with him.”
Not likely. They were both nursing wounds that drove a rift between the brothers, but Kieran kept a clean home. He cooked. He worked normal hours and attended Danny’s practices and games. It was, unfortunately, more than some kids got.
“Being homeless isn’t better, Danny. And if you’re going to prove to a judge you deserve your independence, then you’ll have to show you’ve thought this through and have systems in place to provide for yourself.”
The teen double-stepped forward and slammed his boot against a stone, sending it flying into the woods. “I’ll fucking run away if I have to.”
Lily swallowed and rolled her shoulders back, opening up her chest for more air. “It’s not as good as it sounds.”
“What?”
“Running away.”
Danny scoffed and hauled his pack up higher on his back. “What do you know?”
“I ran away from home when I was seventeen.” The words seeped out, unwanted but necessary. The crunch of Kieran’s footfall behind them screamed in her ears. He’d hear them. There was no way he wouldn’t.
“Okay, and?” Danny waved a hand up and down, gesturing at her body. “Look at you. You’re a content creator. Your life is perfect.”
A dry laugh slipped from Lily’s lips, and she offered Danny a wry smile.
“I’ve been in therapy for almost a year, and I take anxiety meds.
Look, I ran away from home. And yeah, I think it saved my life.
But it also fucked me up for seven years.
I didn’t have my own money. I didn’t have my own home.
Anything I did was at the mercy of someone else. What you see now? This is rebirth.”
When he said nothing, Lily continued. “If you stay home, you have a lot more opportunity at eighteen. You can get loans. Go to school. Rent a damn hotel room if you have to. Work odd jobs. Whatever you need to do to keep control of yourself. You never want to hand that to someone else.”
“So, that’s what you did? Let someone else control you?” Danny finally met her gaze. Big, soulful blue eyes stared back.
“I survived.” She turned back to the trail, ignoring the twisting in her stomach at unpleasant memories. “Ideally, I’d love for you to do more than survive. I’d like you to live.”
* * *
Whether a stress nap or chronic teenage tiredness, Danny fell asleep across the back bench thirty minutes into their drive home. His chest rose and fell in even breaths.
A sad smile tugged at her lips.
“You’re good with kids, huh?”
Lily lifted her head and met with the strong jawline of Kieran’s profile. He kept his eyes on the road, his hand rigid on the wheel. The only proof he’d spoken was the mix of question and statement swirling in her head.
“Not really.” She shifted, tearing her attention away from Danny and settling down in the passenger seat. “Vovik had a little brother—Luka. He’s about a year older than Danny. I guess I see a bit of him in your brother.”
In his hurt. In his sensitivity. In those big blue eyes and the way he needed his brother’s love.
Of everything she missed surrounding Vovik, the boy who she’d called brother hurt the most.
Kieran’s gaze swept from the rearview mirror and back to the road. His grip loosened. “I’m sorry about the hike.”
“I’m not the one you need to say sorry to.” Even if he’d scared her, she didn’t believe for a second Kieran would hit Danny. You didn’t get to be a professional fighter without learning self-control. But some words jabbed deeper than a punch and took a lot longer to heal.
“I wasn’t trying to be a dick.” He glanced in the rearview again. He wasn’t checking the road; he was checking on his brother. “I thought he was going to fall.”
“He’s okay.” She placed her hand on Kieran’s thigh. “You’re both safe. Not everything has to be fight or flight.”
The corner of his lip twitched upward.
“What?” Lily flicked his leg and grinned. “Do you only know how to fight and fuck?”
“Hmm.” He glanced at her, finally tearing his attention from the road, and pinned her with the same dark gaze that had caught her off guard the day they’d met. “Lucky me. I get to practice both with you.”
“Kieran!” She shushed him and whirled about, double-checking Danny was still sound asleep. Thankfully he was. She spun back to Kieran. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
A comfortable silence fell between them, and she settled in for the drive ahead.
With her boots and socks off, she crossed her legs and grabbed her phone.
While she’d already uploaded a few photos to PictureIt, she’d have to edit her and Danny’s video before posting on Hit It.
Pick a trending song. And, of course, time of day for posting mattered, too.
“What’s the story behind running away?”
The question rattled through Lily like a shock wave. Her body tensed, shrinking in and tucking her phone to her chest—as if needing to hide herself away.
Fight or flight, she’d said to Kieran. Or in her case, freeze.
Closing her eyes, she blew a slow breath out through her mouth. On the inhale, she rolled her shoulders back and counted to ten until her nails unfurled from her palms. Eyes open, she flashed Kieran her most playful smile.
