Hope to Fall (Kinney Brothers Book 4)

by Kelsey Kingsley

  He shook his head with a deep gust of air. “They’re wonderful people, but I don’t think they know what to do with two people who probably wouldn’t survive in a relationship.”

  I dropped my gaze to the baby, and wondered if he was wrong. If maybe they saw something neither of us was willing to admit.

  ❧

  “Promise you’ll come to Black & Brewed on Wednesday,” Lindsey pleaded, grasping my hand.

  I’d been trying to escape the house for fifteen minutes, but the Kinney and Kinney-to-be women wouldn’t let me leave, despite how many times I insisted I had work to do. I wished I could just relax and succumb to the hold they had on me. To let them fall in love with me easily, and to allow myself to fall in love with them. I knew there were friendships to be made here, a connection I was missing, since the loss of my ex-husband’s family. But I knew how hard it was to then let go, when things fell apart.

  I smiled at her, glancing at her wavy, blonde hair and imagining all the things I could do with it. The hair tutorials and all the products I could use. “I’ll try,” I insisted.

  “Great, now let the woman leave, for feck’s sake,” Ryan said, opening the door. I caught his eye, and he smiled apologetically. “I’m tired as hell.”

  “No need to explain to me.” I flashed him a grateful grin. “Have a good night, everybody,” and finally I walked out into the fresh air with Malachy at my side.

  We walked silently down the steps and along the path to my car. The October air was cool and crisp, bringing to mind blog posts containing fall foliage and pumpkins. Slices of pie and dollops of whipped cream. Halloween décor and a Thanksgiving Day spread. Color schemes and subject lines danced through my head, and I smiled all the way to my car, when the realization that I was leaving dawned on me, and along with it came a thought.

  “When are you going back to Ireland?” I asked, turning to face him as he stuffed his hands into his pockets.

  Malachy shrugged and tipped his head. “I, ehm … I don’t really know. I guess I have to eventually, right?” He didn’t sound like he particularly wanted to leave, or maybe it was more that he didn’t particularly want to go back. Perhaps it was both.

  “There’s not much for me back there,” he continued, reading my thoughts. “Not much for me here either, to be honest, but there’s more to hope for here.”

  I nodded understandingly. “A lot to gain.”

  “More than I’ve ever had before,” he added. “Kinda makes me angry, actually.”

  That surprised me. “Angry?”

  “Yeah,” he admitted, darting his gaze toward the house, “at me mother.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly. “For keeping things from you.”

  He groaned around a sigh and turned his back to lean against my car. “Ah, bloody hell … it’s just that … It’s just that everythin’ here, is everythin’ I always wished for. I was the kid askin’ for a baby brother at Christmas. I was jealous of my friends for still bein’ in the same house they’d lived in since birth. The concept was always so foreign and strange to me, but I wanted it, and feck … if she’d just told me about him, I could’ve had it. It was here, all along, and it was kept from me.”

  “She did what she thought was right, Malachy,” I replied, unable to find volume for my voice. My heart was taking all of my energy, as it collectively broke for him and the gut-wrenching state of his life.

  “Collin said the same thing, ya know,” he said, shaking his head. “But I think that’s what he’s tellin’ himself, to keep from fallin’ apart, because I’m not the only one that was robbed.”

  I lifted my eyes to the beautiful brick house with the white shutters, and I thought of the red-headed man inside with the graying temples. In just a few hours, I had discerned how much the man loved his family. He adored his sons and loved the women they had chosen as if they were his own daughters. I imagined finding Malachy had brought along a pain he never thought he’d know. The agony of having missed so much; all the milestones, all the birthdays. I wondered if the feeling was more guilt, or more anger. I wondered if he felt helpless, having nobody alive to direct his anguish to.

  “I don’t really know what to say,” I confessed, pressing my back to the car beside him.

  “There’s nothin’ to say.”

