Dale was yanked out of his chair and dragged through the family home like a feral cat they’d found under the bed.
They reached the kitchen on the first floor and shoved Dale inside with no mercy. No kindness! Why was he always so mistreated?
“Tell him,” Finn ordered when Dale came to a stumbling stop in front of a feeding Keane. His eldest brother was hunkered over a big bowl of Irish stew their mother had made them, big arms resting on the wood table, black hair nearly hiding those disturbing gold eyes that never seemed to miss a goddamn thing.
“Tell him,” Finn said again.
“I don’t think there’s really anything to—”
Shay bumped him in the back, shoving him forward. “Tell him.”
Dale cleared his throat. “The thing is,” he began, “I promised her—”
Before he could finish, Keane turned his head and locked that cold, merciless gold gaze on Dale, his mouth moving as he very slowly chewed his food. It shouldn’t freak out Dale as much as it did; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been in this situation many times before. But there was just something about the way his brother did that . . . while staring at him . . . that made Dale want to make a run for it.
And even though he really couldn’t see his brother’s eyes, it didn’t matter. He could feel them.
Dale swallowed and said, “Okay, before everyone gets hysterical. . . she’s fine. She realizes she made a mistake and she’s going to come home soon. She just . . . wants to fix a few things before she does. I tried to talk her out of it, but you know how she is once she makes up her mind. She’s just like you, Keane. But she is okay. I just talked to her.”
Keane stopped chewing. He swallowed. He kept staring.
“What?” Dale finally asked when the staring kept going and going.
“How long have you known where she is?” Finn asked.
“I actually don’t know where she is. She’s been on the move. Constantly.”
“But you’ve been in touch with her. All this time. And didn’t say a word to anyone? Even Mom?”
“She really wanted to do this on her own without you guys.”
“Your seventeen-year-old baby sister wanted to do this on her own and you think that’s not a problem?”
“I don’t know why you’re all mad at me. I didn’t do anything! She did it. And you guys were the ones who went after the MacKilligan sisters, which is probably why she thinks she has something to fix. Again, not something I was remotely involved in. So I don’t see why everyone is all—ow. Ow. Ow! Ow!”
Shay, gripping Dale’s shoulder and squeezing, nearly crushing it with his goddamn tiger-grip, leaned down and reminded him, “Until you have your growth spurt, short stuff, and your fangs fully come in, you may want to just tell Keane what he wants to know.”
“I’m telling you what I know. I don’t know what she’s up to. I didn’t know she’d be going. And I’m not exactly sure when she’ll be back. She just told me she would be coming home soon and that she was completely fine. That’s all I know.”
Keane continued to stare at Dale for another full two minutes—really! It was two minutes! He counted!—and Dale forced himself not to look away. Not to avert his eyes. He forced himself not to do anything because he knew his brother would see that as a sign that Dale was lying. And if he thought Dale was lying, this thing could go on for the next twenty-four hours. So Dale kept his gaze steady and waited.
Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, Keane returned his gaze to what was directly in front of him, spooned more Irish stew into his mouth, and chewed. Slowly. Methodically.
Finn put his arm over Dale’s shoulder and walked with him back to the stairs. “Next time you hear from her, tell us right away. So that we don’t have to worry about lying to our mother when we tell her that you’re not buried in the backyard. Understand?”
“That you’re threatening your own brother with death because our sister is always more important than I will ever be? Is that what I’m supposed to understand?”
“Yes!” Finn nodded and smiled at Shay. “Is it me or do you think the kid finally gets it?”
chapter TWENTY-ONE
Xavier Vargas opened his front door and found his grandson standing there, filling up that doorframe as he always had since the time he was fourteen. He wasn’t alone today, though. For the first time since high school, he’d brought a girl home.
Some Chinese girl with purple hair and sneakers that matched. She didn’t even reach Zé’s shoulder she was so short.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“We need to talk,” Zé said, pushing his way past Xavier and entering the apartment they’d called home the kid’s entire life.
“About what?” he asked, closing the door.
He started to follow Zé, but a knock at the door had him opening it again. The purple-haired girl stood there.
She gestured toward Zé. “I’m kinda with him.”
“Then get in here,” he told her and waited until “her majesty” made her grand entrance.
He pointed to the room he used as his living room and office. Yeah, the apartment was small but it was better than what he used to have growing up.
Xavier went to his kitchen, took three bottles of beer out of the refrigerator and grabbed an opener from the drawer, then took the extremely short jaunt to the living room, which was about two inches away from the kitchen. Although a wall did separate them, which was nice and a feature not everyone in the building had.
He handed out the beers and took the top off his grandson’s, then his own, then was about to do the same for the girl but she had already used her teeth to remove the cap.
Deciding not to focus on that bit of tacky for longer than was necessary, Xavier faced his grandson.
Zé began to speak but Xavier stopped him. “You know what we have to do first,” he reminded his grandson.
With that damn eye roll, Zé touched the top of his beer bottle to Xavier’s, then to the girl’s. Xavier followed suit.
She seemed to enjoy that bit of politeness Xavier insisted upon, grinning like a happy idiot before downing some of her beer.
“It’s American beer,” he told her when she grimaced a little after swallowing. “None of that fancy foreign shit in my house.” He looked at his grandson. “So what do you want?”
“Wow,” the girl said. “You two are not friendly to each other? Is this the typical dynamic between you? Because I love my Pop-Pop. He’s like the greatest guy! So sweet and funny and—”
“Stop talking,” Zé ordered.
“Okay.”
She wandered away, going to the bookcase that took up the entire wall that separated the living room from what Xavier still considered to be Zé’s bedroom. She studied the titles of the many books there. Books he’d been collecting—when he could afford to—since he was a child.
“How could you not tell me?” Zé asked.
“Tell you what?” Xavier asked.
“Don’t try that bullshit with me, old man. You know exactly what the fuck I’m talking about.”