No baseball pitcher would be worth a darn without a catcher who could handle the hot fastball.
—Casey Stengel
Liam never should have punched Finn. It wasn’t that Finn didn’t deserve it—he did—but now Finn couldn’t get the catcher’s mask on properly. He said the cage put too much pressure on his swollen nose, which was why Liam spent the next few nights throwing the ball into the net again instead of into a glove.
It was hard to judge his accuracy without a human target behind the plate, but he did it anyway because he didn’t have any other choice.
The upside was that it was time he had to himself, without Finn or Jessie chirping in his ear about what needed to be done. Liam knew damn well what needed to be done, and he knew that ripping down and rebuilding the fish shack was going to keep him away from other jobs for a few days, but he didn’t care.
If they were going to jump-start the Buoys, they were going to do it by starting fresh and by leaving every last dark cloud behind them. The fish shack was the last of those clouds, and it had to go.
He’d just thrown his last slider of the night when he heard someone shuffling toward him. Standing under the trouble lights, with the rest of the yard unlit, he had a hard time making out who it was, until she spoke.
“It’s not the easiest stuff to walk in, is it?”
“Kate?” He was still squinting when she finally stepped into the light, decked out head to toe in catcher’s gear. “What are you doing?”
He heard her snort before he could see her features enough to make out the smile.
“Oh, come on, Sporto,” she said. “I know you’ve been away from the game for a while, but surely you recognize catcher’s gear when you see it. Think of me as your Russell Martin.”
Liam had played against Martin a few times, and never once did Martin look like that in his gear.
The leg guards came up well over her knees, meeting the bottom of the chest protector about mid-thigh. The face guard hung a little crooked, and the neck protector wasn’t going to do her a bit of good flapping around like that.
Was it weird that seeing her suited up in that gear did something to him? Softened him, made him smile? Shaking his head clear, he bent to the task of collecting the balls and tossing them back in the bucket.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I’m pretty much done.”
“But I got geared up,” she said. “Come on, throw me a pitch.”
She was already waddling toward his makeshift home plate, which was actually an old seat cushion from one of the boats; he’d found it in the fish shack and cut it roughly into shape.
“I’m not going to pitch to you, Kate,” he said, laughing lightly. “You could get hurt.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “I’ve got more equipment on than a linebacker, so pitch.”
“No.”
The fact that she had to tip her head back that far to see out of the mask was pretty much reason enough, but Liam didn’t say that, and good thing, too, given what she said next.
“D’you have any idea how long it took me to get all this on?” For some reason she kept slapping the glove against the equipment, as if that proved how well it worked. “Come on, a couple pitches. Let’s see what you got.”
“What I got?” He laughed. “What are you, a scout?”
It didn’t seem to matter what he said, because she was already crouching behind the plate. Or at least she was trying to, but the equipment was making it a little tricky for her, and twice she lost her balance and almost tipped over.
“Oh, for—” Liam grunted as he set the bucket of balls down. Wrapping his hands around the sides of the chest protector, he pulled her to her feet and turned her so she faced away from him.
“What are you doing?”
“Adjusting.” There was no gentle way to do it, so he tugged, pulled, and yanked on straps from her calves all the way up to her head, until everything was at least snug on her. He hardly gave a second thought to the last time he was that close to her or to how many times over the years he’d remembered what it felt like to run his hands over her skin, so soft, so perfect. And as he tightened the helmet, he hardly paid any attention to how freakin’ good she smelled or the way her silky hair brushed over his hands. Because if he let himself notice that, then he’d remember what it was like to thread his fingers through her hair and…
Fuuuuuuhhck.
Liam forced the memory away and blinked the helmet back into focus. The whole getup was still miles too big, but at least it wasn’t hanging off her like a tent and she didn’t have to tip her head up to see anymore.
“Oh,” she murmured. “That’s better.”
Liam couldn’t help but smile as he turned her around again.
“All right, then,” she said, punching her hand into the pocket of the glove. “Let’s do this. Bring the heat.”
“Bring the heat?” Liam didn’t move, just stood there grinning. “Do you have any idea what that means?”
