With All My Heart - Emilia Finn Page 0,42

squeals and throws her hands over her eyes. She’s fifteen and knows the mechanics of sex, but she still blushes at the thought of Bry dragging me to the room like a genuine caveman.

“So what happened to that bitch? The hair puller.” Evie’s eyes flash with anger. Not because Ann-Marie hurt me, but because she pulled hair.

We fight. We don’t pull hair.

And after she hurt me that day, after things settled down a little, I asked Bryan to teach me how to fight. Not because I wanted to hurt people, but because I didn’t want to freeze the way I did that night.

He took me to the backyard every single day from then on out, and he taught me how to fight. He taught me every day until the day he died.

“The hair puller… went on to have her baby. She wasn’t lying that night. That test was real. That baby was real. She went on and had a baby girl not too long after I had Aiden.”

“Are they still around?”

It’s so obvious, so in their face, the girls don’t see it.

“Reilly, the guy… Reilly was his last name, not his first. He passed away a while ago. He was sick and died when he was still young.”

“That’s so sad.”

“You don’t see it, Smalls?” I wait for her ocean blue eyes to meet mine. “You’ve visited Reilly before. You’ve been at the cemetery with Uncle Jack.”

“Uncle Jack?” She gasps. “Uncle Jack! Reilly. His daddy?”

I nod. “That was his daddy.”

“Which means that baby girl–”

“Is your Aunt Kit.”

The hair puller’s baby would someday be my daughter-in-law.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

I look up.

I don’t jump.

I don’t startle.

I don’t gasp.

I simply smile, because that’s karma, and I already know not to talk about people when they’re not here.

I smile at my beautiful daughter-in-law. The mother of my grandbabies. The love of my son’s life.

And I know she’s nothing like her mom.

She’s all Reilly; sweet, funny, caring.

Loyal.

He wouldn’t leave his baby girl, not for anything, and definitely not for his friends.

Kit steps into the living room and stops on the arm of the couch. She’s been through a hell of a lot in her short life, so finding out I knew her mom is low on the crazy-meter for her.

“You sat there that night we met, and you asked about my daddy like you never knew him. You pretended you didn’t know my folks.”

Heat spreads on my cheeks, but I stand by my actions. “Had I told you I knew them, I would have had to explain it all. Your mom was already gone. Your dad had passed only a few months before that dinner. I wasn’t going to tell you I knew her. I definitely wasn’t going to tell you I was watching you, to make sure you weren’t like her.”

She laughs. “I am a little, I guess. He’s stuck forever. He’ll never escape me.”

Leaning across the couch, I take her hand and yank her down beside me. “Do you remember that night we met?” She nods silently. “When I asked you to help me with dessert.”

She laughs. “How could I forget? I was scared out of my brains. I hated moms. I was dating your son. I was terrified you’d hate me, and that was before I knew all this shit.” She fans her face. “Thank God I didn’t know this extra stuff. I’d have died before Bobby got me into the car.”

“Do you remember what we talked about in the kitchen?”

“Apart from his baby bowel movements. And the fact you told me he bought you this house?” She looks around my grand living room with fresh eyes. Nodding thoughtfully, she answers, “You asked me if I was crazy.”

“And you said…”

She snickers and leans in close. “I said yes, ma’am, I am. I’m crazy in love with your son, and I hope you can get on board with that, because he loves us both and if we don’t get along, that’ll hurt him.”

“There are two kinds of crazy in this world, baby girl. There’s flat out crazy, then there’s us. The ones that can admit it are our kinda people. They’re good to come over and hang out with us. It’s the people who don’t know they’re crazy that are dangerous.” Like her mom. “I wasn’t letting Bry go, either. I’d sooner chain him down and break his ankles than let him walk away. But he knew that. He loved my crazy. And you love my son just as fiercely. So much