by Tracey Ward
I grinned. “I wasn’t a very good lawyer.”
“You’re a very good everything.”
“I’m not a very good guest.”
“Oh God,” she groaned theatrically. “What’d you do? Did you get weird?”
“A little.”
“Should I pack?”
“Probably not yet.”
“I’ll keep my shoes on.”
“Smart.”
Jenna took her hands from me and wiped at her cheeks, looking up at the ceiling the way she did when she was trying to stop the tears. I’d never seen it work.
“I mean it,” I told her.
“Mean what?”
“I’d marry you today.”
She grinned sadly, dropping her hands to her lap. “I’d marry you yesterday.”
“I’d marry you last week.”
“Last month.”
“Last year.”
“Five years ago.”
“Six.”
“Seven.”
I held up my hand. “Whoa. That’s far enough. Seven years ago you were fifteen. It’s getting creepy.”
She slipped down off the edge of the bed into my arms, her long legs tangling with mine until we were wrapped up in each other, our faces inches apart.
“I’m marrying you right now,” she whispered. “I’ll marry you again tonight and tomorrow and every day after.” She kissed me softly. “I’ll marry you every moment of my life until the day I die.” Another kiss. “Because ring or no ring, laws or not, you are my joy, Kellen Riley Coulter. You are my whole heart.”
I loved her breathlessly then. More fully than I’d ever imagined possible. Deep as the color blue. Weightless as purple.
Not a person alive or dead that ever walked the earth could possibly begin to tell me how to love that woman better than I already did.
No one but her.
Chapter Twenty
Jenna
I didn’t ask what happened between Granny and Kellen. It didn’t matter. Whatever it was he thought he did to upset the house went over without notice. When I went downstairs everyone was all smiles, laughter, and hugs. Kellen followed me down a minute later as Grania was making her way out the door and they shared the oddest of farewells. A curt nod from him and a sly smile from her.
No one asked and neither of them was telling.
When Owen’s wife Meagan left to take Grania home the guys busted out the booze again. Dark beer and strong liquor were passed around the house, the lights outside fading as we were getting lit inside. Bridgette and Donal left with the kids and the celebration moved from the house to the backyard where strands of white lights that weaved back and forth over the garden came alive above us like lost stars. Lost or drunk, who could be sure anymore.
We bundled up in our thickest jackets, our breath a burst of fog on every exhale until the entire yard was encased in a low cloud that hugged us tightly. Mason produced a guitar and a singing voice that no doubt served him well at Trinity. He sang songs in Gaelic that made me sway in my seat and smile stupidly as I clenched my cold mug of whiskey to my chest. I tried to remember how many I’d had but the second it was empty someone was quick to fill it again, rousing a toast to Kellen and I and family and Skittles – anything we felt a little love for.
The love quickly formed around sports teams and I tapped out, sitting back on a bench beside Sorcha and watching the men shout at each other about players and positions and rankings and who knows what else. Kellen looked at a loss, soccer not being his sport in the slightest, but he stood with the men in a semi-circle, cup in hand and a smile on his face, and I couldn’t remember him ever looking more relaxed.
I lifted my phone and quickly snapped a picture, drawing their attention with the flash.
“Did ya get my good side, love?” Mason asked playfully.
I laughed, shaking my head and raising my phone again. “Get in together for another one?”
They obliged, closing their ranks, raising their mugs, and smiling for me. Even Kellen.
“I feel like a stereotype,” he joked after the camera flashed. “Drunk in Ireland.”
“Is it not why ya came here?” Owen asked, feigning confusion. “To get langers?”
“What’s langers?” I asked.
Mason smiled. “Drunk. Go on the lash. Locked.”
“Buckled,” Sean added. “Stocious.”
“Ossified.”
“Plastered.”
“Jesus,” I laughed in awe. “The Irish have more words for drunk than Eskimos have for snow.”