“No,” she said with a short shrug. “But that’s what they say, isn’t it?”
Shaking his head again, Liam reached for the bucket of balls and headed to his makeshift mound. If Finn had tried to use jargon on him like that, Liam would’ve beaned him with a ball, but it was too damn cute coming from her.
By the time he set up, Kate was crouched behind the plate again, glove up, free hand tucked behind her back.
“Okay,” she called. “Throw some smoke.”
Snorting quietly, he scraped his foot against the ground and tried to focus. He wasn’t going to throw smoke at her, but he still needed to hit the glove. And he did.
Kate was on her feet like a shot. “What the hell was that?”
He wasn’t expecting that. “What d’you mean? That was a good pitch.”
Hell, in his Little League days, that pitch would’ve had most batters quaking in the box. Fast and straight, right into the pocket of the glove.
“Oh, come on,” she sneered. “I can throw harder than that.”
And as if to prove her point, she hurled the ball back at him. It didn’t quite make it the sixty feet six inches, but it was pretty close.
“I didn’t come out here to humor you,” she said. “I came out here to help, so throw the damn ball!”
“If you get hit, it’s going to hurt.”
Pushing the mask up on her head, Kate took a couple of steps toward him. “If you stick to fastballs, I should be able to catch those; just don’t throw curves or sinkers, ’cause I have no idea where those are going.”
Shaking his head, Liam slapped his glove against his thigh. “Come on, Kate, this is crazy.”
“Did you or did you not tell Finn last night that your fastball’s not where you need it to be?”
That was exactly what he’d said, but he didn’t know she’d been paying attention.
“Fastballs are straight and fast, Sporto. If you hit the glove, we’re all good. If you don’t, that’s what the gear’s for, right?”
Liam inhaled a long, slow breath. He’d never pitched hard to a woman before, and he wasn’t actually sure he could do it. What if she got hurt? What if he broke something on her—then what would they do? How would he explain that not only to his brothers and Jessie but to Paul Foster, who was expecting to get his employee back in one piece?
But Kate didn’t look as if she was going anywhere until he threw her a few pitches, so after a few seconds he sighed and nodded.
“You sure about this?”
“Piece of cake.” Sliding the mask down, she resumed her position behind the plate and lifted her glove. “Let’s have it.”
Liam took a couple of seconds longer in his windup, knowing he wouldn’t throw hard but he’d throw harder than he had.
“Better,” she yelled as she threw it back. “But, come on, I’m not made of glass, Liam.”
A few pitches later, he was working his way up to normal speed, but he wasn’t going to throw it hard without warning her first.
“You’re sure? Really?”
Kate didn’t even flinch. “Bring it!”
So before he could talk himself out of it again, he inhaled, went into his windup, and hurled it at her as if she actually were Russell Martin. He loved the sound of the ball slicing through the air almost as much as he loved the sound of it smacking into the leather behind the plate.
What he didn’t love was the sound of her squealing as she fell backward.
“Kate!” Charging toward her, he slid to a scrambling stop just as she pushed herself upright.
Ball still tucked inside the glove, her eyes wide behind the mask, she sat there laughing.
“Holy shit,” she cried. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Liam curled his fingers through the mask and tugged it up and off her head. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine! But, holy shit, that was hard! Is that how you always throw them?”
“Unfortunately,” he grunted. “Yeah. That’s why I need to keep working on them. I’m only clocking in at eighty-eight and I need to get up to at least ninety.”
“That was awesome. Do it again.”
“What? No!”
But Kate was already handing him the ball. “Yeah, come on, couple more times.”
She let him help her up, then waved her glove toward the mound. A couple of times turned into a dozen until Liam flatly refused to throw another one, because every pitch sent her flat on her ass.
“That was so cool.” Laughing, she waddled beside him up to the lodge, where he helped her ditch the gear.
She tried to hide it, but Liam saw her flex her catching hand a few times as they headed into the kitchen for some water. Without a word, he picked up the same plastic bag Finn had used and washed out a few nights back and refilled it with ice.