  He sighed heavily, and I hung my head, hating the things I was feeling. I thought about my own kids and how everything would’ve been different if I tried to keep them from seeing their father. I thanked God I hadn’t done that. I felt sorry for the younger Malachy, and the pain his current self was in. All those conflicting emotions I was sure kept him awake at night, and I wanted to hug him.

  The night was broken with the telltale sound of a photo being taken.

  “Did you just take a picture of me?” I asked, taken aback.

  “I did,” he stated simply, not even bothering to hide the fact.

  “Oh my God.” I touched my hair and felt the flyaway strands haloing my face. I could just imagine my makeup, smudged and in desperate need of a touchup. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I wanted to,” he said, pocketing the phone.

  “But why?”

  “Because there’s a lot to hold on to here, and I wanted to be able to remind myself of that when I’m lyin’ in bed at night, weighin’ out my options.” My lips fell open in slow motion as I began to shake my head, and he raised one finger, putting a stop to the words that wouldn’t be spoken. “It’s not what ya think, Emma.”

  “Then what is it?” I asked, wishing he would admit he wanted me as much as I wanted him, while also wishing I had never calmed him down on that flight.

  “It’s simple. You’re the first real friend I’ve made in probably twenty years. I understand ya, and I can feel ya really get where I’m comin’ from. Ya feel somethin’ genuine toward me, and I don’t know if that’s ever honestly happened to me, outside of family.”

  “It would take a heartless person not to feel anything toward your situation,” I countered, before digging my teeth into my lower lip.

  “Oh, ya mean the type of person ya want everybody to think ya are?”

  “What?” I snapped, looking back to him.

  He chuckled. “Oh, ya know, that perfect woman ya try so desperately to be. The only perfect people, Emma, are the ones who feel nothin’. Ya don’t wanna be that person. Those are ugly people, and you are way too beautiful to be ugly.”

  “Malachy, I told you,” I said, sighing at the way the compliment made my heart edge into that dangerous territory, “you can’t say things like that to me.”

  “I’m a lot of things, Emma,” he replied, “but a liar isn’t one of them.”

  With that, he pushed away from my car and took a step forward. I thought for just a moment, that he would go back inside without another word. Not a goodbye, not a good night, and I allowed myself the tiniest bit of heartache at the possibility of never hearing his voice again. But then, he turned and smiled, shoving his hands into his pockets as he inclined his head toward me.

  “If there’s a rusty old heart in this chest of mine, it’ll be broken if I don’t see ya on Wednesday,” he said in a low voice and my skin broke out in goosebumps.

  My heart fluttered at the speed of a hummingbird’s wings and I begged for it to relax. “I’ll t—”

  “Don’t try,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “I want ya to be there.”

  No. Say no. Please don’t do this again. I heard the pleas of my heart, but I nodded, making the decision to ignore them. “Okay,” I said, wondering when the night air became so stifling, “I’ll be there.”

  “Good.” He didn’t smile and he didn’t step back toward me. His feet moved backward—one, two steps—and he nodded once. “Get home safe, Emma. Good night.”

  And then he turned, and my hands gripped my chest as I exhaled.

  Please, please, please. Don’t do this again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN |

  COMMON GROUND & MISTAKES

&nb
sp; MALACHY

  I was woken by urgent whines and a big, wet nose stuffed against my neck, and I cracked my eyelids open to a single shred of sunlight peeking through the curtains. The clock beside me read 6AM, and I groaned, not quite remembering the last time I had woken up so bloody early.

  “Pad, go back to sleep, ya feckin’ gobshite,” I grumbled, shoving him away and rolling over.

  But with a full bladder, Padraig was persistent and used his size to his advantage, taking that moment to jump onto the bed. He slumped over my body, burying his nose under my chin, bumping against me as he continued to cry; his volume getting louder by the second.

  “Okay, okay,” I heaved with a groan, shoving him off me as I swung my legs to the side of the bed. “Ya know, I don’t wanna say anythin’, but ya wouldn’t be havin’ this problem if ya hadn’t drank your weight in water right before bed,” I said to him, and he moaned in reply.