“We take it very, very, very seriously, lass,” Owen explained solemnly.
“Almost as seriously as soccer,” Kellen muttered.
Sorcha threw her hands up. “No more football!”
“That’s not football.”
“Ooh,” I cried with a smile, watching the men surrounding Kellen glare at him, outraged.
“What is it yer sayin’, boy?” Sean asked menacingly.
Kellen held his ground. “It’s soccer. It’s cute, but it’s still soccer. American football’s a real man’s game.”
They tackled him. The locked lot of them.
And just like that Kellen was drunk and fighting in Ireland. He wasn’t a stereotype anymore. He was a caricature.
He was also not someone to be trifled with.
They took him down easily, a dark mass of laughter and limbs that tumbled to the ground and disappeared into the darkest corner of the yard. Sorcha and I heard grunts and shouts, happy hollers.
“Get hold of him!”
“Ya get hold of him! He’s slippery as a snake!”
“Who the hell has got my leg?!”
“My cup!” someone shouted mournfully.
“Fock your cup, get off my leg!”
They wrestled and shouted for a good five minutes before finally emerging from the dark, panting and disheveled but all smiles.
“You’re a quick one, Kellen, I’ll give ya that,” Sean told him admiringly.
Kellen grinned. “It’s all that good old American football.”
“It’s not the football,” I scolded with a wide smile. “It’s the boxing.”
Owen’s eyes lit up. “Oh you’re a boxer, are ya?”
“Sometimes,” Kellen deflected.
“All the time. All day. Every day,” I told them proudly.
“What ‘bout tonight?” Owen asked.
Kellen shook his head. “Nah.”
“Yes!” I shouted.
“What’s gotten into you?”
I shrugged, smiling. “I like watching you fight.”
“Box.”
“It’s beautiful. Whatever you want to call it, I like it. It’s hot.”
“Ya canna say no to that, mate,” Mason told him. “When ya girl wants to see you foit, ya foit. Else ya don’t go rounds with her later, if ya catch my meanin’.”
“He’s not wrong,” I confirmed.
Kellen chuckled, dropping his chin and thinking it through. Finally he lifted his face, a gleam in his eye and that impossibly sexy smile on his lips.
“If that’s what the lady wants, then that’s what the lady gets,” he said, affecting a flawless Irish accent that sent heat through my cold bones. “I’ll foit. I’ll foit for you, A mhuirnín.”
I gaped at him. “You show off! What does that mean and how the hell did you learn Gaelic already?”
He came to stand in front of me, leaned down until his hands were on either side of me on the bench, and kissed the tip of my nose. “I learned one word. It means darling.”
I looked up into his deep, dark eyes over his flushed red cheeks, his hair a mess in the cold wind, and his lips curved into an unending smile, and I wondered if I’d ever seen him more handsome. If he’d every looked more content in the ten years I’d known him because tonight he was absolutely breathtaking.
“I like you in Ireland,” I whispered.
“I like being in Ireland.”
“Because you like bein
g home?”
He paused, his smile tightening before he leaned in and kissed my lips briefly. He stood up tall, shrugging out of his coat and draping it over my shoulders. “Because I like being with you.”
Kellen stretched out his cold muscles while Sean went inside to get boxing gloves. I found that very telling – the fact that they had two sets of boxing gloves on hand. This wasn’t a family with a casual interest in the sport. They may not have lived it like a religion the way Kellen did, but they loved it. They practiced.
“Does the entire family box?” I asked Sorcha.
She smiled into her mug. “Not all.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Me.”
Out on the patio near Kellen, Owen was fitting his hands into one set of the gloves. They weren’t Velcro on the wrist like the ones I’d seen at home. These had laces like tennis shoes and I watched as Owen silently put his hand out to Mason who took the laces and expertly tightened and tied them in a blur that I could barely follow. With a speed and precision that smacked of years of experience.