When Kate set his glass of water on the table, Liam caught her by the wrist, flipped her hand over, and pressed the ice into her palm. Her eyes flew wide, no doubt from the shock of the cold, but when she started to pull away, Liam tightened his hold a little.
“Keep it on there,” he said, forcing his thumb still even though it was itching to slide over hers, to get to know the softness of her hand the way he had in Vegas.
“Uh, y-yeah,” she stammered. “Okay. Thanks.”
Liam didn’t know how long his brain screamed, Let her go, before it finally registered that he was still holding on to her. Shit.
Shuffling back a few steps, he wiped his hands against his jeans as if that would somehow erase the feel of her. It didn’t. It couldn’t, because that feeling and the memories that went with it had buried themselves so deep inside him that even now, ten years later, he couldn’t shake them.
Looking a bit confused, she dropped her gaze to the bag of ice as she slowly curled her fingers around it. A second later, she gave her head a brief shake and blinked up at him.
“Anyway. Where d’you suppose Jessie and Finn are?”
With a slight tip of his head, Liam motioned for her to keep her voice down and led her toward the doorway to the great room. They peeked around the corner and there was Finn, stretched out on one of the couches, his head on the armrest, a Lee Child novel propped on his chest, while Jessie sat curled up in one of the huge armchairs, blanket over her lap, completely engrossed in one of the new Caroline Linden books Finn had brought her.
With a soft nudge, Liam motioned for Kate to follow him back toward the kitchen.
“Jessie’ll kill us if we interrupt,” he joked. “She likes to read them in one sitting, which means she’ll be up late and cranky as hell in the morning.”
“What about Finn?”
Liam snorted softly. “He’s the type who can read and talk at the same time and not miss anything in either one. Hell, he usually has three or four books on the go at the same time; he just leaves them lying around so he always has one handy wherever he goes. I don’t know how he keeps them all straight.”
Kate’s mouth curled up into a smile.
“Not gonna lie,” she whispered. “I would’ve thought he’d be more a Calvin and Hobbes kind of reader.”
Liam managed to stifle his laugh, but only barely.
“He plays the fool pretty well,” he said. “But that kid’s a hell of a lot smarter than most people think.”
Nodding slowly, she looked down at the bag of ice in her hand, then lifted both her shoulders.
“Okay, well, I guess I’ll head down to my cabin, then.”
He could actually feel the smile slide from his face. If she left now, it’d be another eight hours before he’d get to see her again. Eight long, dark hours. Sure, he’d gone ten years without seeing her, but now…well, now he didn’t know what the hell his problem was, but the thought of going a mere eight hours was too much.
Shit.
Licking his suddenly dry lips, he thumbed over his shoulder. “Yeah, I’ve got some…stuff…I need to be doing so, uh, I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Need some help?”
Say no. Don’t hesitate, you idiot, just say no!
“Sure, that’d be great.”
After grabbing their jackets, he hunted down some paper and a pen in the office, then led her out the front door and down toward the dock.
“What are we doing?”
“I need to get some measurements in the fish shack.”
It wasn’t a lie; he really did need the measurements, but it wasn’t necessarily a two-man job.
He’d wanted to start ripping the thing down after they finished roofing the cabins, but Jessie and Finn had insisted the plumbing needed to be worked on first. And since Jessie had been right about the weather turning to crap, it was better to be inside anyway, so he’d spent the last two days working with Finn on replacing what they could and adding to the list of things they’d need to pick up the next time they went over to Hardy.
Now that the rain had stopped again, he was going to start on the shack first thing in the morning, no matter what anyone said, because he wanted it up and finished before Ro got back.
“Watch your step,” he said as he pulled the door open and hit the light. “The structure itself is going to be basically the same, but I need to graph out an area for a bigger freezer, and we need more cutting space and a bigger sink. I found the fixtures I want, but I need—what’s wrong?”
Kate had stopped moving right inside the door. “Nothing; it’s just that I got the distinct impression the other two don’t really consider this a priority, so maybe we should—”
“I don’t care,” he said, a little harsher than he meant to. “It’s a priority to me.”
