Saving a Legend(18)

“What are you talking about?” Rory looked confused, but then he waved his hands as if to dismiss the conversation and started walking away. Kieran had no plans to let him off that easily. Rory couldn’t just yell at him like he was a child and then walk away like it was nothing.

Everything he’d wanted to say for two years was standing at the gate, banging to be let out. Kieran’s clenched jaw and tense shoulders told him he couldn’t hold it back much longer. He followed Rory and grabbed his upper arm, pulling him back to face him.

Ace growled at him the moment he touched Rory, causing Kieran to drop his brother’s arm quickly.

“I’m talking about me! You put me in prison, Rory. I’m still paying for what you did to me! You’re talking about all these people knowing where I was—well, how do you think I got there? You ratted me out!”

Rory advanced on him fast, turning the tables. Anger flamed in Rory’s eyes as he held up a finger between them in warning. There was something else there, too, though. Kieran saw a pain he wasn’t expecting lurking underneath his brother’s fury. The combination surprised him and caused him to take a step back before holding his ground.

“You put yourself in prison, no one else. You shouldn’t have been there that day. You shouldn’t have been doing that shit. You hurt the whole fucking family when you went down, and you’ve no one to blame but yourself.” Rory’s angry expression morphed into sadness as he stepped back. “You haven’t been here, Kieran. You didn’t have to watch Ma crying every day for weeks after you got sent up. Get back to work. I’m done fucking talking about this.”

—



“Ready for your second day?” Nora smiled sweetly at him as he walked into her office at the youth center later that afternoon.

Kieran nodded. “Sure, I had fun yesterday.”

“Making community service fun; now, that’s looking at it glass half full,” she teased. If anyone else had said something like that to him, he might have gotten defensive, but Nora had a way of making you smile. She was lighthearted and easygoing, and in the one day he’d known her, he could see her intentions were always friendly.

“Tell that to my parole officer,” he said, only partially kidding, since she would be the one to report regularly back to Officer Huppert about his work.

“Keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll get a glowing report from me,” Nora assured him. “The kids all had great things to say about you yesterday. You’ve got the high school boys this afternoon. You’ll probably find most of them out on the basketball court.”

“On it, boss.” He left her office and navigated his way through the center until he exited into the back. The yard itself wasn’t much to look at, just pavement fenced in by several buildings. The alley down the side was a garden area lined with storage sheds. Along the far side was a half-sized basketball court made up of a rickety basket attached to a brick wall and a few painted lines on the concrete.

“I’m going to kill you, motherfu—” Sudden shouting caught Kieran’s attention, and he turned to see a circle of boys facing away from him. Looking harder, he could see the group had congregated around two boys who were in the midst of a fistfight.

“Hey!” Kieran rushed over to them, pushing kids aside to get in the middle. “Stop it!”



The surrounding crowd suddenly dispersed, but most stayed close, pretending to be doing something else but really watching the drama unfold. Kieran had both boys by their shoulders, holding them apart despite their attempts to keep hitting each other.

“He was talking shit about my—” one boy started to say.

“I don’t give a shit who he was talking about,” Kieran said sternly. “There’s no fighting here.”

The boys pushed away from him, sullenly moving in different directions and trying to save face in front of their friends.

Kieran kept his eye on them both, in case a repeat performance was to occur. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him. He’d spent two years in prison for aggravated assault. He’d been raised his whole life to be a fighter, and his family owned one of the most famous mixed martial arts gyms in the country. Yet here he was, telling kids not to do the very thing that was ingrained in his DNA.

Scowling at himself, he tried to push the thoughts out of his head as he prowled over to the basketball court. Splitting the kids into teams, he arranged a pickup game of hoops and supervised as the kids played. Occasionally, he would join them and give pointers, but mostly he coached from the sidelines.