Chapter Nine

I was surprised to get no further communiqués from Kieran. I was waiting for him to pop out from behind my office door or just be inside my bathroom after I stepped out from the shower. But he didn’t. Declan and I talked at least once a day. We avoided work. Mine was boring, his was a problem.  

A few days after I had seen Declan again, I reached out to Kieran. Maybe I’d regret it, but things felt unfinished. Or maybe I merely thought I could change things. On my way home from work, I dialed him, walking back from the bus stop to my apartment.

“We need to talk,” I said, after telling him who it was who was calling.

“About what?” he sighed. 

He sounded exhausted. It was only a few minutes after five. He sounded as though he’d been through a boxing match or was ready for bed, though. I hadn’t heard that from him before. That kind of heaviness I heard in Declan’s voice. But not Kieran. Kieran always put on a melted chocolate tone– at least when he wasn’t trying to intimidate.

It made me worry. If Kieran was exhausted that likely meant business was bad. Or difficult, or troublesome. Declan and I didn’t talk about it. So I wouldn’t know if something was going sideways. It also made me feel bad for Kieran.

“I’ve had time to think,” I said, being gentle. “And I’d like to talk to you some more. I could come by the office or–”

“No,” he interrupted harshly. “No. I’ll come to you… If you want to see me.”

“I do,” I said.

“Give me an hour,” he sighed.

“It doesn’t… It doesn’t have to be tonight,” I said. “You sound–”

“No,” he interrupted again, but gentler. “I owe you some time.”

He hung up, leaving me staring at the phone. I didn’t know what to think of him. Didn’t know how to interpret his actions versus his words. 

There was a knock on my door a little over an hour later. I opened my door to him, stepping back to invite him inside. Forever surprised by how good-looking he was. Even just his startling coloring– nothing like Declan. Declan’s hair was probably milk-coffee when he was younger, more gray now. His eyes impossibly dark– overcast night dark. Kieran was gold and green. The only things truly like about them was the shape of their faces, their expressions when they wore a mask. Dangerous, or serious or grinning, then you could tell they were the same blood. 

He shook his head, stepping back, further out onto my stoop. Gesturing to the concrete steps. 

“I don’t mind inviting you in,” I said. “I don’t think you’re able to actually do any harm to me.”

He sighed, shaking his head, face downcast. The tiredness was obvious again.

“If you’re not scared of me,” he said. “Which is tremendously stupid of you… But if you really aren’t… Can I show you something? Will you come with me?”

I was almost waiting for him to extend a hand to me. My fingers were almost lifting from my side to rest in his palm. But of course he didn’t.

“Tell a friend where you’re going,” he added. “Send her a picture of my license plate or–”

“No,” I said quickly. Reaching behind me to the hook beside my door where my keys hung. Slamming the door shut behind me and trotting down my steps toward his car. 

“You may be one of god’s dumbest creations,” he said, following after me. 

“Consider me a risk-taker,” I said as he opened the passenger door for me. 

We started driving. Back toward the old neighborhood. Past his office. Past my grandparent's house where I grew up. He cut down one of the side streets, Lovey Avenue.

“Look up,” he said. “Up the hillside.”

Above the hood, above all the duplexes, apartments, motels, closed down shops and row houses were the old steel baron houses. Most falling into terrible disrepair. Looking ready to slide down the steep hills and crush the impoverished homes below. There was one still in brilliant shape. A brick manse, painted white. White painted brick walls, eleven feet high all around. It must be power washed weekly, I thought.

“That is my father’s house,” he said.

“The boss,” I said.

“Connor Quinn. The boss,” he agreed.

We slid into silence again. He drove sedately. Left arm hanging out the open window, right wrist draped on the wheel. 

He went down another side street. Juggler’s Lane. All these odd and poetic names in our old neighborhood. Named by the immigrants shipped here to work the mills. The neighborhood my grandparents remembered. Bustling, and if not prosperous, comfortable and alive.

Not today. Not abandoned shopping carts and months-old trash and boarded over windows. 

“The yellow house,” he said, pointing out the windshield to the left.

“Uh-huh,” I said. 

