Chapter Thirteen
ATTICUS: SAMMIE
Atticus: Sammie
Atticus: Sammie
Kai: Oh my god, stop, she’ll respond when she sees it.
Atticus: Sister
Sammie: What
Atticus: Update please
Sammie: Gonna replace the window. Lots of water damage in the kitchen. Kieran is helping with the gutters. There are spiders in your room.
Atticus: FUCK
Kai: Is “helping with the gutters” a euphemism?
Sammie: There was an egg sack in the window sill above your bed
Atticus: FUCK NO FUCK
~
Ivy: how’s it going at the house??? is the window going to be okay???
Sammie: Ehhhhh good and bad. Everything that’s wrong is fixable, just gonna cost a lot
Ivy: :(
Ivy: anything i can help with?
Sammie: Honestly, I’ll probably just need a night to crash out over it all and then it’ll look better
Ivy: i’m always up for a good crash out! i’m free tuesday night!!!
Sammie: Knew I could count on you
Ivy: always :)
“Aunt Meredith already asked if I know anything about your contract.”
Sammie stared at the tall, muscular, blonde woman standing before her, whispering into Kieran’s ear.
Kenna, she presumed. Kieran’s cousin. Sammie hadn’t seen her since they were children, not since some sort of falling out had happened between the McCullough brothers. Kieran frowned at her whispered words.
Kenna continued, leaning in closer. “A contract that you failed to bring up on our last call.” God, she was taller than Sammie, thicker too, with a frown for her cousin that pushed her lips into a pretty pout.
So the whole family was hot. Awesome.
“Let’s try not to talk about it tonight.” Kieran sighed, rubbing the short beard at his jaw. Kenna nodded, and then her attention turned fully toward Sammie.
“Uh,” Sammie started. She held out a hand. “Don’t know if you remember me. Sammie Mills.”
“I remember.” Kenna shook the proffered hand with a raised brow, and Sammie wanted to squirm under the scrutiny. She vaguely remembered finding Kenna hard to read as a child. That much apparently hadn’t changed.
Kenna’s eyes flicked between Sammie and Kieran, the smallest of smiles flickering over her lips. “This a thing now?”
“No,” from Kieran.
“It’s not what it looks like,” from Sammie. Kenna flicked her bored stare between the two of them.
“Sure. Might want to figure that out if you’re wanting to distract your mother from more questions about that contract.”
Kenna turned toward the voices echoing down the hall from the dining room, leaving Sammie and Kieran to presumably figure their shit out in the thirty or so seconds they would have before being discovered by the rest of the family.
“Why do they all think we’re together?” Sammie hissed the question. It rankled, having people think she was in a relationship with the person she did, in fact, want to be in a relationship with.
Kieran was still staring down the hallway. “I don’t know what Kenna’s deal is.” He rolled his eyes, turning back to Sammie. “She’s kind of infuriating with her know-it-all tendencies. And my parents… they just like you. They’ll drop it eventually.”
That rankled as well. While she wasn’t over the moon happy with the constant investigation into her nonexistent love life, a part of her did preen every time someone thought her and Kieran were together.
But Kieran’s words had just blown out the candle flame of pretending, and the warmth of his family’s assumptions faded away.
A family that wanted her. That saw her with their son, and liked her enough to assume she’d be sticking around for a while.
Grant and Meredith knew her. They’d been there when Greta died.
They’d come to Attie’s games whenever they were able, even before Kieran had switched to the same team.
They’d taken Sammie out for a celebratory dinner when she’d been promoted to head brewer.
They hadn’t blinked an eye when Atticus had introduced his boyfriend to them earlier that summer.
The bittersweet reality of her situation spread through Sammie like a poison. She had Kieran, but not in the way she wanted. Not in any way that could be permanent.
And the worst part? Sammie would take what she could get, regardless of the damage it did to her heart.
“Kieran, Sammie, you coming?” Meredith’s voice echoed out from the dining room, sending a jolt through Sammie.
It was fine. It would be fine. Sammie had gone into her arrangement with Kieran knowing it wasn’t real, that it would never be real.
And so far, they were having fun. Their bodies fit together, their desires aligned.
It would have to be enough.
“We’ll be right there,” Kieran called, eyes still holding Sammie steady, pinning her in place. He leaned in, ruffling her hair. “Come on, let’s go eat.”
Enough was going to be pretty hard to accept, Sammie thought, if he was going to pull cute shit like that all the time.