“Why? I mean, aside from that big gaping hole in the wall there, it looks like it’s in okay shape.”
He didn’t have to tell her, he could have given her a simple “because I want to” answer, but if he was going to steal her away from the list Jessie had—which would no doubt cause problems—she at least deserved to understand why it was so important and why he wanted it done before Ro got back.
Liam tugged his ball cap off, scraped his hand over the top of his head, and put the cap on again.
“Okay,” he said, blowing out a long breath. “After Ma left, things were pretty messed up. I don’t know why, but the old man missed her something awful, and I guess he figured the best way to get over her was to drink, and…well…he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a happy drunk.”
Kate paled just enough to stop Liam and make him rethink how much he needed to tell her. Clearly, she got the gist of it.
“Once he got going, there wasn’t much the three of us could do except get the hell out of his way, and Ro usually got it the worst, probably because he looks so much like Ma.” He couldn’t look at Kate, not when her eyes were so wide, so worried. Instead, he leaned back against the sink—which would be the first damn thing he ripped out—and crossed his arms over his chest.
“It was Ro’s nineteenth birthday and the old man was on a tear; he’d been drinking since breakfast, put his fist through the wall in the mudroom, that kind of shit. He was riding Ronan pretty hard that day, and when I…uh…”
“When you what?” Kate asked, her soft voice like a cushion for Liam’s memory.
“It’s stupid,” he said. “I’d made this stupid cake for Ro, but as soon as I pulled it out of the oven, the old man took it and hurled it off the end of the dock, so there was no cake, no gift, not even a goddamn balloon.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, so Ro figured, what the hell, he was nineteen, which made him legal, so he decided he’d have his own celebration.” Liam held out his hands, palms up. “Wasn’t like he’d never had a drink before, but the old man was usually too drunk to notice, so Ro took a mickey of rum out of Da’s stash and came down here.”
He flicked his gaze toward her just as she lifted her free hand to her mouth.
“What happened?” she asked, barely over a whisper. “Did your dad find out?”
“Oh yeah, he found out. If it’d been a beer or two, he might not have noticed they were gone, but when it came to his rum, he noticed. Soon as I heard him yell, I hightailed it down here to warn Ro, but he was pretty wasted by then and Da must’ve seen me leave the lodge, because he came ripping in here before I could get Ro out. As soon as he opened that door, Da started swinging, and when I tried to stop him, he came at me, too.”
“Oh my God.”
The memory, so vivid, so strong, made Liam’s stomach roll exactly like it had that night, followed by the same sense of dread that washed over him when Da came at him.
“We’d learned pretty early how to protect ourselves, but we never took a swing at the old man, because drunk or not, he was all we had and we knew it.” Liam cleared his throat hard as the image of his sixteen-year-old self blazed to life in his mind. “Anyway, he had me pinned in that corner over there and I guess I was crying and what all, and the next thing I knew, Ro hit him.”
Kate stared at him with huge eyes.
“It was only one punch, but it caught Da off guard. He went down hard and smacked the side of his head on this.”
Liam tapped his fingers against the edge of the metal sink, making Kate gasp.
“The cut wasn’t deep,” he said quietly. “But it bled like a stuck pig and knocked him senseless for a while.”
“What did you do?” She set the ice on the small square table but left her hand resting on top of it.
Liam dragged the toe of his boot across the spot on the floor where he’d spent so many hours scrubbing up the bloodstain.
“We put him in one of the wheelbarrows and huffed him up to the lodge, stitched him as best we could, and then, first thing the next morning, Ro was gone.” Liam chewed his bottom lip for a long few seconds before finishing. “Was a long time before he ever came back, too, and in all the years since, he’s never once set foot in this damn shack again.”
He’d never had another drink, either.
“Oh my God, Liam.” She took a step toward him, hand outstretched, then stopped, stepped back again, and crossed her arms. “Did you ever tell your mother what was going on?”
Liam shook his head slowly. “I haven’t talked to her since the day she left.”
