11. Killian
KILLIAN
Iwas awake when they went to the tasting room.
The order, which is not my call.
I've known it was Cormac's call since I watched his face at the first dinner she came to.
He poured her wine first—not courtesy, a statement—and his expression didn't change but something in the room did.
I held my mouth shut because she was Ryan's then.
I held it shut after because Cormac had been waiting two years with the patience of a man who has decided to wait as long as it takes, and I am not going up against twenty-six years of watching my father do exactly what he says he's going to do and do it better than anyone else.
I'm not my father.
I'm not Ryan either.
I lay awake for an hour and a half and didn't go downstairs.
I heard voices at two in the morning.
My father's, low and even. Ryan's—the controlled version that means something has already burned down. I lay in the dark a while longer. The voices went quiet the way they do when people have run out of what to say and are just standing in the room with it.
I got up.
The stairs creak on the left side. I've known which boards don't since I was twelve. I went down quiet.
The kitchen was empty. One glass with water still in it. Back door unlocked. Through the window I could see the north slope, and a figure at the fence line—Ryan's jacket, Ryan's walk, the set of his shoulders when he's carrying something and doesn't have a name for it yet.
I thought about going back upstairs.
I stood in the kitchen with the cold coming through the window frame and the tap dripping under the sink and I thought: go back up. Let him work through it on the slope and come inside and you can all have breakfast in the morning and pretend this is manageable.
I stayed.
He comes back in twenty minutes later.
I'm at the table in the dark. Clock reads two-forty-one.
The back door opens and he sees me before I say anything, and his face does what it does when he needs the anger to have somewhere to go.
I've watched him do this his whole life.
He aimed it at coaches, teachers, once at our father for about thirty seconds before he thought better of it.
He can't aim it at Cormac tonight. He knows it. I watch him know it.
So I'm here.
"You wanted her." Not a question.
"Yeah." No use lying.
"Two years. Every dinner. You sat there and let me?—"
"She was with you." I keep it level. "That was the end of it."
"But not anymore."
"Not anymore." I hold his gaze. "Yeah."
He goes very still. The moment before the decision—the look of a man who is about to do something he knows is wrong and has decided to do it anyway because standing there with all of it is worse.
He's twenty-four years old and he can't go to Cormac.
Can't go to Jade. Can't go to the winery and take back the last two hours.
He can come to me.
I stand up because sitting for what's coming is a bad idea.
The first punch is his. He's not small, and he puts two years of consequence behind it. It lands along my jaw—the impact traveling up through my skull—and I take a half-step back into the table and my vision blurs at the edges for one full second.
He pulls back to go again. I block it—one arm up, one hand in his collar—and I have him against the kitchen wall. Nose to nose. Both of us breathing hard. I haven't hit him back yet.
"Do it," he says. His eyes are wet and his jaw is set and he looks exactly as young as he is.
I look at him.
He threw that punch for Cormac. He threw it because our father was in that building with her tonight, doing what Ryan failed to do for two years, and he can't touch Cormac for it—the authority, the twenty-seven years of Cormac being the thing you push against without ever actually moving.
So it went sideways. Into me. Because I wanted her too and said nothing.
Sat across from her at every dinner for two years and watched.
I'm not angry about it.
I let go of his collar.
"Same arm, same angle," I say. "Every time you're angry. You've always been predictable."
"Killian—"
"You're not wrong." I press two fingers to my jaw. Going to bruise. "I wanted her. I held it because you were with her and I'm not that guy. You know I'm not."
His fist loosens.
"Then you weren't with her anymore."
"I know what I did."
"Then you know it's not my fault she's here." I hold his gaze. "You know it's not Cormac's fault either. You did the thing that put her in that position. You stood in a hotel room in February and you lit the match yourself."
Something moves through his face. Not anger. The thing underneath it.
"She was down there tonight," he says. His voice has gone quiet. "With Dad."
"I know."
"I heard it. I stood there and I heard all of it."
I figured that from the kitchen, from the water glass, from the look on his face when he came through the back door. He didn't go to the north slope for the air.
"Yeah," I say.
The silence between us is the most honest one we've had in years. He's looking at me like a man who has run out of misdirection and doesn't know what to do now that it's gone.
"I kept her at arm's length on purpose," he says. "Two years. Because I was afraid."
"I know."
"And he just—" He stops. Presses the back of his hand to his mouth for a second. "First night."
"That's who he is."
