by Sam Burns
“I still have friends there, you know. Mick—”
“Does he expect you to go back?” Jon asked. His impression of Mickey had been a favorable one. He hoped that didn’t have to change because the man was trying to drag Keegan back into something he didn’t want.
“No. He told me to let it all fall apart.” Keegan seemed far away, eyes unfocused and staring past the ceiling, a tiny bittersweet smile on his face. “He practically offered to dismantle it himself. He said Phil is the last person I should be listening to.”
Jon was momentarily stumped by the change of subject. “Phil? What does he have to do with this?”
Keegan’s eyes refocused, and snapped to Jon’s. “Nothing, not really. He was just the one who pointed out it’s an issue I’m gonna have to deal with.”
“Was he?” Jon asked. He tried to keep his face neutral, but he was pretty sure it didn’t work. “And just why did he think it was any of his business?”
After a couple of false starts, Keegan finally shrugged. “It seemed like he was just making conversation at the time.” He looked a little bothered, and a lot confused. “But Phil isn’t a part of the business. There’s no reason he’d be interested in that.”
“That’s sweet, but shockingly naive of you.” When Keegan gave him a dirty look, Jon held up a hand. “I’m just saying, it sounds like a cushy life, being the arm-candy husband of a rich gangster.”
Keegan looked again like he wanted to deny it, but after a moment, his eyes slipped closed. “Mickey never liked him. Said he disappeared when I needed him most.”
Jon let his contempt show on his face. “Let me guess, he left you when you left the family business?”
Keegan’s eyes snapped open, wide to an almost comical degree. He looked at Jon, mouth falling open. There was hardly a breath behind it, but it wasn’t hard for Jon to read his lips when Keegan spoke. “Yes.”
Jon pulled him out of the lazy sprawl in his lap and held Keegan to himself, running his hand along the other man’s back.
“I thought he got tired of waiting for me to get my shit together,” Keegan whispered, the words only audible because his mouth was inches from Jon’s ear. “But I came home one night to find Uncle Pat in my apartment. He said he came to check on me, on when I was getting back to work.”
“You told him you weren’t?” Jon asked, though the answer was obvious.
Keegan nodded. “He yelled at me for almost five minutes. Phil was sitting in the bedroom the whole time. He looked shell-shocked when I found him. Said it was nothing, but less than a week later he was gone.”
Something about the description struck Jon as odd, but Keegan didn’t need him playing detective just then. What he needed was support, so Jon was going to give him that. For a long time, he just held him, silently petting his back.
After a while, Keegan’s shoulders started to shake. It took a moment to realize that it was laughter, not tears. Keegan let his head fall back, and he looked Jon in the eye for the first time in a while. “I’ve got to be the worst date ever. You come over for dinner and a movie, and instead you get a sob story about my ex only wanting me if I’m a criminal.”
Jon leaned forward and pressed his lips against Keegan’s. Instead of offering resistance, Keegan melted into him, kissing back fervently. They didn’t break apart until they were gasping for breath. Jon smiled at him, still panting when he spoke again. “Not the worst date I’ve ever had. Not even top ten.”
“That sounds like a challenge,” Keegan said, offering a genuine smile.
“Nope. I’m good like this.” Jon leaned back and brushed a stray curl out of Keegan’s eyes. “When you started talking about the family business, I thought I was about to be dumped. That would have made the top of the list, but I’m glad we’re not doing that.”
“I still don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Keegan whispered, his eyes starting to drop again.
Jon took his chin in hand and forced him to look up. “You’re going to do what’s right, just like you’ve already been doing for years. You’re going to do what it takes to be able to keep looking people in the eye, because it’d be a crime if no one got to look into those baby blues again.”
“You’re so corny,” Keegan said, lips quirked up in a smile.
“Damned right I am,” Jon agreed. “For my next trick, I’ll feed you cherries and read Neruda naked in bed.”
Keegan’s eyes sparkled. “That sounds less corny, if only a little. But I’m thinking Whitman.”
