Black Swan Affair by K.L. Kreig Page A

Maybe we should move to Texas. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
    “I think it will be nice.”
    “Nice?” A brow crooks. Dinner with my family is the opposite of nice. I will have to listen to my daddy drone on about how I could run DSC someday if I just come back. He’ll be subtler than my mother, though, who will just put it out there that I’m better than baking loaves of bread all day. And then I’ll have to pretend to be happy for my sister when I’m anything but.
    “Fine. Tolerable. They want to invite my parents, too.”
    “Really.” I make it a statement, but it’s more of a question. The DeSotos and the Shepards were once an inseparable duo. They worked together. Vacationed together. Spent weekends together. Both of our mothers were active in the church and so many committees I lost count.
    Then when Arnie Shepard retired a couple of years ago, they sort of drifted apart. Arnie and Eilish Shepard started spending half the year in Florida at their retirement home and when they were home, it seemed they always had something else to do. I feel bad for my parents. It’s almost as if they lost their best friends of thirty years. “I didn’t know they were back yet.”
    “They get back Saturday.” He looks happy.
    Every family has its issues. The Shepards are no different. His relationship with his father has been strained for the last few years, although he won’t talk much about it. But Kael loves his mother like no man I’ve ever seen. He hates it when she’s gone for so long.
    “Good. I’m looking forward to seeing them.” I always felt more comfortable around Kael’s parents than my own, anyway. Eilish, a sassy Irish redhead, loves me like a daughter. She accepts me for who I am and what I want to do. Next week, I know I’ll get a call from her. She will insist I bring her an entire box of éclairs and croissants. Then she’ll make her famous slow-roasted corned beef, a mound of boxty, which is a fancy Irish potato cake, and we’ll sit in the gazebo and gorge ourselves on carbs. My mother hasn’t touched a carb in twelve years.
    “Do you want to call her or should I?”
    I take a breath in until my stomach bulges. Then I blow it out, taking my time. “I will. I’ll get the ass-ripping over with before Sunday.”
    Kael chuckles. When I slap another mosquito, he asks, “Want me to grab that bug spray and a couple of beers?”
    “Sure. Sounds great.”
    Five minutes later he returns to our back porch, sporting nothing but a pair of baggy black gym shorts. Two bottles of Michelob Ultra hang in one hand, bug spray in the other.
    He sets the beers down on the whitewashed wooden table between our two Adirondack chairs but doesn’t open them yet. Then he goes about spraying himself with the repellent, slowly running the mist over one arm before switching hands and doing the next. I sit back and watch him as he generously covers his torso before working his way down one thigh.
    He’s like Killian in so many ways, but I realize those ways are only superficial. They both share the same square jawline and chiseled cheekbones. Their eye color is only a shade or two different, with Kael’s being lighter, but their hair color is exact. Kael’s a couple inches taller than Killian. He’s leaner, though, whereas Killian is a little more brawny.
    But where Killian is ruthless, Kael is compassionate. Kael is outgoing and chatty, Killian more reserved. He’s serious to Kael’s fun-loving personality. And where Killian would apparently do anything for himself, Kael would do anything for me.
    I think back to the day he followed me to my lake. Well, Old Man Riley’s lake, but I quickly thought of it as mine. We had an understanding, Old Man Riley and I. He wasn’t nearly the monster everyone created. He was just a lonely old man whose wife had died ten years earlier.
    So when I stumbled across him in the woods one day, I couldn’t breathe. He was hunched over a mewling animal and for a split