“But that was like twenty years ago,” she said, her voice hushed with shock. “Surely she must have—”
Liam was still shaking his head.
“But if she’d known what was going on, maybe she could have helped.”
“She did help,” he said. “By leaving, she helped us learn how to take care of ourselves.”
It looked as if Kate wanted to say something else, but then she changed tack and nodded.
“And you think by tearing this shack down and building a new one, it’ll help Ronan when he’s here.”
“It’ll help both of us.” Swallowing hard, Liam ran his fingers along the sharp edge of the sink. “If I’d gotten to Ro faster or if I hadn’t led the old man down here, we wouldn’t have been trapped inside when he showed up. The only reason Ro took that swing at him was to protect me.”
The look on Kate’s face—the horror, the pity—was exactly why he’d never told anyone else what happened. But just like that, her horror turned to something else. Anger?
“And then he left you here? How was that protecting you?”
Liam couldn’t do anything but shrug. “If I were Ronan in that situation, I’d have done the exact same thing.”
“Who else was here with you?”
“No one. He only got ugly-drunk in the off-season, when the guests and staff had all left. Things were usually pretty good when guests were here.”
Kate stood there shaking her head. “And after all that, Finn won’t help you rebuild this thing? What the hell’s wrong with him?”
“He doesn’t know.” When Kate’s mouth opened, Liam shrugged again. “He was away on a school trip when it happened, and as far as I know, no one ever told him.”
Truth was, they probably would have found a way to keep it from Finn even if he had been home. Of the three of them, he was hit the hardest when Ma left, so from then on, Liam and Ronan had taken it upon themselves to shield him from as much of Da’s shit as they could.
Da had woken up the next morning with no memory of how he wound up with four stitches in the side of his head, so Liam had given him a half-truth: He told him he’d fallen in the fish shack and cut his head.
Funny thing was, Da never asked where Ronan was. Not once. And when Finn asked, Liam couldn’t come up with anything other than “He just left.”
By the look on Kate’s face, it was clear she was still trying to wrap her brain around all of it, but after a second she inhaled slowly, straightened her shoulders, and nodded.
“Okay, then. What do you need me to do?”
The entire story played over and over in Kate’s mind as she lay in bed later that night. She’d never met Jimmy O’Donnell but she’d seen the pictures hanging in the office, and he was clearly no lightweight.
It made her sick to her stomach to think of him going after his boys that way, of giving them no other choice but to fight back the way they had. They must have been terrified being out here alone with him. And what the hell was wrong with their mother that she’d just walk away from her own children?
Kate hadn’t said anything about it down in the fish shack, but she wondered if Liam realized he’d done exactly what his mother did when he’d walked away from Kate. The circumstances might have been different, but the outcome was the same.
Apparently that’s how O’Donnells dealt with things: Walk away and don’t talk about them again.
He’d talked tonight, though, and as much as it sickened Kate, it also touched something deep inside her. He didn’t have to tell her what happened; he could have easily said she needed to help with the shack and that would’ve been the end of it. She’d been sent there to do whatever they needed her to do, and at the end of the day it was his family’s name on the deed, not Jessie’s.
At least that’s how it was for the moment; a few months from now it could well be Paul’s name on the deed, and then this need of Liam’s to rip down the shack would have been for naught. And it wasn’t the first time thoughts like that prickled her conscience.
They were busting their butts to get this place in shape, and the only one who was going to benefit from their sweat was Paul Foster. And, God willing, Kate.
By the time she finished her workout and made it up to the lodge the next morning, Finn and Jessie were just sitting down to breakfast.
“How was the book?” Kate asked. “You were pretty into it when I went to bed.”
“Ahhh.” The sigh Jessie released made Finn roll his eyes. “Have you ever read Caroline Linden?”
“No.”
“I’ve got a whole stack of them you can borrow. She writes Regency romances, and they’re like…wow!”
“Historical romance, eh?” Kate tipped her head from side to side. “Not my usual genre, but I’m always happy to try something new.”
“There’s eggs.” Apparently having had enough of the romance talk already, Finn pointed toward the frying pan on the stove.