An old-yolk yellow row house. With those crumbling cement steps, a falling down aluminum railing on the side. Those steep steps that made taking home groceries feel like a Herculean task. That was the kind of house I grew up in too. That my grandparents so painstakingly maintained. The American flag hanging out front, cobwebs brushed from the flagpole. The marigolds she grew. The stoop he hosed down. The house number I rubbed with a torn-up tee shirt. 

“That was where the Hound… Declan grew up,” he said. 

I glanced at it. It held no mystery or further information, however. All it did was remind me of facts. The similarities and striking differences in our pasts. The homes we shared. 

We kept driving. Heading on the down slope toward the train yards. I should have been nervous. If I was going to die in some kind of gang-style hit, the mostly unused train yards would be perfect.

A few trains still went through– coal or corn or lord alone knew what. The song of my bedtime as a kid. But fewer lines went through these days– all industry for the most part utterly dead. 

But I truly wasn’t frightened. Obviously, Kieran was capable of violence. I still didn’t know which of them had attacked my attacker. It hardly mattered. But I also knew there was no reason for him to do any damage to me. And perhaps more importantly I strongly understood he had no desire to. He stopped outside of a warehouse. Walking up to a gate. There was a lock on the chain. I watched him slot something into it, give it a quick little rap with the side of his fist and it flew open to the ground.

We weren’t supposed to be here, clearly.

Flinging the gates open he came back to the car and drove through the broken-into area. Driving around the back of the warehouse into a lot. There was a flattened plateau of gravel that he mounted up on. And then we were staring down at the river. That still carried barges. That used to carry steel and coal to factories all along the river. 

It was almost pretty, in a gritty and carbon way, at sunset. The light remarkably violet purple. He got back out of the car, coming around to the passenger side and opening my door. We went to the front of his car, leaning on the hood. 

It stunk and smelled good here. The churning muddiness of the river, the high-heat humidity in the air, the sun-washed gravel, even the heat rising off the hood of his car. 

He pointed straight out ahead of us, leaning a little into me. Giving me the barrel of his arm to stare down. I held a hand up to my brow to try and see what he was pointing at. 

All I could see was the cleared edge of the opposite riverbank. The greeny-brown of the river ahead of us. Stagnant and summer stale. 

“Well,” I said. “You said you wanted to show me something. I’m not sure what I’m meant to see though.”

“Your mother is out there,” he said. 

I startled away from him. Taking three big steps to the right. 

“My mother is too,” he said. 

“Oh,” I said. 

Moving no closer though. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with this information. I raised both hands over my eyes again. Squinting across the river.

There was a burned flat portion of the land across the way. The rest of the river bank was scrub plants and weeds. Opposite us was the only bare spot. 

“Potter’s field, I guess,” I said numbly.

“We’ve always called it Stranger’s Ground, around here,” he said. 

I stared for a while longer. Like something about the area would suddenly seem momentous or important, or just anything but a burnt-clean patch on a dirty river. But there was no miasma around it. No glowing light. No divine mist. Just mud. 

“Your mother and my mother died only about four months apart,” he said. 

“Oh,” I said again. 

He didn’t sound upset– he was just conveying information. 

“The coolness with which we approach death always feels obscene and unreal,” he said.

I glanced at him then. Looking gorgeous and lit golden like a saint in the sundown. Arms crossed over his chest. Shirt pure white, slacks richly navy blue. All of him luminous. He looked like a museum piece and he looked like a beaten dog. 

“Yes,” I said quietly. “But you can still hear and see through the remove. Even when someone is attempting to be remote.”

His chin tipped further into his chest.

“Your mother and my mother both have the same cause of death written in for them. Just in opposite order. Mine was acute liver failure and exposure. Your mother’s was exposure and acute liver failure. It made me wonder for the first time if they thought one was more at fault for her death than the other. Or if the coroner who did my mother’s autopsy was trying to be alphabetic and whoever did your mother’s simply didn’t care. It’s these strange questions that pop up at moments like that. I read a version of the Little Match Girl as a very young child. Which made me weep. Once my mother died, that was all I could picture. Every oil painting of that little girl freezing on the street. Arthur Rackham and Richard Moynan. And now I picture your mother in similar fashion. Cupping match after match, attempting to survive. I wondered if they had huddled together, maybe it would not have ended for them so.” 