  I couldn’t say it was necessarily his fault, to be fair. His exertion had been tested by Paddy’s young daughter Erin, and by the time they had gone home, Padraig was panting and sufficiently dehydrated. Still, I grumbled as I pulled on a pair of jeans and grabbed his lead.

  “Listen,” I told him as we walked to the door, “ya gotta be as quiet as a feckin’ mouse, ya understand?”

  But of course he didn’t, and the second the bedroom door was opened, he was pulling me urgently toward the stairs, clambering over his long limbs and big feet as we made our noisy way down the stairs.

  “Pad, you’re a bloody arsehole sometimes, ya know that?” I whispered needlessly, knowing very well that if the noise was going to wake Helen and Collin, they’d already now be lying in bed with their eyes wide open, wondering if they’d just been hit with an earthquake.

  We made our way to the backdoor and stepped out into the yard. “Do your business and then we’re goin’ back to sleep,” I grumbled, letting him loose to sniff through the grass and find a place to relieve himself, when I was startled by the backdoor opening behind me.

  “Early, isn’t it?” Collin asked, stepping outside onto the back deck, and I sighed.

  “Sorry for wakin’ ya.” I winced apologetically. “He had an emergency.”

  He lifted a hand. I wondered where it was going, until he comfortably placed it over my shoulder. “Don’t apologize.”

  “I just don’t like bein’ a disrupt—”

  He shook his head, and his hand squeezed gently. “You’re not a guest here, Malachy. For the time you’re here, however long that is, you’re home, ya understand?”

  Home. Feck. Even my own place back in Dublin never quite felt like home, after decades of moving around from apartment to apartment. I had bought the place several years back, determined to plant my roots somewhere, and yet it had never felt quite right, to be stuck somewhere.

  But after only days spent in River Canyon, I’d experienced a comfort that I never thought could’ve existed in me. A sort of peace that I wondered if everybody felt when stepping over those town lines. I knew Snow and Lindsey must have, and they had never left.

  I couldn’t stay though. Not when I still had a life in Ireland. I would have to leave eventually. But with thoughts of the Kinneys, and that picture of Emma on my mobile, I also questioned if I would ever be willing to sacrifice this life for the thing masquerading as one across the pond.

  When I didn’t respond, Collin removed his hand from my shoulder and I looked over to him, already missing the warmth of his touch. He sat down in a chair, settling himself back and tightening his wooly robe around him.

  “A bit chilly,” he said thoughtfully, looking up at the sky, colored with the sunrise.

  “Aye,” I nodded, “feels like home.”

  He chuckled. “I always prefer the fall and winter. It reminds me of Ireland.”

  I smiled, looking out to the yard to watch Padraig mosey around like he was on a mid-day walk. “Ya ever think of goin’ back?”

  Collin inhaled deeply and tipped his head this way and that before saying, “I used to, back when the boys were younger. Although I don’t think I ever would’ve convinced Patrick to leave Kinsey,” and he chuckled again at that. “But now that they’re older, with families of their own, I know for certain none of them would ever leave, so I guess I’m stayin’ also.”

  “Not even to visit?” I dared to ask, turning to find his eyes on me.

  He smiled fondly. “As long as you’re there, Mal, of course. We’d all visit ya.”

  That was the answer I’d hoped for, and it was the answer that made me feel a bit squeamish inside. The feeling that also told me this was all too good to be true, and that they were committing too fast and too soon.

  “But,” he added, “I hope you’ll also be back.”

  “I will,” I said, wishing it felt more like a promise than a flimsy bit of hope.

  “Maybe for Christmas,” he wondered out loud. “We’d love to have ya for Christmas.”

  My exhale was weighty and uncomfortable, causing my lungs to ache and burn. Just thinking about Christmas was physically painful, seeing that it would be the first without my mother. It would be the first Christmas where I’d be all by myself, with nobody to celebrate with, and I was dreading it like the bloody plague.

  But, the invitation was open, and I smiled. “I’d really like that,” I said, as I thought, if you still want me by then.