“Thanks, but Liam’s already at the shack, so I’ll just grab a thermos of coffee and get going.”
“I was hoping to get an inventory of the kitchen today,” Jessie said. “If Liam’s going to do a run to the mainland sometime soon, we need to send him with as complete a list as we can.”
Kate heard what she said, even nodded along with her, because Jessie was right. They did need to get the inventory done.
“Finn’s going to have to help you,” Kate said as she screwed the lid onto the thermos. “Liam needs my help today.”
“But—”
“Sorry, gotta go.” Armed with her work gloves and an extra pair of socks, she hustled down to the shack, where Liam had already started ripping things out. The sink was on the dock close to the same boat they’d stored all the old shingles on, and the wooden countertop it had been attached to was now stacked in pieces on the grass.
If there was one thing she’d learned in her short time at the Buoys, it was that nothing got wasted. If they couldn’t reuse it themselves, they either took it to the Return-It place in Port Hardy or they burned it. But there was no logical reason to get rid of what looked like a perfectly good sink, which meant Liam was going to have to do some pretty fast talking when Jessie or Finn asked. And Kate had no doubt they would.
Liam was inside the shack, furiously thumb-typing something on his phone and muttering under his breath, when Kate walked in. The second he saw her, he pushed something (she assumed it was the SEND button), then tucked his phone in his pocket and tipped his chin up at her.
“Hey.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Nah, it’s…it’s nothing.” He pressed the heel of his hand against his right eye, presumably to stop the twitch she saw flicker across his lid. “You ready for this?”
“You bet. I brought coffee.”
“Thank God.” With a quick wink, he unscrewed the lids and filled the cup, while she tried to figure out if there was a system to what he was doing. Didn’t look like it.
Handing her an old yellow milk crate, he pulled open the cupboard door and lifted his coffee cup toward the mess inside. Lures and weights were scattered over, under, and around a couple of pairs of rusty pliers, half a dozen water-warped books, and three tipped-over metal coffee cans. And all of it was tangled up with miles of unrolled fishing line.
“Most of this stuff we can reuse; we just need it out of here for now.”
Kate wasn’t sure any of it was any good, and when she started running the place, she’d make damn good and sure that Paul replaced all of it. When the crate was full, she walked it out to one of the boats and set it inside the back, under a tarp she’d found in the shack.
Turned out she and Liam worked pretty well together, falling into an easy but steady rhythm of removal and sorting, and the whole while their conversations flowed with a growing ease she didn’t have with many people.
He told her about his early days in Little League, and she told him about her failed attempts at cheerleading. He told her about how hard Ronan cried the night Liam got drafted, and she told him how hard she’d laughed watching Shrek the first time—and, yes, since he asked, that meant she’d watched it more than once. More than half a dozen times, actually. He’d never seen it, but he had seen Moneyball four or five times, as well as Field of Dreams and a bunch of other baseball movies whose titles were only vaguely familiar to her.
By early afternoon they had the place completely gutted and sorted into different salvage piles, and even though they were both starving, neither one was keen to go face Jessie alone, so they did it together.
“Exactly how long is that shack going to take?” Jessie asked as they quickly threw a couple of PBJs together. “You’re not ripping the whole thing down, right?”
“I’m not really sure,” Liam said. “And, yeah, whole thing’s going.”
“God almighty, Liam, we can’t afford for you to be wasting time on things like that when there’s so many other things that need to be done.”
“He’s not wasting time.” The words were out of Kate’s mouth before she realized it. Regret immediately followed. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”
“We’ve got about a thousand things on our to-do list,” Jessie snapped. “And that stupid shack doesn’t even make the top twenty.”
“I know what’s on that list, Jessie; you show it to me forty freakin’ times a day.” Liam slammed his knife down on the counter and turned. “But you better get used to it, because this is what I’m doing right now. Today. And I’m not asking you to like it and I’m not asking you to help, but since I’m the one footin’ the bill for this shit-show, you might want to cut me a little slack here, all right?”
Silence.