I let the tears fall down my face, and didn’t turn from him. I didn’t step closer, either. I didn’t offer him comfort. He didn’t appear to be trying to hurt me. But I didn’t know what he wanted, either. 

“Do you look like your mother?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said softly. I thought about brushing my face dry but there didn’t seem to be a point. “Maybe? I don’t know. My grandparents both had dark eyes and hair… before they went gray. But obviously I don’t. Presumably my father was dark too. So maybe I have her coloring. I don’t… I don’t know their faces enough to say.” 

“I do look like my mother,” he said. “If you’ve ever wondered why Declan and I don’t look very alike… I look like my mother. He looks like his father– my father’s brother. It always made me wonder if that’s why my father favored him over me. At least when I was young. If he liked his dishwater hair better than mine. If he found his black eyes easier to look at than my green.”

“His is willow-branch and onyx,” I said, getting defensive for no reason. He glanced at me briefly. Anger and then exhaustion going across his face in lightning flashes.

“Maybe your green and gold was a lovely reminder for your father,” I said.

“My mother lies in the same ground as yours– do you think she was a lovely reminder to anyone? If she was, wouldn’t she be marked?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said, realizing how stupid I’d been. 

“Don’t bother,” he said, but gently. No hint of sarcasm or anger. “This is history… And it turned out that wasn’t the real reason for his favoritism, anyway. You went to the parochial school too, didn’t you?”

I nodded. Finally getting a little closer to him. Facing him.

“You can perhaps remember how the nuns were, then,” he said. “Tightly close to all of us all the time. Sticking their noses where they ought not to have. Telling every adult anything that entered their heads about the children under their care.”

It would have sounded like misplaced bitterness. But I remembered one particular sister telling my grandmother as soon as I read a book with “irreligious kissing” in it, and how my library card was taken from me. My one real outlet. The thing that could cause me no damage. So instead I just nodded. 

“They conveyed to my father what they felt was the potential of both Declan and I. From that point onward, it wasn’t Declan and Kieran carousing on the sidewalks any more. It was college-track Declan and dumb-as-a-dog Kieran. It was the boss and Declan playing chess every Friday night, while Kieran engaged in underage drinking and street fights. You remember the summer of fifty-two bodies, don’t you?” he asked. 

I paused for a moment. I’d never heard it titled as such. But he must have been referring to the summer I wasn’t allowed outside after sundown. I didn’t know someone had given it such a poetic moniker. 

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“I’m glad you were kept safe,” he said. “I’m glad you had people around you who loved you and kept you sheltered and out of the blood and fray. If I could, I’d give them a metal for it. Declan was sent out of the state. I was sent out as a soldier.” 

“Oh… Oh, honey,” I said.

“No,” he said harshly. “I’m not asking you for that. I am showing you something. I am explaining things to you. Declan says you’re smart, you’re capable and you understand the scope of history. Prove it to me. Hear this.”

I paused again. Trying to picture the two of them talking about me. I couldn’t. 

“Declan’s father was not successful like my father. He was small-time. He was the uncle who ran numbers. He was a boxer who took too many hits. But my father saw who Declan was. He earmarked him once a nun said he was a ‘remarkably bright boy.’ Declan was sent to school, Declan was kept clean. He never spent a night in lock up. He got into a few rough fights before we were legal to drive. That was swept quite neatly up. He was admonished to not engage in that behavior any longer. And he didn’t. He was told to go to school and excel. Rub elbows with folks outside of our neighborhood. Make friends with the children of money. The boys who played lacrosse. Those well-maintained mother’s with designer dogs. And every decision of mine runs through him. My father has always paired us together. The expectation is that Declan is our frontline manager. He is the face of an operation that doesn’t exist. I am the man that keeps him clean.”

“I am sorry for you,” I said. “I am sorry you have been neglected and overlooked. I am sorry you both are stuck where you are. I have no ill will. I’m no enemy of your family.”