“It’s a date,” Jon agreed. “But if you keep naming poets, I’m gonna have to drag you off to bed right now, cherries be damned.”
“Get off on poetry, or just guys who can list things?” Keegan asked, pulling away slightly, as though he were going to make a break for it.
“Guys who are too humble about how smart they are, mostly.” Jon leaned in and captured Keegan’s lips for another kiss. “Much sexier than guys with college degrees.”
Keegan pressed his palms against Jon’s chest and gave a light shove, then turned and ran for the bedroom. “How about guys who make you chase them?”
As it turned out, Jon liked guys who made him chase them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Keegan Finally Gets It
Keegan didn’t want to get up the next morning, but Saturday was one of the busiest days at Wilde’s, and he couldn’t take it off without warning. As nice as it was to think about lazing around in bed with Jon all day, it wasn’t a luxury Keegan could afford—at least not until he hired and trained another member of management. So he dragged himself out of bed, through his morning routine, and down to the restaurant.
With that in mind, along with the conversation he’d had with Jon the night before, he made a decision. When he got to his office, he grabbed the file of resumes from his desk drawer and leafed through them, taking a moment to make sure he had the right one. He didn’t want to accidentally call the wrong guy.
“Bennett,” came the voice on the other end of the line after just two rings.
Keegan might have been imagining it, but he thought the guy sounded hopeful. “This is Keegan from Wilde’s. I’m calling to ask if you’re still interested in the position we discussed.”
“Yes!” The answer came before Keegan had actually finished asking the question, so that seemed like a good sign.
“Excellent. Is Monday morning a good time for you to come by? We can talk schedule, training, and all that stuff then.”
“Absolutely, Mr. Quinn. At ten again?” the young man asked. Well, Keegan supposed twenty-four wasn’t so young, but it sure felt like it had been eons ago in his life. That was about how old Keegan had been when he’d opened Wilde’s, in fact.
“Yeah, ten’s good. But call me Keegan.”
“Yes, sir. Um, Keegan. And it’s Javier. But you know that. Oh, but everyone calls me Javi, so, um—I think I’ll shut up now.”
Keegan couldn’t hold back a smile at that. The guy was almost as excited as the people he hired for the waitstaff, and those positions were way easier to interview for. “I’ll see you in a couple of days, then, Javi.”
For a few minutes after he ended the call, Keegan sat at his desk, feeling self-satisfied. He had successfully hired a college graduate, and the guy hadn’t acted like Keegan giving him the job was the obvious and correct decision. Actually, the guy hadn’t even asked how much he’d be making. It seemed like Jon was right about that whole eating-and-paying-rent thing.
Brigit knocked and poked her head in. “Everything okay? You looked like a man on a mission on your way in. You kind of had your interview face, but I thought we were done with interviews for the week?”
“We’re totally done with interviews, at least for now,” he told her. “I hired the guy.”
She hopped in place and clapped her hands together, eyes shining like a preschooler on Christmas morning. “Cute, English-major guy?” He rolled his eyes and nodded, and she threw her hands in the air. “Yay! He was my favorite. He kind
of reminded me of you. Plus, he has this great voice—”
“Don’t go throwing a party until he shows up and does a decent job.” They both needed to keep their expectations reasonable, no matter how exciting it’d be to have more than one day off in a week. Maybe he could even pick Saturday, since Jon had Saturdays off most of the time. That was a truly luxurious prospect. When he looked up, she was still standing in the doorway looking at him. “What?”
She gave him a tiny, pleased smile. “I’m glad you said yes to Jon, Key. You never would have done this for yourself. And I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you this happy.”
“We’ve only been dating for three weeks,” he reminded her, as though he thought it would change her mind. She didn’t answer him, but gave him another smile before disappearing back out to the dining area. Next, she’d be planning a wedding without mentioning it to him beforehand.
She made a good point, though. He never would have come up with the idea of hiring new management if he hadn’t wanted more time to spend with Jon. He felt a little bad about it. If it hadn’t been for Jon, he might never have noticed how much Drew and Brigit needed more time off.