“Sorry, that’s a big-deal story. Like, not even close to a second-date story. More of a six-month-anniversary story.”
He lifted his left hand to the top of the wheel and with his right pointed at the phone in her lap. “There’re theories on Hit It we’re secretly married and pretending we barely know one another for clout. So come on, wifey. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”
Lily sucked her teeth into a pout and scowled down at her phone. For someone who claimed to hate social media, he knew a lot about what happened there.
The memory of their shower unfurled behind her eyes. The way the water had slipped between every notch of muscle. The heat of his body beneath her touch. The puckered, rumpled skin of a stitched-up slash across his side near his ribs. He wanted her to be vulnerable. You first.
“Tell me about the scar on your torso.”
His mouth tightened, and his jaw worked back and forth, chewing the unspoken words. All emotion left his face. Eyes blank and trained on the road. He could have been a ghost.
“I got into a fistfight with my pops when I turned eighteen. Figured I was grown and could take him on. We had this junker in the front yard that he’d been ripping parts out of and selling for drug money and shit.
I kicked his tweaker ass, but he shoved me against a jagged part of the car.
I had to get stitches and a tetanus shot.
Didn’t have insurance, but Neal helped me out.
Mom chose Dad. Told me never to come back, and Neal took me in. ”
The blood drained from Lily’s face. Her hand shot out, grabbing his. “I’m so sorry.”
His own mother chose his abuser over him? She knew all too well the pain of that betrayal, but it wouldn’t be what she’d want for Kieran or for Danny. Mothers were meant to choose their children.
Kieran’s hand closed around hers, and he squeezed, encouraging her. “Your turn.”
Lily swallowed and her tongue darted out, wetting her lips.
There were a thousand different ways to say it.
Dress it up all pretty and make it out to be less than it was.
Give in to the truth and say the words she’d only ever whispered in her head as those memories rolled out on repeat behind her eyelids.
Or dissociate. Take away the pain of it all.
Like how she’d told her therapist. All facts, no tears.
“My stepfather wasn’t a good man. Or even a decent one. And um. There was a lot my mom let him get away with. When I was seventeen, he tri—” The words hardened in her throat, unwilling to be uttered even after all the years that had passed.
Kieran’s thumb stroked over her hand. “It’s okay. Did you get away?”
She nodded and glanced at their clasped hands. Maybe he would understand. Given everything that happened with his own mother, maybe he wouldn’t ask her, Why?
“I got away. And I ran straight to Vovik. His family took me in. And I was safe. For a while, at least.”
“Vovik.” Kieran said the name slowly, as if testing for poison on his tongue. “The guy you wanted to marry?”
Wanted to? Hell, promised to. She’d worn the ring and set a date.
“Yep.”
Kieran traded their cupped hands for threaded fingers and clamped their hands against his thigh. The mesh of his gym shorts tickled her arm. His breath was deep and steady. Measured. “And when did he first hit you?”
Ice froze in Lily’s chest and sank, shattering into shards within her belly. She whipped back, facing Kieran. Those dark eyes didn’t waver from the road. His hand squeezed hers again.
She nibbled her lip, wishing she could quell the violent rolling of her stomach. “Who says he did?”
“Your body language did when Sebastián grabbed your arm at the party. Your body expected him to hurt you, and you reacted the way whoever taught you self-defense showed you how to react.”
He’d known for a while then. Before they went to lunch.
Before they’d ever kissed. She glanced out the window, watching the flat plains of Illinois roll by.
“It wasn’t until college. We’d left his family home and, just…
” She shrugged. “He owned everything. The car. The apartment. The bank account. I couldn’t have left him if I’d wanted to and…
I didn’t want to. I loved him, more than I loved myself. ”
She dared a glance at him. Kieran’s chest expanded and shrank with deep, trembling breaths. His nostrils flared outward, and his grip on the wheel turned white.
She tugged their joined hands upward and nuzzled the back of his hand. His scent was calm and familiar—like the crisp coolness of a winter sky just before snow.
“Kieran.” His hand flexed in hers when she called his name. “Talk to me.”
His jaw clenched and churned. “Are you safe?”
“Yes.” She kissed the back of his hand.
“And would you tell me if you weren’t?”
“Yes.” She answered without pause. Maybe she didn’t know Kieran very well, but she knew how he felt about protecting women. When it came to safety, he could be trusted.
He blew out a long breath, and with it a bit of the tension in his shoulders dropped away. He released her hand, choosing instead to spread his hand over her thigh. He rested it there, its weight a welcomed warmth. When he glanced over, a pinch of a smile crept up toward his eyes. “Good.”