“You understand why things are the way they are, though?” he asked.

“I understand,” I said. “It doesn’t change a thing for me.” 

He sighed. Grabbing me roughly by the elbow and dragging me back to the car. Practically throwing me back into the bucket seat.

“The Hound is soft. You clearly aren’t,” he said, sitting back in the driver’s seat. “You can choose to help him and–”

“I’m choosing not to,” I said. “Do what you think you have to. As will I, Kieran.”

I listened to his heavy exhale through his nose. Unafraid but tired. So tired it felt like my blood had turned to sludge. 

He left me at my front door without a word. Accelerating too fast as he went up the hill back toward that walled-in white prison on the hill.  

Chapter Ten

I didn’t talk to Kieran again. While Declan and I spoke every day, we barely saw each other. Meeting up furtively for coffee. Late night, brief rendezvous at convenience stores. Walking the dark sidewalks of my neighborhood, talking rapidly for twenty or forty minutes and parting again. 

The day after seeing Kieran, I begged Becky to come over and stay with me for a few days. I hadn’t felt lonely like this in a long time. Maybe that first holiday at school with nothing and no one to go home to after the holidays. I didn’t think falling in love was supposed to be like this. 

She looked around at the nest of blankets piled up on my floor. At the wide-mouthed bowls of pasta on the table, and her eyes widened. Hanging up her purse on the hook by my door she kicked off her pumps.

“Oh no,” she said. “Has Declan broken up with you?”

“Hardly,” I said. “We’re in love.” 

“Then why don’t we have cake and candles?” she whined. “We have excellent news and–”

I interrupted her and we settled onto the floor together. Told her everything. The first showdown with Kieran. His spy-mission on me.

Even with Becky, I didn’t talk about my parents much. And I honestly didn’t know much about them. Not really. I had known about their deaths, but no details. I knew they’d never been married. I didn’t know if they were in love. I didn’t know how they met. And anyone with any insight into anything about them appeared to be dead. And while she schooched closer to me while I was speaking, she didn’t interrupt. I’m sure she knew if she did, I wouldn’t be able to continue. 

Nothing at all like her family. I went to her for most of the holidays, for the last few years. Her parents were high school sweethearts. With a sort of mild affection for each other. An older brother she attempted to foist on me for the longest time. They had a croquet set and pictures of summer vacations on their walls. Seasonal tablecloths and aunties they rolled eyes over. 

“Are you in trouble?” she asked very seriously. Belying her tone by slurping up spaghetti right afterward. Eyes wide and pretty above her spoon and fork. 

“No-o,” I said slowly. “Well… They won’t… They won’t kill me or beat me up or like… Report me to my job. But I think the expectation is that I break things off with Declan. For his own good. But I have no desire to. In fact, I think I can’t.” 

“What’s Kieran trying to prove in doing like… A background check on you?” she asked.

“I think he honestly thinks he did it for the right reasons. Who knows? Maybe they look into all the people they do business with or sleep with,” I said.

She shivered and grated more cheese over our bowls. 

“Not to be a white woman of a certain age…” she said slowly. “But what if… What if you go straight to the boss?”

“Are you saying I ought to speak with the manager?” I asked. “Like just… go to the crime boss and say ‘I’d like to date your nephew?’” 

“Why not,” she said. “What’s he going to do? Maybe he doesn’t even know. Maybe Kieran is weird or envious or jealous or something? Maybe if you appeal directly to the boss, you can make a point.”

“Um… My point is I really like having sex with Declan?” I asked sarcastically. Obviously that wasn’t the whole of it. But I couldn’t picture going to some strange man and explaining my predicament either. 

“No,” she groaned. “If his whole thing is being a front… Isn’t a wife and a home a good front? It all makes sense– you’re from the same neighborhood, you met through work, you have a good job. You’re both young, successful and good-looking. You fell in love. Now he has a wife and someone to take to all those social events and–”

“Why are we skipping right to marriage?” I cried.

“Because you want to be married,” she said simply, shrugging.

God. I did want that. I wanted to be his bride and live with him and– 

I was getting way ahead of myself. 

