Page 101 of Beautiful Lies
“Connor will come around,” Keira reassured me, sensing that I’d been thinking about him.
“You’ve gotten close,” I said, thinking it was wrong of me to feel sorry for myself, considering how fucked up her life was. But Eden had told me that Keira and Connor spent a lot of time together, even though she was staying in Killian and Eden’s spare room now. I guess Connor had become a regular visitor here.
She smiled. “Yeah, he’s a good guy.” Her smile faded.
“Is your mom…have you heard from her?” I asked. Their mother was a touchy subject and it was hard for me to ask about her without letting the resentment creep into my voice.
She shook her head. “No. But I’m not surprised. I doubt she’ll ever forgive me.”
“Forgive you for what? For leaving?” I felt like there was a part of this puzzle still missing.
“No. For betraying my dad.”
“How did you betray your dad?”
“I gave Connor a lot of information on him. Enough to put him away.”
My eyes widened. “Oh. I didn’t realize…wow. Does he know it was you?”
“Connor didn’t tell the FBI where he got it, but I’m sure my dad could figure it out. It was the right thing to do. He’s hurt a lot of people and he needed to be stopped.”
“It was a brave thing to do. It took a lot of courage,” Killian said, joining us, his arm around Eden.
Keira let out a breath and tried to muster a smile. I wondered if she regretted doing it. I hoped she didn’t.
“You ready to go home?” Killian asked me, twirling his key chain around his index finger then capturing the keys in his palm. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“Okay, thanks.” I pulled Keira into a hug, feeling like I needed to reassure her. In a weird way, we were all family now—Keira, Killian, Eden, Connor, me. A dysfunctional family but still … family. “Everything will be okay. We’re all in your corner.”
“Thanks,” she said as I released her. I hugged Eden goodbye, grabbed my coat and bag and followed Killian out the door.
Before Killian sold his share of the bar to Zeke, I used to see him every day, but it had been a while since the two of us had been alone together. Not that Killian had ever been a big talker. But I used to make up for his silence. “You good?” he asked as we pulled out of the underground garage.
“Hanging in there. How about you? Now that you’ve got a sister? That must have come as a shock.”
He shook his head and let out a breath like he couldn’t quite believe it himself. “A shock. But a good one.” I stared at his face in profile and his lips curved into a smile. He’d changed a lot, for the better, I thought. His edges had gotten softer and I knew a lot of that had to do with Eden, but I also knew that he’d been putting in the work.
“You’re not angry with Connor,” I said. A statement, not a question. Eden had already told me that Killian wasn’t angry.
“No. I’m not. I get why he didn’t tell me. Not saying I like it. Just that I get it.”
“Did you talk it over with your shrink?” I teased.
Killian chuckled. “When did I get so pathetic?”
“When you fell in love with Eden,” I joked. “She ruined you. In the very best way.”
“Yeah, she did.” We fell silent until he pulled up in front of my apartment building. “I almost walked away from her last year, thinking it was the best thing I could do for her. I thought I didn’t deserve her.” He looked down at his hands and flexed them, his unspoken words loud in the silence. Killian had killed two men, one was an accident, the other in self-defense. Neither one had been his fault, but that didn’t change the fact that he had blood on his hands or that it weighed heavy on him.
“You made the right choice,” I said. “If you’d left Eden, it would have broken her heart. And yours.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah. I’m so damn lucky to have her in my life.”
“Yeah, you are. But she’s pretty lucky too. I think that any girl who wins the heart of a Vincent brother is a lucky girl.”
He didn’t respond and we sat in silence for a few seconds. “I wanted to talk to you about something. Connor donated the rest of the money he inherited from Seamus to my program.”
That didn’t surprise me. I’d expected him to do it sooner, truth be told. Connor had never cared about money, but he did care about good causes. “I also got a donation from Zeke’s dad. A sizeable donation.”