Keegan felt like he’d been wandering through a fog, and it had suddenly lifted to reveal that he was in a foreign country.
Obviously, he had also been talking about poets and poetry too much. Rolling his eyes at himself, he refiled the folder of resumes, leaving Javier Bennett’s information on his desk. It would be a good change, he decided. Javi seemed like a nice guy.
He headed out for the lunch rush feeling like at least one weight had been lifted from his shoulders. If only his father’s illness and the family situation were going to be as simple.
Jon had been right, annoyingly enough. Keegan was the only person whose expectations were unrealistic. No one else was planning for him to return to the business. Still, his father had spent a lifetime building it, and Keegan was going to walk away again. It felt disrespectful.
Lunch went by in a flash as usual, customers coming and going so fast that he didn’t know how the waitstaff kept up with it.
Sometime around three, he noticed Jake McKenna sitting at the end of the bar, scratching away in a notebook with a bright red pen. Writing music looked violent, at least the way Jake did it. He was scowling, an expression that Keegan suspected was calculated to keep people away.
So, as Keegan often felt a need to do, he decided to go poke the badger.
“Hey, Jake,” he said, sliding onto the empty stool next to him.
Jake looked up, surprised by being approached, but the look almost immediately softened into a friendly smile. “Hey, Keegan. Am I taking up space you need?”
Keegan motioned to the slowly emptying dining area, and shook his head. “Nah. We’ve got plenty of room. You’re always welcome to come write here anyway, even if we are busy. Helps build up the place’s mystique, you know? Someday I’ll tell everybody a world-famous musician wrote a hit song here.”
Jake snorted, and smacked the paper in front of him. “Yeah, ‘insert stupid pop title here’ is sure to be a major hit.”
Keegan raised an eyebrow. “You really named it that?”
“Jenn’s been bugging me to write ‘peppier’ tunes.” Jake used his fingers to put quotation marks around “peppier,” as though Keegan needed to be told that Jake hadn’t come up with the word. “It’s not that I only wanna write doom and gloom, but one song that isn’t ‘Look At Me’ isn’t gonna kill her, is it?”
“You never know. People might stop looking.” It was easy to see himself in Jake sometimes. Jenna was all about the spotlight and being noticed. Jake just wanted to do what he did best, and for people to leave him alone. “Doesn’t she ever, like, turn off?”
Jake cocked his head, asking without words what Keegan was talking about.
“Like Jon. You remember how he put on that act with her the night you guys played. But most of the time he’s nothing like that. We’ll sit around and watch a movie, and he’ll be quiet. I’ve only ever seen Jenna—” Keegan broke off because Jake was shaking his head.
“No, the pep doesn’t have an off switch. Jenna’s always like that.” He took a deep breath and it came back out as a sigh. “It’s not that I don’t love her. I mean, she’s my sister. I even love that she’s nuts most of the time.”
“But you don’t always wanna deal with it, and sometimes it’s exhausting?” Keegan said.
Jake set the notebook down on the bar, laying his pen across it. “Yeah, so I run away and write here. But I do need her. Alone, I’d sit around writing music all day and never do anything with it. Plus, she writes the words, and if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s a poet.” He shuddered theatrically.
Keegan chuckled at that. “It takes a special sort of person to write poetry that feels genuine.”
“Exactly. And I’m not one of them. Every time I try it comes out sounding like I scanned my way through a rhyming dictionary.” Jake sighed again and took a drink of his water.
“What does your father do?” Keegan asked, apropos of nothing.
Jake was so surprised that he almost fumbled his glass. “Um, he runs a construction company. Why?”
“Does he want you to run it when he retires?”
For a moment, Jake was stumped. “I have no idea. I mean, he started it himself. It’s not like it’s an ancient family tradition.” He looked conflicted for less than a handful of seconds, though, before shaking his head. “No. He doesn’t want that. It’s not what I do. I’d hate it, so I’d be bad at it, and the company he’s worked hard to build would be totally ruined.”