“Do you think so?” I asked.

“Mhmm,” she nodded, carrying our empty bowls and throwing them haphazardly into my sink with a clatter that made me wince. “I think it’s worth trying. You never try anything.” 

“So… What?” I asked as she handed me a bowl of ice cream. “I just go on up to the crime boss's house and say ‘hi, hello, I’m sucking your nephew’s dick’?” 

“Mhmm,” she said, licking her spoon, unimpressed with my vulgarity. 

“Who sent us the flowers?” she asked after several bites of ice cream.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It feels like more of a Kieran move… I didn’t think to ask.” 

“Hey, so um… Tell me,” she said. “What does Kieran look like again?”

I hit her, laughing a little and feeling pretty good. 

I wondered precisely how to go about it. I wondered if I actually should. Becky, obviously, had a tendency and ability to talk me into things that, afterward, even if I didn’t totally regret, would be astounded that I had done it. Never anything truly terrible, but just a forehead hitting why. 

What were the odds that I would be stopped right at the gate? I knew the house, I could find it on my own, but what would I find once actually there?

It wouldn’t be like going to someone else’s house. Maybe there would be fifty Luckys, all standing around, waiting to box me in or throw me back down the hill with the rest of the swill. I’d walked in on Declan unaware and that had resulted in a hand going to a pistol on his belt, most likely. So what could it possibly be like, going straight to the wild dog’s den?

I talked myself out of it. Talked myself back in. And ‘round and ‘round it went.

I knew both Kieran and Declan talked to Mr. Quinn several times a day. The fact of me, and the upset I’d caused between them had most certainly come up. Kieran had told me they were both expected to “report” on the other. It was a way Mr. Quinn kept both of them in each other’s business and at each other’s throats. 

I wouldn’t be an unknown quantity to Mr. Quinn, was the point I’d made to myself. Even if there were fifty bodyguards (though that seemed unlikely) yelling my name enough would probably get his attention. Besides, I doubted Kieran had gone on his “fact finding” mission on me alone. It seemed likely someone else was farmed out to dig up my surname at town hall and through the daily gazette. So I’d probably be a familiar name to at least a few people in the organization. Not to mention whoever else had been set to watch me by Kieran. 

I caught the bus going the wrong way one day after work. I should have told Becky where I was going but I didn’t. I just hopped on. Knowing it was the wrong one and not caring. Besides, it would get me to my stop eventually– all routes ran through all the neighborhood centers. This just happened to be a route that climbed into the hills. 

The streets were in good repair in only a few of the neighborhoods. Our town, which had been split by immigrant quarters, still fell in similar lines. The “Italian” where I lived now was working on getting back to rights. Trendy restaurants, gelato shops, office spaces. The “Serbian” was also depressed– and most of the former inhabitants had died, or grown and moved away. The “Hungarian” was similarly bootstrapping itself, like where I lived. They were seemingly trying for a night-life kind of business. Bars, date-night restaurants. The “Irish” quarter me and the Quinns had grown up in was still falling apart. Even up in the hills, there were cracks and potholes. And most of these lovely old houses looked ready to slide down the hills. Most didn’t even appear to be occupied. There were several for-sale signs outside. That looked limp and disheartened. As though they’d been hanging long enough to grow moss. 

It was a tough walk up the hill from the bus stop. Especially in my work shoes. I hadn’t thought this ahead. The likelihood that I’d turn an ankle on this stupid quest was very high. And my bag felt very heavy on my shoulder. 

It was easy, even through the scrubby and overgrown lawns, to keep an eye on the Quinn stronghold. Brilliantly white like a plate hanging in a treeline. When I finally came abreast of it, I peeked around. Reaching out, I lay my palm on the brick wall. Startled by how long I was walking along the wall, the textured feeling of the brick under hand. It was odd that something so familiar to me felt so foreign. So much of the architecture here was brick. Even our roads used to be brick. You’d see the hot top peeling away and showing the bones of still-lovely brick beneath. But perhaps because of the sterile white and frequently-applied paint, the brick didn’t feel like the brick of my childhood and everyday life. Not that sun-warmed, earthen feel. But something porcelain and rubbered. 