  ❧

  After waking up a second time, at a more suitable hour, I met Collin and Helen in the kitchen, hot mugs of coffee in their hands. They poured one for me and we sat together at the table. Helen offered me a muffin, which I gladly accepted, and we ate a quiet breakfast, while Collin perused a newspaper.

  “So, what are your plans for the day, Mal?” Helen asked me, gripping the mug and smiling sweetly over its brim.

  I shrugged. “Dunno. Thought maybe I’d take a walk around town.”

  “Are ya seein’ Emma?”

  I sniffed a laugh with my smile. “Ah, doubt it.”

  “She’s a nice girl,” Collin tossed in.

  “If ya like a lady that carries her life in her purse, sure,” I replied with a chuckle and a fond smile, plucking a blueberry off the muffin.

  I noticed Helen’s eyes meet Collin’s, and I saw the way they smiled at each other. It was that smile again—the parental, knowing smile. If there was just a bit more comfort around them, I would’ve maybe said something. Maybe I would’ve insisted there was nothing going on between us; just a couple lonely people finding company in each other while I was visiting.

  But I wasn’t going to say anything, and not only because I wasn’t yet comfortable enough to dispute their inclinations.

  I just think we all knew what a lie it would’ve been.

  “So, maybe I’ll go with ya on your walk,” Helen mentioned. “It’s supposed to be beautiful today. Sunny, cool. Not like yesterday—so rainy.”

  “It was like bein’ home.” I chuckled. “I love the rain.”

  “You’re like this one over here,” she said, elbowing Collin in the arm. He lowered his newspaper to look between us cluelessly. “Malachy was just sayin’ he loves the rain.”

  “Ah,” Collin said, catching himself up to the conversation, “do ya now? It’s peaceful weather.”

  I nodded. “It is. Good readin’ weather.”

  “Ya like to read?” he asked, cocking his head, and I nodded. “Ah, I love to read; so does Sean. Patrick and Ryan, not as much.”

  Helen snorted. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ryan with a book in his hand.”

  “My mam and da didn’t like readin’ much either,” I mentioned before sipping my coffee.

  Collin shook his head. “No. I remember Roisin wasn’t much of a fan.”

  My vertebrae stacked tightly on top of each other at the mention of my mother’s name. Somehow, I’d forgotten that he’d known her, before I was even conceived. I glanced at Helen, to gauge her reaction at the mention of her husband’s former lover and was surprised to find she hadn
’t even flinched.

  “Maybe we can talk books later on,” Collin threw in, and I smiled with a nod.

  “We can do that,” I said, and with that I excused myself, to get Pad ready for our walk.

  ❧

  “So, who is this fellow?” I asked, approaching the statue in the center of what Helen called the park. It was a pretty little place, and aside from the statue, there were only a couple benches and a gazebo. “Was he someone significant?”

  Helen nodded, coming to stand next to me. “This was William Fuller, one of the colonists who founded River Canyon in the eighteenth century. According to Connie Fischer, the mayor, he had a part in buildin’ much of the town, and he single-handedly saved its residents durin’ an attack.”

  “Hm,” I grunted with a nod. “So, a hero.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “He was murdered durin’ the fight. I remember the kids learnin’ about him in school. Very sad.”

  “Aye,” I responded solemnly, turning away from the statue to walk toward a bench. I settled into it, pulling Pad between my knees where he sat obediently, and Helen made herself comfortable beside me. There was a contented silence between us, and for just a moment, it reminded me of being with my own mother. The security of her presence, the assuredness that she was there.

  Feck, I missed her.

  I heaved a sigh and with her motherly instincts, Helen laid a hand against my back. “What’s wrong?”

  Nodding, I insisted, “I’m fine.”

  “Malachy,” she said gently, “you’re forgettin’ I raised three children. I know exactly when things aren’t fine.”

  I chuckled a sad little laugh as I shook my head. “A lot has changed in such a short amount of time, and I don’t think I’ve had enough time to really sort it all out just yet. I’m still just gettin’ used to me mother not bein’ here, let alone … everythin’ else.”