"I know who he is." His voice is rough. "I grew up watching who he is."
I hit him back then—open hand, flat, not hard enough to damage, just enough to be real. He takes it. Doesn't flinch. His head turns and turns back. Neither of us moves.
"You should have been braver," I say. "You know that."
"Yeah."
"She waited."
"I know."
"And now she's here." I look at him. "So are we."
He looks at the floor. He's not going to cry in front of me—he never does—but it's close. I put a hand on the back of his neck for one second the way I did when we were kids and he'd worked himself into something he couldn't get out of. Then I let go.
My father's voice, from the hall: "That's enough."
He's in the doorway. He's been there long enough to hear what he needed to hear. He looks at Ryan. Then me.
"Bed," he says.
Ryan's jaw works. He opens his mouth and closes it.
"We both deserve her more than you did." No heat. Just what it is. "Maybe it's time you learned that."
Ryan doesn't answer. He goes past me to the hall, up the stairs. His door closes—the measured version, not a slam. The slam is anger. The measured close is a man choosing not to break, which means he still has more to break than he wants anyone to see.
My father looks at me. Something in his face acknowledges the order without naming it—the fact that he goes first, always, that this is the structure he built. He's not apologizing for it. He never will.
"She's outside," he says. "Winery step."
He goes down the hall. His door closes.
I press two fingers to my jaw. Solid bruise by morning. I get a cloth from the counter, run it cold, hold it against my face. The tap drips. Through the window the north slope goes dark to the tree line and the house is almost completely still.
I go outside.
The winery step is concrete, cold through her jeans. She has her arms around her knees and she's looking at the north slope when I come around the building. She hears me on the gravel and turns just enough to see it's me, then looks back at the slope.
I sit beside her. Our shoulders don't touch.
In the low light from the winery window her auburn hair catches warm along the edge of it—dark red in the dark, falling loose around her shoulders where it's come down from wherever it was earlier.
Her skin is pale and warm and she's not wearing a jacket, been out here long enough to be cold.
When she finally turns and looks at me fully, her eyes are the dark steady green they get when she's not performing anything. Just present. Just watching.
She looks at my jaw.
"He hit you."
"First punch."
"Did you?—"
"Once." I touch the bruise. "Open hand."
She looks at my face a moment longer. Then back at the slope.
The air is cold and sharp. Turned earth, oak from the winery, the creek behind us in the dark. I look at the same rows she's looking at.
I don't say anything.
She doesn't say anything.
A bat crosses low over the nearest row. The house sits solid on the rise behind us, most windows dark.
"He wasn't really hitting you," she says, after a while.
"I know."
"He couldn't go to your dad."
"No."
She nods—small, confirming something she already worked out. She pulls her knees tighter. The warmth of her is close in the cold. She's been out here long enough to be cold and she hasn't moved. That's the thing about her. She sits in things. She doesn't try to get out of them too fast.
I've watched her do that at three Sunday dinners in a row: sit in the discomfort of my brother's distance and not flinch. I told myself it was patience. I think it was something closer to knowing her own mind.
I've wanted her since the first dinner she came to.
She had her hair back that night and she asked my father about the north slope varieties and he answered her like she was the only person in the room, and I sat across the table and held my jaw level and my hands flat on my knees and counted the minutes.
She was Ryan's. The line was real. I held it for two years.
I'm not holding it anymore.
But I'm not saying that tonight. Not on this step, when she's been through whatever the last few hours were and she's sitting in the cold with her arms around her knees. She doesn't need me to tell her what I want. She already knows. She's known since the kitchen this morning.
Tonight she needs the step and the dark and someone who will sit in it without needing anything from her.
This I know how to do. I've always known how to do this.
Running baths. Sitting outside closed doors. The version of staying that doesn't ask for anything back. I learned it young and I'm still figuring out what it cost me. Tonight I don't care about the cost.
"You okay?" I ask.
She turns and looks at me—really looks, taking a second. Whatever she sees, she doesn't name.
"I've been better," she says.
"Yeah."
She goes back to looking at the slope.
We sit. Concrete cold through my socks. The creek. The bat making another pass above the rows.
Her shoulder leans against mine.
I don't move. I let it sit.
The north slope goes out to the tree line. Tomorrow there's the east side still to turn, the second tractor, rain Thursday. Everything that was here before tonight and will be here after.
Her shoulder against mine in the dark.
I can stay here as long as she needs.