Keegan supposed that was part of his problem. He was good at what his father did, and everyone knew it. He’d been raised to run the business.
“Whoa,” Jake muttered, and the expression on his face said he knew exactly what Keegan was thinking about. “No way, man. You’re not thinking about going back to that, are you? You’d be terrible at that crap.”
All Keegan could do for a moment was blink. “Terrible?”
Jake nodded, looking strangely apologetic for saying it, even though it was exactly what Keegan wanted to hear. “Yeah. No offense, man, but you’d hate it more than I’d hate construction. You left for a reason. Plus, you couldn’t do it and date that fed guy everybody’s talking about, so you’d hate it even more.”
“Lots of people don’t have jobs they love,” Keegan pointed out. But he had always liked the business as a naive, stupid kid. He struggled to imagine what it would be like to go back to it, feeling how he felt now. Remembering the shooting.
“Sure,” Jake said, but then he smacked the notebook of pop songs. “Except you can’t spend the rest of your life doing something you hate. You’ll fail eventually.”
They both looked at the notebook for a long moment before Keegan nodded. “Maybe you should tell her how you feel about pop songs.”
Jake nodded. “You should tell your dad to find someone to take over the business if he dies.”
Keegan could have kissed him. “Jesus. That’s freaking obvious, isn’t it? How have I not done that?”
Picking up the notebook and giving it a hard look, Jake turned back to Keegan one last time. “I dunno. Knowing you’ve gotta say it and saying it are a long way from each other.”
“But knowing is more than I had this morning. Thanks for talking, Jake. You come back anytime, yeah?” Keegan patted him on the shoulder and went back to his office.
#
That night was the perfect chance to talk to his father, but of course Jake was right about it being harder than it seemed.
Owen had been staying with their father at night, while Keegan spent days with him when he could. Mickey, of course, was practically always there. Keegan wondered if Wilkes had given Mick his own bedroom in the house. Goodness knew there were enough of them.
On this particular night, Owen had begged off, claiming that he had a presentation for a class. Saturday at seven p.m. seemed like an odd time for
it, but Keegan believed him. Keegan wouldn’t have questioned him if he’d said he wanted to go drinking with his friends, and they both knew it. There was no reason for him to lie.
That left Keegan with his dad and Mick. It was the perfect time to talk.
Unfortunately, real life had invaded that fantasy, and Brendan Quinn had been sleeping since Keegan had arrived at the house hours earlier.
Mickey and Keegan were sitting at the table in his room playing cards. They’d cycled through various kinds of poker, hearts, and even a two-person version of solitaire where Mickey played and Keegan watched over his shoulder and half-heartedly told him what to do. It wasn’t a great game.
The two of them had been on enough long assignments together that just sitting quietly together wasn’t a problem. They’d known each other practically since birth, and silences tended to be comfortable. Or, like this one, bored.
Then Mickey got a look on his face that Keegan didn’t like. It was Mickey’s poke-the-badger face. “You talk to him yet?”
Keegan gave him a short glare and jerked his head in the direction of his sleeping father.
Mickey groaned, a little too loudly for Keegan’s liking. When Keegan intensified his glare, Mickey rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that shit. The Boss could sleep through an air raid, and you and me need to figure out how you’re gonna stop worrying and start talking.”
“He’s sick, Mickey,” Keegan protested softly, despite the fact that Mickey was right, and his father could sleep through almost anything. It was an odd trait for a man in his position. “It’s not really the time to be laying crap on him.”
“And we both know there might not be a better time, Key.” Mickey leaned forward, lowering his voice to match Keegan’s. “I know neither of us wants to deal with it, but he could be dying. And if you don’t say something now, you might never get to.”
Keegan had the urge to lash out, but swallowed it. Mick wasn’t being cruel. He knew all too well what it was like to lose parents. With Brendan’s illness, he was even looking at losing the closest living thing he had to a father.