by Mari Carr
“Dammit. Open your eyes and say my name!”
Kelli fought to give him what he wanted as he continued to slam inside her even harder. Her orgasm continued. She couldn’t come down. She didn’t fucking want to. Not ever.
“Colm. Colm. Colm…” His name became a chant as he held her gaze captive, his eyes never leaving hers, so that she saw it the second he was there too.
“Fuck. Kelli. God… Kelli,” he breathed, her name almost a sigh as he came as well, his face etched with intense pleasure that almost looked like pain.
For several moments, neither of them moved or looked away. They simply lay there, connected, gasping for breath, staring.
Colm had been in her life since she was five years old. And tonight, it felt like she was seeing him for the very first time.
Chapter Eleven
Colm leaned back in his chair at Pat’s Pub and rubbed his way-too-full stomach. Padraig sat across from him, doing the same thing. They were both suffering the aftereffects of Aunt Riley’s Thanksgiving dinner.
“Every year, I say I’m not going to overeat,” Colm murmured, closing his eyes as he fought off the desire to take a brief turkey-induced nap.
“Me too,” Padraig said. “Then I see that homemade stuffing with the real bacon bits and I start shoving it in my face like it’s my job.”
“We haven’t even had dessert yet.”
Padraig groaned. “I’m going to explode if I eat Mom’s pumpkin pie.”
Colm cracked one eye open. “You skipping it?”
“Don’t be insane. Of course not.”
“Damn. Thought that meant there would be more for me.”
Despite being closed, the noise level in the pub currently rivaled that of St. Patrick’s Day when the place was filled to the rafters with the local patrons.
The Collins family had grown too large over the past few years to celebrate holidays together in someone’s house, so they’d moved the festivities to the pub.
Pop Pop had always closed the pub on Thanksgiving, even though many other restaurants stayed open, claiming it was one of the best business days of the year.
Pop Pop insisted holidays were for family, not for making a buck. And since taking over the management of the pub and Sunday’s Side, Colm’s dad, Tris, Aunt Keira, and Uncle Ewan had kept up that same policy, closing so that the whole family could be together.
Looking around the room, Colm couldn’t help but smile and feel blessed. Hunter and Uncle Sky were playing their guitars, a bunch of the little kids dancing around, laughing at the silly songs they were making up.
His mom and aunts were sitting around one large table, drinking wine, reminiscing about past holidays.
His dad and Pop Pop and uncles were sitting at the bar, watching football on the big screen, alternating between cheering or shouting at the refs.
They’d already done the eternal “say what you’re thankful for” deal prior to eating the meal. As the family continued to grow, the time it took for everyone to have their turn to speak had expanded exponentially.
Pop Pop always started it, lifting a bottle of Jameson and demanding everyone’s attention.
It usually took a few minutes to quiet the crowd, but once everyone saw the Jameson, the conversations would end and they’d all turn to Pop Pop.
Pop Pop said the same thing every year. His grandfather was grateful for the roof over his head and the food in his belly, but most of all, he was thankful for the greatest family a man could ever ask for. Those words never failed to put a lump in Colm’s throat.
Then Pop Pop would lift the bottle of whiskey, take a sip, and pass it on. After that, everyone took a turn, sharing what they were thankful for that year before drinking the whiskey.
Colm had said he was grateful for his thriving practice, for his mom and dad and brother. Like Pop Pop, he typically said the same thing every year as well. But this year, he made an addition…saying he was also very thankful for blackouts.
Then he took a drink of the whiskey and passed the bottle before anyone could question him on it, though he caught the knowing expression on Sunnie’s face and the curious one on Padraig’s.
Kelli admitted she’d told Sunnie, Darcy, and Yvonne about their blackout adventure on Halloween, and he’d gotten the sense she thought he’d be upset by that.
In truth, Colm had secretly been pleased that she wasn’t trying to hide what they’d done. For some reason, it had given him hope that she would soon come to accept what he already knew. The curse had struck and there was no going back now.