“Well,” I sighed resignedly, “this just got real.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Kellen
The gloves Sean pushed on my hands were a shade too small. The bottom of my palm didn’t fit entirely inside the padding, pulling the cuff up high on my wrist. Reminding me again that I was an odd fit in the family.
“How many rounds ya wanna go, Kellen?” Owen asked me.
“Until somebody gives?”
He laughed. “I’ve more’na pint in me. I could go all night. Ya’ll want to be more precise.”
“One round,” Jenna said, pulling out her phone again. “Timed. Sorcha and I will keep score.”
“Ya know how to score a foit, do ya?”
“Pro or amateur? Because a monkey can judge a pro boxing match. Just count up how many shits he threw at each opponent and belt your winner. Or slap a mood ring on the corpse of Julia Childs if you want more accuracy, it really doesn’t matter. I prefer amateur. The rules are more clear, more straightforward. You land a hit, you get a point. You take a hit, you’re on the run, so if you boys don’t mind we’ll go amateur rules.”
Mason shook his head at me, growling, “You lucky focker.”
I grinned proudly. “I know.”
Owen and I came to face each other, both of us dancing on our feet, readying for the fight. The other men created a makeshift ring around us, making the wall of a shed one side of the square and each of them a point opposite it. They told us our boundaries but no one specified our limits. As I looked at my uncle standing over half a foot shorter, easily thirty pounds lighter, and as many years older than me, I wondered how hard I should go at him. This was family and I’d never boxed with family. I sparred with other guys at the gym but they were opponents too. I could end up facing any of them in a competition. I didn’t show them everything I had but I didn’t go easy on them either.
I decided the best way was to feel him out. See how hard he came at me and go a shade farther. Just enough to win, because make no mistake, family or no, I never stepped into any ring without the intention of winning.
“Are you ready with the timer?” I asked Jenna.
“In a way.”
“What does that mean?”
She smiled in the glow of her phone. “You’ll see. Are you both ready?”
We bumped gloves at the center of the makeshift ring before retreating to opposite corners.
“Ready,” Owen called.
“Ready.”
“Go!”
Just as we both took a step toward each other music broke out over the quiet patio. It was a steady beat, a rousing drinking song but it wasn’t from Ireland. It was the American Authors Go Big or Go Home.
I laughed, looking over at Jenna holding up her phone for us to hear. “What are you doing?”
“This is your timer!” she shouted. “And it’s running so you better get to business! Like right now!”
Her last words were hurried, her eyes widening as she looked to my left. I understood Owen was coming so I feinted back, slipped to the side on my right foot and was standing on the other side of him before he could get his bearings. I didn’t swing at him, though. I waited, watching him move. Gauging his reaction time, his alacrity.
He was accurate but he was slow. An easy mark. But I didn’t know yet how hard we were running so I slowed down and let him catch up. I let him land the first hit.
It was hard, harder than I expected. Dude was not playing around and that shit was good to know.
I sped up, going into sparring mode and dodging him until he was tired. I landed a hit, let him have one, kept it tight, but I kept a tally in my mind and when the song was reaching the end I made sure I had two more points than he did.
“Kellen’s the winner,” Sorcha announced, wincing at Owen. “Sorry.”
“Whatcha sorry for?” he asked on a breathless laugh. “Have ya seen the size of the boy? I’m pleased I’m still standing.” He surprised me when he pulled me into a half hug. “Good foit, lad. Good foit.”
“You too, Owen.”
He laughed with incredulity as he walked away, pulling his gloves off and tossing them at Sean. “Yer turn. Good focking luck to ya! He’s faster than he let on. Stronger too.”
Mason helped Sean lace up the same way he helped his dad. I watched him with interest as he walked back to his corner. I was gauging his stride, logging his dominant hand. He was a southpaw. I’d need to remember that when his turn came around.
“Ready?” Jenna called.
Together we replied, “Ready.”