I finally came upon a black iron gate. Peeking around. Mostly just seeing a long drive– newly paved. It curved off toward the left. And everything was hidden and camouflaged by a veritable wall of purely white hydrangeas. I didn’t see any humans. Nor mailbox. Nor even parked cars. Just white flowers, black drive. I walked to the opposite side of the gate. Seeing if there was a call box or button. Looking straight up to both sides of the gate, looking suddenly for cameras. If there was one, I couldn’t see it. But then, I wasn’t experienced with spotting such things either. For all I knew, someone had watched my entire approach. I gave the gate a little wiggle.

It gave.

I pushed, and the left-hand side rolled silently backward. About two inches. 

I hesitated, and shouldn’t have.

A car screeched to a halt right beside me. The frame of it almost brushing my hip. Blowing my loose hair off my face.

“You get in this fucking car immediately,” a voice said. A low whispering hiss in the silent neighborhood. I turned to look at the furious face of Kieran in the open driver’s side window.

“I was just–”

I watched him scramble around angrily in his seat. Grappling with the handle of the backseat of his car. Flinging open the driver’s side door at the back.

“Get the fuck in, get the fuck in, get the fuck in,” he demanded. 

I did, mostly because he seemed so scared. He looked pale– more than pale, he looked gray. His eyes were usually jewel-like– distracting with scintillation. Today he was almost blank sea-glass. He sped up the hill before I’d fully shut the door. We were cresting the heights before I even got myself buckled in. 

“God damn you,” he said, finally raising his voice above the furious whisper it had been at. 

“Damn you,” I shot back. Finally feeling a little braver now that he was speaking at full volume. 

“No, damn you,” he said. “Stupid, risky, dumb actions for what?”

“Are you still following me?” I shot back.

“And a fucking good thing I am!” he said, eyes flashing to the rearview mirror. I leaned against the window so he couldn’t see me. 

“You were being watched the whole time you were walking up the hill,” he said, low. Voice almost guttering. “There are men on both sides of that fence. With specific orders to only allow in an agreed upon list of visitors. Do you know how long that list is? It’s five people. And one of them lives there with him. So what was your plan going to be? Flash your business card? Your similarly white tits? How did you think that was going to go down?”

“I’m a grown woman, Kieran,” I said. “You don’t get to just swoop by and toss me in your car and–”

“This wasn’t a swoop, dumb little girl. This was a rescue,” he said.

“What? Was I going to be shot in the streets of our neighborhood? That seems highly unlikely–”

“He can,” Kieran said quietly. “He can shoot you down in the streets of our neighborhood.”

I reeled back against the seat. Crossing my ankles. Folding my hands in my lap. Falling back into childhood “good-girl” posture in the backseat. Feeling scared. 

He sighed, glancing into the backseat again. He pulled over. Beside a closed pharmacy. 

“Come up here,” he said. “I hate talking into the mirror like I’m talking to a kid I’m babysitting. Or I’m a chauffeur.” 

I slid across the bench seat. Got out. Considered booking down the sidewalk to another bus stop. Realizing that wouldn’t help me much, I got into the passenger seat. 

“Buckle up,” he directed. I did. Slowly setting my purse down at my feet.

“He wouldn’t,” he sighed. “You’re right. It would hardly be prudent to shoot some random businesswoman outside of his house. He also has no desire to. He’s hardly bloodthirsty. He’s a businessman himself. It wouldn’t be wise or profitable to kill you. But I need you to understand… He could. It would be a problem for him. It would be a problem to him, the way it is for you if you forget a specific file you need for work. Or neglect to charge your phone. A passing irritation, a troublesome inconvenience.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “I get your point.”

“It’s not a point. It’s a matter of fact,” he said. “Who gave you this stupid idea anyway?”

I flashed instantly to Becky’s pretty little blinking-doll eyes looking up at me from my floor, crunching a chocolate chip in her back teeth. 

“I gave me the idea,” I said softly. “I thought I could–”

“Oh-h, look at me, I can communicate my way out of any problem,” he said, suddenly and viciously sarcastic. Sounding like any time an older boy had teased me. Waiting for him to call me a “teacher’s pet” or “goody two-shoes” or something like. 