Kate didn’t dare turn around for fear of what Jessie’s expression might be, but by the time Liam picked his knife up again, Kate could hear Jessie’s footsteps fading in the direction of the office, followed immediately by the sound of Finn’s rapid approach.
“Oh shit.” Liam’s mutter made Kate snicker. “Here we go. Better brace yourself.”
So Kate did. She braced herself for both flying words and fists, even winced when she heard Finn stop just inside the kitchen, but nothing happened until Liam glanced back over his shoulder at him.
“Hey.”
“I just got off the phone with Ronan.”
“Yeah?”
Kate could hear the apprehension in Liam’s voice, even though he’d mumbled the word out over a huge bite of his sandwich.
“Yeah. He called to see how things were coming along, so I started bitching at him about you and that goddamn fish shack.”
Liam stopped chewing, set the rest of his sandwich down, and turned slowly, his hands gripping the counter behind him. Kate turned, too, shocked to see the look on Finn’s face. Gone was the smart-ass grin, and gone was the accusing glare he’d pinned her with the other night.
Leaning up against the wall, his hands tucked behind him, there was something in his eyes, an ache that made him look like he was about eight years old.
“He told you,” Liam said quietly, then cursed again, louder, when Finn nodded. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
“The hell with that!” Finn blasted back. “You should’ve told me when it happened!”
“It wasn’t your problem, it was ours. You didn’t need to know what happened in there.”
“I didn’t…Jesus, Liam, you had no right to keep that from me.”
“I had every right! You were fifteen years old and still having nightmares about—” Liam stopped short.
“Fuck you.” Finn wasn’t even close to yelling, but he almost vibrated as he yanked one arm out from behind him and jabbed his finger in Liam’s direction. “The day I left for that goddamn school trip, I got into it with Ro, called him a fucking asshole and told him all of our lives would’ve been so much easier if he’d have left with Ma.”
“Oh.” Kate tried to catch the whoosh of air before it escaped, but she was too slow, and just as her hand clapped over her mouth, Jessie came hustling back into the kitchen.
“What?” she asked, but no one answered. Instead, Finn kept going.
“When I got home, he was gone and you wouldn’t tell me why. So all this time I thought he left because of me. Just like Ma did.”
“What are you—” Liam stopped cold when Finn’s eyes darkened. Kate didn’t know what that meant, but she knew better than to ask right then. “Fine, I’m sorry, maybe we should’ve told you, but we didn’t. We didn’t tell anyone.”
“Tell anyone what?” Jessie demanded. Again she was ignored, especially by Kate, who was desperately trying to find somewhere else to look.
“Bullshit. She knows, doesn’t she?” Finn tipped his chin Kate’s way but didn’t move off the wall, which made Kate kind of happy, because she was pretty sure if he did, things were going to get bloody again.
“I told her last night, but only because I need to get the shack done before Ro comes home. You and Jessie are so fixed on getting through that damn list, so, yeah, I told Kate. If I hadn’t, she’d have been up here all morning doing inventory instead of helping me gut the place.”
Before Finn could fire back, Jessie held up both hands. “What the hell are you talking about?”
His sandwich forgotten, Liam rubbed his face roughly and started at the beginning. By the time he got to the part about Jimmy cornering him, Jessie had slumped into a chair and covered her face with her hands.
When he finished, she wiped her eyes and sat back.
“For the love of God, Liam, why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because.” When that didn’t seem to appease her, Liam cursed quietly and threw up his hands. “Fine. Because when he came at me that night, I knew he wasn’t going to stop. There was a look in his eyes I’d never seen before, and—”
He gripped the nearest chair, bent over at the waist, and exhaled loudly before pushing himself upright again.
“And instead of standing up to him and fighting back, I fell into the corner, crying like a baby and pissing in my pants, until Ro was forced to take him down. So which part of that whole scene do you think we wanted people to know, Jessie?” His voice got increasingly louder, increasingly harder. “Do you think it was fun having an old man who liked to use us for punching bags? Or that he scared me so bad I pissed my pants when I was sixteen? Or how about the part where for about ten seconds there we were sure Ro’d killed him, and for about two of those seconds we were both glad?”