He knew things weren’t exactly clear sailing. Neither of them had brought up her desire for a baby, but Colm didn’t believe for a minute Kelli had changed her mind. Nor should she.
The only thing he wanted to do was convince her to reconsider whose baby she would be carrying. If she was on the same page as him…that would be simple. Because he was already planning their future together.
Kelli still hadn’t caught up. Which meant he had his work cut out for him. And then some.
“You haven’t been around much the past week. Work keeping you busy?” Padraig asked.
“Not really,” Colm said. He’d actually been leaving work early and going over to Kelli’s apartment after work every single day since Friendsgiving. At some point, he was going to have to figure out how to work a full day without succumbing to the need to be with her. As it was, his new normal consisted of hightailing it across town so that he was in the apartment and waiting for her when she got home from school.
Of course, given the way Kelli tackled him within two seconds of dropping her bag by the door, he’d say she was suffering the same unending, aching desire to be with him as well.
Padraig waited for him to explain, but Colm didn’t.
“So,” Padraig said. “Blackouts?”
Colm chuckled, surprised his twin had managed to hold that question in for so long.
“Blackouts,” Colm repeated, adding nothing else. He liked to make his brother work for things.
And Padraig, bless him, always took the bait. “Care to elaborate.”
Colm hadn’t purposely kept Padraig in the dark about Kelli. The truth was, he simply hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to him. But even as he considered that, he couldn’t help but wonder how Padraig would respond. After all, it was Padraig who’d broken up all the fights between him and Kelli when they were growing up. “I slept with Kelli that night.”
“My Kelli?”
Colm sighed. He really was going to have to break his brother of that habit. “My Kelli,” he corrected.
Padraig didn’t move or respond for a moment. Instead, he studied Colm’s face hard, clearly searching to see if he was joking or telling the truth.
“I thought you were with Brooke that night,” he said at last.
Colm grinned. “Hence my gratefulness for the blackout. I thought I was with Brooke, but it turned out to be Kelli.”
“But Kelli knew she was with you?”
Colm shook his head. “She thought she was with Robbie. There was a bit of misunderstanding for about a week and a half, until we sorted it all out.” Colm briefly recapped the story, including the part about Kelli thinking Colm was Padraig when she’d woken up to see him clean-shaven. His twin was laughing so hard by the end, he was wiping tears from his eyes.
“Holy crap. That might be the best story I’ve ever heard.”
Colm agreed, not because of the humor—though it was pretty fucking funny—but because it had opened his eyes to the woman who’d been standing right in front of him for nearly thirty years. It was crazy to think he’d had to be blinded by a blackout before he could finally see clearly.
Once Padraig managed to pull himself together, more questions emerged.
“So, she’s your Kelli now?” his brother asked.
Colm nodded. “Yeah. She doesn’t realize it just yet, but she’ll get there eventually.”
“What does she think it is now?”
“Just sex.”
“Oh yeah.”
“And neither one of you has killed the other yet?”
Colm chuckled. “No. It’s been…incredible. Perfect.”
Padraig leaned closer. “Holy shit. You’re in love with her!”
Colm didn’t bother to deny it. He hadn’t said the words to Kelli because she’d probably laugh him out of bed. This thing between them was brand-spanking new, something Kelli would point out to him, as if it was a valid argument. It wasn’t. He didn’t give a damn about the new car smell on them.
He’d fallen fast and hard. Done the exact same thing he’d always teased Padraig about.
“So…the curse?” Padraig asked, grinning widely.
Colm rolled his eyes and grimaced. “You know it’s not a curse.”
Padraig laughed loudly. “Wish I’d known all this before I’d said what I was thankful for because I’d like to change my answer now.”
“Let me guess. You’re thankful for getting to see me eat crow.”