The same song cued up, sending us into the dance. Sean was faster, I saw that right away. Lighter on his feet. He used his smaller stature to move around the space in quick steps that made me buckle down and pay attention. He got the first two hits on me and I didn’t let him have them. He was that kind of quick.
I wasn’t new to fast fighters, though, and Owen was right. I was faster than I’d let on. I drew him out, pulling him from the center of the ring where he could run circles around me and make me dizzy if I wasn’t careful. I pulled him to the edges, to the invisible ropes. He came after me quick, but the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and that’s exactly how he advanced. No more fancy footwork to leave me guessing. I got a hit on him as he approached, startling him. Throwing him off. I dodged a throw, sending him off balance outside the ring and bringing shouts of protest from the crowd.
Sean immediately stepped back in the bounds of the space and came at me, another straight line right into my range. I kept this up with him for the last minute of the song, opening the gap between us by four hits. I was harder on him and I wasn’t quite sure why. He was all smiles when his defeat was announced, though. Sorcha on the other hand booed me.
I laughed, throwing my hands in the air. “Judges are supposed to be impartial!”
“Boo!” she repeated, her smile unrepentant.
Sean threw his gloves to Mason and went to Sorcha, kissing her soundly on the mouth. She giggled against his lips.
“You’re a fine woman, Sorcha Coulter,” he told her admiringly. “Loyal to the bone.”
“To the bitter end,” she confirmed, pulling his mouth down for another kiss.
Owen was already lacing Mason up, the final fight coming on fast. Mason was ready. Eager. I could see it in the way he carried himself. I recognized it because there were days when I lived it and there was a part of me, a snarling, gnashing part of me that felt it then. That banged against its bars, begging to be let out.
“No need for the song, love,” Mason told Jenna with a smirk. “I’ll take him up on his original offer.”
She shook her head. “What offer?”
“We go ‘till one of us gives.”
“Ah, come on now,” Owen said with disdain, dropping his hands away from Mason’s. “Ya don’t wanna do that.”
“I do. Don’t you, Kellen?”
I tri
ed to read his face but I got nothing from him. Whatever his reasons, whatever his motivation, he was keeping it hidden. I could respect that. I could also guess at it and if I were to put money on it, I’d say Mason was a boxer like his grandfather. Like me. He was better than the other men, that much was clear. I was walking into the real deal when I stepped into the ring with him and I had no idea what his fight looked like while he had about a million clues as to what he was getting into with me. I was the underdog here. At a disadvantage. It would be wise not to take the bait.
“Let’s do it,” I agreed.
Of course, the animal had never been especially wise.
That’s where I went when I circled the space slowly. I paced until my steps matched the beast inside me as he prowled the dark edges of my mind. He was waking up, coming alive, and when I let him have the driver’s seat he growled long and low in exuberance.
I wouldn’t pull any punches with Mason because I could see it in his eyes that he wasn’t going to pull any with me. And it wasn’t malicious. It wasn’t vengeful in some way, it wasn’t a pissing contest or a drunken brawl. It was the sport. It was one fighter facing another and it was more insulting to hit him softly than it was to not hit him at all.
“Kellen,” Jenna started, her eyes darting between Mason and me.
I nodded curtly. “I know.”
She nodded as well, settling back into her seat.
“Ready?” Sorcha asked.
Mason and I touched gloves and retreated to our corners. “Ready.”
“Foit!”
I went slow and easy. A Sunday stroll through the park as I went toward the center of that ring. I watched his footing and it was weird the way he stepped. It was wrong for a lefty. He started in on his right foot, not his left. It threw me for a loop. It left me wondering why and while I was pondering the oddities of fucking nothing, he landed a hit to my jaw that snapped my head back like a rubber band.
I didn’t stumble. I held my ground and I recovered quickly, eying the smirk on his face. He didn’t say a word, though. He switched his footing, rotated his hands, and took a new stance. A right handed stance, and what do you know, his next punch came from his right hand instead of his left.