Chapter 132
Kieran's POV
"Kieran, please—" Mom's voice broke through the winter air, her breath forming clouds between us. "He doesn't have anywhere to go. It's freezing. Just for tonight—"
"No." The word came out flat, final, cutting through her plea like a blade through silk.
"One night—"
"I said no." I looked at her—really looked at her—and felt something crack deep in my chest, the kind of fracture that spread slowly, inevitably, like ice forming across a windshield. "Do you remember what he did? Do you remember finding me on the floor? The blood?" My voice stayed level, controlled, even as the memories threatened to choke me. "Do you remember Lily calling 911 because I taught her how, because I knew he was going to kill me eventually?"
Mom flinched as though I'd struck her, her body recoiling from the words she'd spent two years trying to forget. "He's changed—"
"Bullshit."
"He went to anger management classes in prison—"
"I don't care." My voice was rising now, the cold control slipping like snow off a roof. "I don't care if he became a fucking monk. He doesn't get to come back. He doesn't get to pretend like nothing happened. He doesn't get to be near Lily."
Drake's face had gone hard, the fake reasonableness dropping away like a mask he'd grown tired of wearing. "Watch your mouth when you talk about your sister."
"Or what?" I stepped closer, close enough to see the veins webbed across his bloodshot eyes, close enough to smell the cigarette smoke clinging to his jacket. "You'll hit me? Go ahead. I'm not fifteen anymore. And this time, when the cops come, I'll make sure they take pictures."
For a second, I thought he might actually do it—his hands clenched at his sides, his shoulders bunching up with that familiar tension I'd learned to read before the first blow fell. But then Mom put her hand on his arm, her fingers trembling against the worn fabric of his coat, and he forced himself to relax, the violence receding behind his eyes like a tide pulling back from shore.
"Come on, Cathy," he said, his voice soft now, manipulative in that way that had always worked on her. "Let's go. Your son made it clear I'm not welcome."
Mom looked between us, her face crumpling like paper crushed in someone's fist. "Kieran—"
"Go with him if you want," I said, forcing the words past the broken glass lodged in my throat. "But you're not bringing him home."
She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes pleading for something I couldn't give her—forgiveness, maybe, or permission to choose the man who'd beaten her son unconscious over the son who'd spent two years keeping her family together. Then she let Drake take her hand and pull her away, back toward the main street where the streetlights cast orange pools across the dirty snow. She looked over her shoulder once, her eyes searching my face for any sign of weakness.
I stood there in the falling snow until they disappeared around the corner, my breath coming in short bursts that had nothing to do with the cold, my right hand clenched so tight I could feel the damaged nerves screaming in protest.
---
The apartment was too quiet when I got back, the silence pressing against my eardrums like water at depth. I checked on Lily again—still asleep, thank God, her small body curled under the blankets with that stuffed rabbit clutched against her chest—then sat down at the window to wait, watching the street below for any sign of Mom's return.
One AM. Two AM. Three AM.
Mom didn't come home.
By the time the sky started to lighten over the rooftops, turning from black to charcoal to that sickly gray that passed for dawn in Southie, I'd accepted what I already knew. She'd spent the night with him, probably in some shitty motel on the edge of the neighborhood, the kind that rented rooms by the hour and didn't ask questions. She'd chosen him over us. Again.
I must have dozed off at some point because the next thing I knew, Lily was shaking my shoulder, her small hand insistent against the stiffness in my muscles.
"Kieran? Where's Mom?"
I opened my eyes, my neck protesting the angle I'd been sleeping at. Lily was standing in front of me in her pajamas, her hair sticking up in every direction like a cartoon character, her cochlear implant sitting on the table where she'd left it before bed. Without it, she was reading my lips, her brow furrowed with that worry that no eight-year-old should have to carry.
"She had to help a friend," I signed, the lie coming easily because I'd had two years to practice lying to protect her. "She'll be back later."
Lily didn't look convinced, but she nodded anyway, accepting the lie because what else could she do? "I'm hungry."
"I'll make you something."
I got up, my body stiff from sitting in the chair all night, my spine crackling like old wood as I straightened. My right hand was worse than usual, the fingers barely responding when I tried to flex them, the damaged nerves sending sharp little jolts up my arm that I'd learned to ignore. I pushed past it and headed to the kitchen, opening cupboards that I already knew were mostly empty.
We were out of milk. Out of bread too. I found a can of soup in the back of the cupboard—chicken noodle, the cheap kind that was mostly water and salt—and heated it up on the stove, pouring it into a bowl for Lily. She ate slowly, watching me with those big eyes that saw too much, that had learned too young how to read the tension in an adult's shoulders.
"Is Dad coming back?" she signed, her small hands forming the words carefully.
My hands froze halfway to signing a response. "What?"
"Mrs. O'Brien said he called. That he's getting out soon."
Of course she'd heard. Of course she knew. Nothing stayed secret in this fucking building, where the walls were thin enough to hear your neighbors' arguments and the hallways carried gossip like a virus.
"Yeah," I signed, forcing my hands to move smoothly despite the anger coursing through me. "But he's not coming here."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
She looked down at her soup, stirring it with her spoon in slow circles that made the noodles chase each other around the bowl. "Okay."
I wanted to tell her more—wanted to explain that I'd do whatever it took to keep her safe, that Drake would have to go through me to get to her, that I'd learned enough in two years to make sure he never got the chance to hurt either of us again. But she was a kid and she'd already seen too much, had already been forced to understand things that should have remained beyond her comprehension. So I just ruffled her hair and told her to finish eating, then went to check my phone for any message from Mom.
Nothing.