His brother shook his head. “Nope. Thankful that my two best friends in the world found each other. Kelli’s always been like a sister to me, and now—”
Colm held up his hands to cut Padraig off. “Do me a favor. Don’t say the marriage word in front of Kelli yet. Don’t even say the relationship word. She’s…” Colm couldn’t quite decide what she was. He knew she was at a definite crossroads in her life. Before the two of them crash-landed into each other, she’d sworn off men and dating in order to focus on becoming a mother.
He’d seen the way she’d looked at Caitlyn on Halloween. Knew he was fighting an uphill battle.
“She’s…” Padraig prompted.
His cell and Padraig’s beeped at the same time. They glanced at their phones, and then at each other.
“She’s outside,” Colm said, standing up. “You get the wine. I’ll get the door.”
Padraig nodded and laughed. Kelli had just spent all day alone with her mother. While Colm looked forward to the holidays, Kelli did not, frequently referring to Thanksgiving and Christmas as her journeys to hell and back.
About a decade earlier, she’d started her own new Thanksgiving tradition, escaping her mother as soon as humanly possible, then joining the Collins family for dessert. And wine. A lot of wine.
He flipped the dead bolt on the front door of the pub, trying not to laugh at the haggard expression on her face.
“How’s Barb?” he joked.
“Speak that name to me again and I will kill you.”
He tugged her inside, locking the door again. Padraig was already on his way over to them, a large glass of merlot—and the bottle—in his hands.
“Paddy. My hero. You are the most wonderful man on the planet. Marry me.”
Colm expected Padraig to give his standard response, to claim she was too much woman for him, but instead, his brother said, “I’d love to, Kell, but it sounds like you’re already taken.”
Kelli turned to Colm. “Told him about Halloween, huh?”
“Sort of surprised you didn’t tell me,” Padraig said.
She shrugged. “Figured I’d leave that to Colm. I told Sunnie, Yvonne, and Darcy and didn’t want to hog all the fun of seeing people’s reactions when the bomb was dropped.”
Padraig laughed. “So you really thought you and I…” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, letting her know that was his favorite part of the story.
“Don’t remind me. That was a rough week and a half.”
Padraig wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “You could’ve told me. I’m not as fragile as you and my brother choose to believe.”
She gave Padraig a quick kiss on the cheek. “I know that. I’m sorry. Next time. Full disclosure.”
“Not going to be a next time,” Colm said, playfully knocking his brother’s arm away from Kelli. “And hands off my girl. Drink up, Kelli. It’ll make you feel better.”
“Not sure a bottle’s going to cut it this year,” she said as she lifted the glass. “Nothing short of hooking up an IV of wine is going to help me forget the nightmare I just left.”
Kelli took a long drink, chugging nearly half the glass. She was oblivious to the fact her arrival had been noticed by most of his family, and the room had gotten quiet.
When she finally lowered the glass, she looked around, confused, until the light went on. “Okay, okay. You got me. I’ve fallen off the wagon again. Who had Thanksgiving?”
Colm chuckled and raised his hand. “I did.”
“Of course you did.”
“Barb never lets me down.”
Kelli rolled her eyes, though the wine was already working its magic. Her shoulders visibly relaxed as she lifted her glass. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she called out to everyone. “This year, like every year, I’m grateful for the Collins family. And wine.”
Everyone laughed as several of his cousins, as well as his parents, came over to say hello. Colm remained next to her, fighting the urge to pull her close and kiss her.
Once the crowd around them thinned out, he took the wineglass from her and placed it on a nearby table, then he grasped her hand and tugged her to the quiet corridor at the back of the pub that led to the restrooms and storage closet.
He wondered if she’d insist on playing it cool in front of his family, but he should have known better. The second he turned to face her, she was there, her hands in his hair, kissing him with an air of…desperation.
Colm gripped her waist, pulling her closer, until they were breast to chest. They weren’t in the main pub area, but they weren’t exactly hidden either. Anyone in his family could happen to peer down the corridor and see them.