The only thing stronger than Kate’s worry that she might throw up was her need to go to Liam and wrap her arms around him until the memory washed away. It was no bloody wonder he hadn’t told her anything down in Vegas about his family. Her childhood hadn’t exactly been a picnic—with the number of boyfriends her mom moved in and out on a regular basis, and especially that one year they spent living in their car—but that was nothing compared to any of this.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie whispered. “I had no idea it was that bad.”
“Yeah, well, now you know.”
Long seconds ticked by without anyone saying anything, and the longer the silence dragged on, the more Kate wished she hadn’t come up for lunch. This was family business, and Kate wasn’t even close to being family.
Much to her surprise, it was Liam who finally broke the awkwardness that followed his confession, with a quiet choking laugh.
“Couple days after that, the idiot over there”—he tipped his head toward Finn—“he walks into the shack while I’m gutting my catch and says, ‘Smells like piss in here.’ D’you remember that?”
Finn shook his head slowly.
“I swear to God, I must’ve gone through about fifty gallons of bleach trying to get that smell out, but even today…” Liam snorted softly. “I open that door, it’s all I smell.”
The only thing Kate smelled down there was salty ocean air, but telling him so wouldn’t change anything. As long as that shack stood, it’s what he’d smell.
“So what you’re saying, then,” Jessie said, her expression softening, “is that you think it’d be better for business if our fish shack smelled like fish instead of piss.”
“Yeah,” Liam laughed. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“Well, all right, then.” The smile on Jessie’s face wasn’t a happy one but rather one of understanding and compassion, mixed with a hint of sass. “There’s no need to get so dramatic about it.”
Pushing out of her chair, she stepped up next to him and wrapped him in a tight hug, exactly how Kate had wanted to.
Giving her the token one-arm hug back, he shrugged. “You know me, Jess, I’m all about the drama.”
“Yeah, right.” Snorting out a laugh, Jessie swiped her eyes again as she released him. “Well, come on, then, you big crybaby, let’s go get this shack done.”
She was half a dozen steps past the door, on her way to the mudroom, before she turned back and tugged on Finn’s sleeve until he followed her. Kate didn’t move until Liam finally turned to face her.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Just great,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Nothing I like more than rehashing shit like that.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault.” He took another bite of his sandwich, but he clearly wasn’t tasting any of it. “I shouldn’t have yelled at Jessie like that.”
“Maybe not, but the two of them were pushing you kind of hard.”
“Yeah, but…” God, he looked tired. “She’s the one who convinced Da to join AA. We’d just celebrated him being twelve years sober a couple months before he died.”
“Twelve years,” Kate breathed. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, it was. He could still be a right son of a bitch when he wanted to be, but at least he wasn’t drinking.”
She handed him a napkin to wipe the peanut butter off his lip while she put their supplies away.
“You ready to go back?” he asked. At first she thought it was a rhetorical question, but it wasn’t. His blue eyes searched her face, as though the answer lay somewhere there instead of in what she said.
“I am. Are you?”
Without a second’s hesitation, he shook his head. “Nope. So let’s just get it done.”
They were heading for the door when Jessie’s voice called out from the mudroom.
“Hey, Liam?”
He stopped, looked straight up at the ceiling, and sighed. “Yuh?”
“In the span of a week we’ve found out this and the fact that you were married, and you thought neither of those things were worth mentioning. Is there anything else we should know?”
“Nope, that’s it.” Pressing his hand against his eye again, he continued toward the door, with Kate right beside him.
“What’s the matter?” she asked as they stepped out on the porch. “That’s twice your eye’s gotten all twitchy today.”
“It’s nothing,” he muttered. “I’m fine.”
Even if she had believed him, which she didn’t, she didn’t get a chance to call him on it, because Jessie and Finn came out behind them.
“All righty, then,” Jessie said. “Are we good?”
Liam’s gaze flicked to Kate for a second before she turned a well-practiced smile Jessie’s way.
“Yup,” she lied. “All good.”
“Great. Then let’s burn this thing down, shall we?”