He looks away, his face grim.
“Now, we need to get going. I’m sorry I snapped at you, but my goal right now is to keep both of us alive. All right?”
I nod, sniffling and feeling so weak for crying and freaking like this. “Okay.”
We turn and head back to the car.
“Sorry I freaked out,” I mumble.
“Don’t.”
He pulls me close, his eyes lancing into mine.
“You were amazing back there, actually.”
I roll my eyes.
“Oh, you don’t believe me? You do a lot of wheel-grabbing and passenger-seat driving while someone shoots out the window of a moving car?”
I smile quietly.
“Yeah, that was pretty bad-ass, sweetheart.”
He pulls the car out of the rest area and revs us back up the ramp to the highway.
“Well, that’s me. Bad-ass grad school fuck up.”
Connor grins.
“Keep lighting fires, princess.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Connor
“What is this place?”
She shuts the car door and looks up at the old two-story house. The surf crashes loudly farther down the beach, over the dunes, and the sea-salt air I fucking love washes over our faces.
I grin to myself, looking up at the house.
Damn, I missed this place.
“It belongs to some family friends. Me and my brothers and sister used to come here in the summers. I fuckin’ loved it here. And, we’ll be safe here. No one knows about this place.”
She turns to me, her brow furrowed. “I thought you just had brothers?”
“Eh, it’s complicated.”
“Hey, I’m one of five, spill it.”
I grin as I walk around to the big porch that looks out over the dunes and the ocean past them.
“It’s just old family shit, boring stuff.”
“If you say so.”
I find the spare key exactly where I knew it’d be in the mason jar bolted to the underside of the second step. The lock clicks, and the door creaks on sea-brine-rusted hinges.
It’s musty in here, but untouched. There was some shit with local kids breaking in a few years back. Liam and Damien and I put a stop to that real quick by sneaking in here one night, leaving the lights off, and waiting for those little fuckers to come back.
High school douchebags are decidedly less tough once they’ve literally shit their pants when three guys with guns meet them in the dark house they’re trying to use to get laid.
I click on the lights and grin.
The place is exactly the same as it always was back then.
In the old days, pre-Dark Saints, pre all of us kids growing up too fast and too hard, this place was our haven. Mike and Colleen Gallagher would take us here when Boston turned into a fucking frying pan in the summer - out here on Cape Cod to the house Colleen’s parents had left her.
Just me, Liam, and Gray, and our basically adopted siblings, Damien and Nora.
I glance around at the 50’s kitsch decor - the wood walls, the old windowpanes, the old throw blankets over threadbare couches that still look like home. The fireplace to one side, the doorway into the old kitchen where Mrs. Gallagher would make sandwiches and insist on lathering us with more sunscreen before we headed back down to the water.
I barely ever come here anymore, just with life being what it is. I’ve also never brought anyone here, that’s for sure.
Sierra whistles behind me. “Oh my God, this place is amazing.”
“That better not be sarcasm.”
“It’s not! Holy shit I love this.”
I grin. “Thanks.”
“Your family’s?”
“Sort of.”
She sighs, giving me a look.
“Drink?”
Sierra smiles. “Now? It’s like ten in the morning.”
“Yep, right now.”
“Family stuff that hard to talk about, huh?”
“Sorry, were you there when those guys were shooting at us and trying to kill us?”
She grins and looks away, and I kneel down and feel under the bottom shelf of the bookcase before I smile.
Yep, still there.
The bottle Mike Gallagher always kept hidden away. I pull the dusty thing out into the light and shake my head. This shit is rotgut bad, but hell, it’s aged now, I guess.
I pour us some glasses, but then leave them on the coffee table and head out to grab some wood by the side of the house. I come back with an oversized armload and start to build the logs up in the fireplace.
“My brothers and I - Liam and Gray. Eventually, people figured out our parents weren’t around.”
She looks down into her glass.
“My mom ran off when we were real young, and my dad,” I shrug. “My dad was a piece of shit, and he eventually took off too. Jack- that’s Aela’s dad-”
“Aela?”