Not that he gave a shit. He was ready to tell the world about the two of them.
Kelli moaned as his tongue touched hers, and she pulled away. “You taste so good.”
“Aunt Riley puts on one heck of a Thanksgiving feast. I ate everything. Twice.”
“Barb managed to outdo herself this year, too. I honestly didn’t think she could find a way to make the turkey even drier. And she’s on some stupid diet, so we didn’t get real mashed potatoes. Only mashed cauliflower.”
Colm winced. “Sacrilege.”
“Right?”
There were tense lines around her eyes and mouth that only appeared after a day spent with her mother. Colm didn’t like seeing them there.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her in for a hug, and he was thrilled when Kelli sank into it, her cheek pressed tightly to his chest, her arms adding their own strength to the embrace.
“I don’t understand how someone can be that genuinely unhappy for sixty years,” she murmured.
Colm had to agree. When he looked back over the years, he couldn’t think of a single time he’d ever seen Barb with a smile that didn’t look forced or faked, and he was fairly certain he’d never heard her laugh. Which made it even more incredible to him that Kelli had made it out with such an amazing sense of humor. She was quick to laugh and rarely without a smile. “Me either.”
“Apparently, she was asked not to chair the fire station potluck this year. I know it’s because she drove the rest of the committee nuts the last two years.”
He chuckled. “Jeez, Kell. Only your mom could get fired from a volunteer position.”
“I know. She was super pissed off and said the whole thing was going to go straight to hell without her running the show. Then she spent forty-five minutes bitching about something she’d heard through the grapevine about my dad. Apparently, a friend of a friend of a friend ran into him here in the city a few months ago.”
“You didn’t know he was in Baltimore?” Colm asked.
Kelli shook her head but didn’t separate from the hug, still clinging. “Nope.” There was precious little emotion behind that response, which simply reinforced the fact that Kelli had stopped expecting anything from the man a long time ago.
; Kelli’s parents had divorced when she was thirteen. Not that it came as a surprise to anyone—Kelli included—except Barb.
Kelli had actually confessed once she was shocked her dad had managed to stick around that long.
Barb, however, was blindsided by her husband’s departure, and her general unpleasantness before that had turned to hardcore bitterness after. She criticized her ex to anyone who would listen and had for the past twenty-plus years. Time had not healed her wounds. Not even a little bit.
Mr. Peterson had tried to remain a part of Kelli’s life the first few months after he’d left. Until his ex-wife made it too impossible. Then he moved across the country to Denver, met a woman with two sons, and remarried. As far as Colm knew, Kelli and her dad exchanged birthday cards and spoke on the phone a couple times a year. If she’d ever wanted more than that from her dad, she’d never expressed it.
Actually, after her dad split, Kelli had begun to turn to his father whenever she needed help with something she probably would have gone to Mr. Peterson for. It was Colm’s dad, Tris, who taught her how to drive, throwing her in the car with him and Padraig, claiming it was just as easy to teach three teens as it was two. Dad had taught her how to change a tire, how to check the engine oil, how to fish. It was his dad whom Kelli had asked to go with her when she’d saved up enough money for her first piece-of-shit car.
Colm placed a soft kiss to the top of her head. “I’m sorry it was such a rough day, but hey, at least it’s over.”
“That would comfort me more if Christmas wasn’t a month away. I’m considering running away with the gypsies.”
“What if…” Colm took a deep breath, shocked by what he was about to offer, but he did it anyway. “What if you invite Barb to join all of us here for Christmas dinner? There are enough of us that if we all take a turn, no one should have to spend more than ten minutes with her.”
Kelli lifted her head, her expression one of longing and horror.
Jesus. Only Kelli could pull off a look like that.
Then she leaned closer and sniffed his breath. “Have you been drinking?”
Colm narrowed his eyes. “No, Kell.”