“Met that athletic trainer of yours,” Kenna said to Kieran as she lifted a piece of pizza that was absolutely sagging with cheese to her mouth. Kieran felt Sammie go rigid next to him, even though they weren’t touching.
“Ivy?” Sammie asked. Kenna nodded, dabbing at her lips with one of the cloth napkins Kieran’s mother had passed to all of them.
“Is she the one you got into a fight with at the conference last month?” The voice of Kellan, Kenna’s younger brother, pulled the attention of everyone at the table.
“A fight?” Meredith said, gasping softly.
“It wasn’t a fight.” Kenna looked bored, picking up a second slice of the homemade pizza.
“Couldn’t pay me to get in a fight with Ivy,” Kieran mumbled, earning a breathy chuckle from Sammie. He saw her relax slightly in the corner of his vision.
“So you’re the one—”Sammie cut herself off, cheeks going red as every set of eyes at the table turned toward her. “Never mind.”
“I’m the one what?” Kenna could be intimidating. Kieran, his parents, the whole family, they were used to her unique brand of bluntness, her matter-of-fact, seemingly emotionless way of approaching every conversation.
“Ivy mentioned having a… confrontation with a player. That’s all,” Sammie said, her words coming out just a bit too fast, enough that Kieran noticed. He’d have to ask her what exactly Ivy had said about his cousin. Later, when she wasn’t facing down a large portion of his family.
Kenna frowned, but Kieran knew not to read into it. Best to let her process the information in her own way.
“Damn, Kenna,” Kellan continued, pushing his strawberry blonde curls, lighter than Kieran’s own, back from his forehead, a conniving smile that only a younger sibling could pull off shining bright as he faced his sister. “Making enemies even in the men’s league. That’s a new level for you.”
Kenna frowned harder. Kieran felt like he needed to step in, just like he’d always tried to when they were younger, to find a way to pull the spotlight away from her.
“Ivy isn’t an enemy,” she finally responded, the lines smoothing out on her brow, some inner turmoil dissipating before their eyes. “We just disagreed about some stretching techniques.”
Kieran’s gaze snapped to Sammie, and he watched as a smile crinkled the corners of her eyes.
“Oh,” Sammie said, and Kieran nodded along. “Stretching is kind of a big deal to Ivy.”
“Ivy says stretch, the team says, ‘Yes ma’am,’” Kieran agreed.
“She sounds lovely,” Meredith said with a soft hum and a smile. Kieran’s gaze was still on Sammie, though, and he saw something flicker there, an emotion he couldn’t quite place that was gone before he could study it too hard.
“How’s Colorado?” Grant asked around a mouthful of pepperoni, turning the attention of the room to Kellan. Kieran’s younger cousin shrugged, leaning back in his chair.
“Expensive,” he grumbled, sighing. “Have to hike for ages just to find any worthwhile snow right now.”
“You find a roommate yet?” Kieran asked. That perked Kellan up.
“Two, actually,” he said. “Morgan snowboards too, they’re really good.
Met them through work at the resort this past winter, they ended up needing a new place after their rent was raised.
Just happened to be around the time I decided to make the move permanent.
Had their roommate, Emery, in tow. He’s cool too.
Spent a couple years on the professional skateboarding circuit, but he does commercial graphic design now. ”
“I’m glad you’re finding your place,” Kieran said. The whole family had been worried after the youngest of the grandchildren had roadtripped out to Colorado for a season of snowboarding, only to announce that he’d decided to stay and have a go at making a life for himself there.
Kellan smiled brightly. “Me too. Even if someone likes to act like it’s too hard to come visit me all the time.” He punctuated the sentence by poking Kenna’s arm. Hard. Her response was to shove him almost completely out of his chair while expending minimal energy.
“We should all go this winter!” Meredith exclaimed. “As soon as the slopes open up! Sammie, do you snowboard?”
“Um,” Sammie began, her cheeks flaring pink. “Yeah, Granny used to take us to a place a couple hours away. I’ve still got my gear.”
She sounded so timid to Kieran’s ears, and it hit him that this wasn’t normal for her. Sammie’s family had always been small. Her, her brother, and their grandmother. No aunts and uncles, no cousins to grow up with. Just the three of them.
And yet, here was Kieran’s family, making vacation plans, including her like it was the most obvious thing to do.
His parents, namely his mother, hadn’t prodded any more about the status of his relationship with Sammie.
He was sure there would be questions later, an endless supply of them, but none of it really mattered because if Sammie meant something to Kieran, then that meant she was a part of their group, full stop.