“Nothing conquers the power of love,” he drawled. 

“Well,” I said. 

But I had nothing against that. Just crossing my arms over my chest. 

“Poppy,” he finally said. “Why don’t you just let me… We have so much in common. I don’t know why you won’t listen to me or let me take care of you or–”

“Hush,” I said. 

Suddenly cool, guts churning. He’d made a joke about having sex with me. I thought it had been just a matter of intimidation, a show of force. Something to make me angry and off-balanced. When Declan had said they discussed me, that they both felt an urge to be a protector, I hadn’t thought about it. Or, only thinking of Declan and how he felt like the shield of my life. 

“What do we have in common?” I asked. 

“Everything. Our pasts. Our neighborhoods. Our parents. Everything,” he said, sounding puzzled. Surprised that I would ask.

“Oh god, tragedy isn’t a thing to have in common. Or not even tragedy… It’s all so small-scale. So low and crass. Sick mothers? Neglectful fathers? Impoverished neighborhoods and a shared sports team? Come on,” I said.  

I watched hurt and then anger pass over his face like a cloud before he went carefully blank-faced. God, that Quinn mask. 

“We talked,” he said.

“And you stalked me! And talking isn’t… Lord, do you think that going to Stranger’s Ground was some kind of… It wasn’t anything, Kieran,” I said. 

“It’s something,” he said, low and fierce. “Who else do I have that with? You’re remarkably pretty, you look nothing like your family. You know how lonely that is– you know how lonely I was. You knew so little of where you came from. In a neighborhood that was all about who your family was. Who was your blood and how you were all connected. And you and I were so desperately and totally unconnected. Who else knows how that feels?”

“So many people do Kieran, I’m not special. And I certainly can’t fix what you think the darkness in you is,” I said. 

“You’re so silly,” he said, voice almost breaking. “So brave and foolhardy and willing and… You need someone like me. Someone to watch over you.” 

“I don’t need that,” I said, reaching across the console, briefly and without pressure resting a hand on his knee. “I especially don’t need that from you.” 

His grip tightened on the wheel but nothing else about him was betrayed. His face an unmoving portrait, his breath easy and regular. Once more pulling up outside my apartment. I gathered my purse up.

“If not for me,” he said. “Consider it for the Hound. How do you think he’s going to feel when I tell him what happened this afternoon?” “Oh!” I said. “Maybe don’t–”

“Are we going to keep secrets from him?” he asked. 

I couldn’t tell if this was a tease. It almost felt like it. Or maybe he was seeing how honest or worthy I was. I couldn’t be sure. I was always unsure about him. 

“No…” I said slowly. 

“You tell him,” he said. “I’ll give you the time to tell him on your own. I’m tired.”

“Okay,” I said. 

Stepping out of the car, I turned back around.

“Try and take care of yourself,” I said.

He snorted, pulling the passenger door shut behind me. 

Once I was back inside I finished my pack-out for the day. Emptying out my lunch supplies from my bag. Taking out my laptop. Taking off my work-pumps with a sigh of relief. It was a bad idea to walk up the hills in those. If I’d had to run, I would have had to do it barefoot. Feeling that sort of painful, sort of delicious relief as my feet went flat to my floor.

I padded around a bit uselessly. Taking off one piece of jewelry at a time and slowly putting them away. Finally, I called Declan. 

“Hello, Puppy,” he said.

“‘Lo, darling,” I said.

“What’s wrong? You sound low,” he said. “Can I come to you? For just a few minutes? Late tonight?”

“Please do,” I said.

I had gotten a little nervous about telling him about today. Not of how he’d react to me– but how he’d feel. I realized now he’d probably be made very anxious and guilty. I hadn’t intended for that. 

We talked for a few minutes more about our days. Missing each other. Reminding each other simultaneously to eat dinner and then laughing about it. I heard us both go quiet for a moment or less. I knew we were both picturing having dinner together instead of apart. Picturing some point in the future where eating dinner would always be easy and pleasurable because we’d be doing it together.