“You look like shit, Kier,” Ian said as he stacked a few more mugs in the behind-the-bar freezer to frost up.
Kieran saw no reason to argue. Ian was right. That’s what happened when you felt like your heart was ripped right out of your chest. It tended to affect things like eating and sleeping and working out. As it was, he could barely stand to make it through the day until he could get back to the Pub and try to numb the pain a little. He didn’t have to worry about drinking and driving; all he had to do was manage the stairs to his room on the second floor when he’d had enough. He simply nodded and accepted the longneck Ian handed him.
“Still no word from Faith, huh?”
Even her name was a sharp dagger to his chest. How could he have been so wrong? “Nope.”
ESPN played on the flat screens hung on each wall. Kieran glanced up occasionally, but he couldn’t follow the game. He didn’t care. None of it mattered.
“How’s Matt handling all this?” Ian prodded.
Kieran took a long swig. “Don’t know.”
“What the hell?” Ian said, his voice low enough that the other customers didn’t hear him. “You see the kid every day, don’t you?”
“Not anymore. He quit.”
“Why?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Kieran said, slamming his beer down hard enough to earn a few curious glances from the other patrons.
“You have to do something, Kier.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Kieran lifted the bottle to his lips and drained it. “Give me another, will you?”
“No.” It was Lexi’s voice denying him, not Ian’s. Kieran looked up and saw not the eyes of his brother’s wife, but those of the scrawny little girl he’d befriended and taken under his protective wing so many years ago.
“Let it be, Lex,” he warned.
“I don’t think so.” She stubbornly pulled herself up on the stool next to him. “White,” she said, pointing at herself. “Rice,” she said, poking him in the chest. “That’s how I’m on you, Kier. At least until you talk to me and say something that makes sense.”
Kieran looked pleadingly at Ian, who just put both hands up in the air and found something else to do at the other end of the bar.
“You’re not going to go away, are you?” he said with a martyred look.
“Nope. So start talking.”
Kieran remembered how he used to bully her into telling him what was bothering her. He liked it a lot better when he was the one pushing for info.
“You’re a bully, anyone ever tell you that?” He couldn’t completely stop the quirk at the corner of his lips.
“Ian tells me that all the time,” she said, waving her hand and completely unrepentant. “And quit stalling. Why aren’t you with your croie?”
Kieran clenched his teeth so hard he thought he might have cracked a few molars. “I was wrong about that.”
He was met with stunned silence. It was a few moments before Lexi could speak. “Are you saying that Faith is not your croie?”
“Yes.” It was a hiss, not a word.
Lexi exchanged a concerned glance with Ian. He shook his head slightly. A Callaghan man was never wrong about his croie.
“So... Faith is not your croie,” she said slowly.
His jaw flexed. “No.”
“And you aren’t missing her at all.”
His knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip around the bottle. “No.”
“And it doesn’t bother you in the slightest that she’s leaving for Georgia tonight?”
“N- what?!?”
“Lacie said she and Matt are headed down to Georgia.”
“What the fuck for?”
She smirked. “Thought you didn’t care.”
“I ... don’t.”
“Well, that’s probably good then,” she said, patting his forearm. “Because Lacie also said she’s planning on meeting Matt’s father tomorrow morning, and if you did care, it would probably be driving you batshit crazy right about now.”
Kieran let a vile curse fly from his lips, and the next second he was on his feet.
“You are an evil woman,” Ian growled into her ear a moment before he nipped it. “You make me so fucking hard.”
Lexi laughed as they watched Kieran’s fast-retreating form disappear toward the stairs that led to their private living area.
––––––––
Kieran fired up one of the computers in Ian’s “office”, his fingers working magic across the keyboard as he logged into the secure FAA site. Ian might be the acclaimed digital genius, but Kieran had a few tricks of his own. Within minutes he’d located Faith and Matt booked on a red-eye to Atlanta on one of the economy airlines.
He sat back and stared at the manifest as the strangest feeling came over him. It began somewhere in the middle of his chest and rippled outward from there, an icy, tingling fire that was uncomfortable as hell. Kieran shifted and rubbed at the spot right over his heart.
What the hell was she thinking, going down there like that? If Lacie was right about the flight, then she was probably right about Faith meeting Nathan Longstreet as well.