“I’ll walk you down the aisle,” Keenan said one day over breakfast. “If you’ll have me, McKenna.”
It’s fitting, as he’s my chief, my brother, and someone who’ll stand in her father’s stead.
She readily agreed. Now I watch as she gracefully holds Keenan’s elbow, walking down the rose-lined path that leads her to me.
Maeve beams beside me and clasps my hand.
“Oh, that girl loves you so very much,” she says.
I shake my head. “Must’ve fucking fooled her.”
She smacks my arms and snorts. “Tully, for the love of God, you and that mouth of yours—”
“Will take me to my deathbed? Oh, aye.”
We have a new priest in Ballyhock, and our wedding is the first ceremony he’s performed. He waits under the trellis, prayer book in hand. He’s adapted well to being the new vicar of Holy Family, and Keenan’s formed a solid alliance already.
When they reach us, Keenan bends and kisses McKenna’s cheek, before he passes her to me and shakes my hand.
Clouds part as we take our vows, and I slide the simple wedding band on her finger. She didn’t want anything fancy, but just wanted it engraved with a Celtic knot.
“I have you,” she said. “I want something sturdy, that will remind us of our vows to one another. Always.”
So that’s exactly what I had engraved in the inside of our rings in Gaelic.
I gcónaí.
Always.
Forever and always one.
* * *
Epilogue
McKenna
One year later
I walk by the garden, giddy with anticipation. My steps feel light, my heart full. Tully’s due home at any minute, and I’m so damn excited to see him.
Today was the last day of school as we break for the summer holidays. I have a full summer ahead of me to spend with Tully, and the family I’ve made here in Ballyhock.
He’s been traveling lots lately, heading to the north as liaison with the elusive Scottish mafia. “They’re a hardheaded lot,” he said after his first visit. “Stubborn as fuck and as loyal as they come, though.”
Keenan praised him for playing liaison, as it’s always helpful to have the loyalty of another brotherhood on your side, and within a few short months of our wedding day, Tully made his first trip to Scotland.
I stayed back, because I had to teach, but he met up with Mary.
“You’re our bridge, lass,” he said just before he left. “Without you, we’d never be able to join alliances with the north the way we have.”
I’m not sure how much I had to do with it, but I’m pleased that he’s pleased.
“I feel I don’t have much to offer the Clan,” I told Maeve the eve of his first trip to Scotland.
She shook her head and smiled, squeezed my hand, and assured me. “Oh, love, you have everything to offer.”
I’m not sure exactly what she meant, but perhaps I’m learning.
Occasionally, Tully co-teaches with me, and it’s honestly a bloody riot. It’s especially helpful, if I have a particularly feisty bunch of students to teach. All he has to do is clear his throat, and they fall in line like soldiers going to battle. Every one of them knows my husband is a high-ranking member of the McCarthy Clan. Every one of them wants to be in his good graces.
But he’s restless at school. He says he likes to go because I’m there, and while I love the sentiment, I know he grows restless. He needs to move, needs to act, and sitting in a classroom with books is not truly his idea of a good time.
“I get enough book learning from when you read to me,” he said one night as he polished off his shot of Jameson.
“Oh, you mean the little snippets of novels I read when you fuck me senseless, hmm?”
He grinned. “Precisely.”
We still fight from time to time. Sometimes, we battle it out and come to an agreement. Sometimes, I provoke him on purpose and end up belly down over his knee. But most of the time… most of the time we’ve got an ease and simplicity in our relationship I never thought possible.
He knows I’m fiery, and I know he is, too. He knows what I like, and I know what he does. I know he’s domineering to a fault, and he knows I have a hair-trigger temper, but somehow… we make it work.
I’m saddened that I don’t hear from my mum much. But recently, Maeve pulled me aside and assured me that she’s just fine, that she’s personally seen to her care and wellbeing. She’s been diagnosed with early onset dementia, and I know she’s in good hands.
Since we drove the Welsh out of Ballyhock, they haven’t so much as overturned a stone here. They’ve fled, and when Keenan made it clear we knew they framed the Scots, the McCarthy Clan let the Scots and Welsh duke it out. I mostly stay out of the inner workings of the Clan, and prefer it that way. If it’s anything of importance, Tully will tell me. He trusts me. And moreover, he keeps me safe from whatever harm may come to me.