Faith shrugs. “I suppose I’ll just do it.” Her legs stops bouncing. “How did you know Shane was leaving us?”

Okay, I really need to stop letting my guard down around Faith. She’s a lot smarter and more observant than I’ve given her credit for. “I think Kitty mentioned it one morning in passing.” Sure, Willa. Pin it on the crazy lady. Class-y.

She watches me curiously for a moment. “She must have been having one of her good days. Most of the time she pretends Shane never left in the first place.”

For some reason, that makes my throat ache. “Maybe he’ll change his mind,” I say offhandedly, praying she’ll change the subject. I don’t want to know any more about this family than I already do. Every new piece of this dysfunctional jigsaw puzzle that slips into place adds to my curiosity.

“Not bloody likely,” Faith answers brightly. “He has a need. A need for speed.”

“Top Gun. Nice.”

“Top what?”

“Seriously?”

She stares back at me blankly.

“Never mind.”

Our cab pulls up in front of O’Kelly’s on Sheriff Street. Faith reaches for her wallet, presumably to pay the cab driver, but I reach over and stop her. I’ve heard the expression “dive bar” many times and have at least a passing idea of what they look like. That term is pitifully inadequate to describe this run-down excuse for a legal establishment. Watching two men pour out onto the sidewalk trading punches, I heave a laugh. “Oh, no. No. Keep driving, please.”

Faith gasps. “But we came all the way here. Surely we can have just one drink.”

“Not in there we can’t.”

She glances over my shoulder, her conviction wavering before my eyes. “It looks grand to me. You can’t blame the lads for working out their troubles amongst themselves. They even had the decency to go outside. That’s all you can reasonably hope for.”

I’m positive I’m staring at her like she’s crazy. “Look, we’ll try this another night—”

“No.” Faith suddenly looks desperate. “It has to be tonight. I can’t spend another night cooped up at the inn, Willa. Please.”

Dammit. This is what I avoid like the plague. In my limited experience, when you let someone in a little, they’re never satisfied until you’re bleeding in front of them on an altar, every single one of your layers peeled back for them to psychoanalyze. This is the first step in that process. Faith is wiggling her way under my skin, appealing to whatever tiny shred of empathy I have inside me. Next thing you know, she’ll be pouring her heart out and acting wounded when I don’t do the same.

When she sucks in a breath, I know she can see the thoughts on my face, so I turn my head, casting one more glance at O’Kelly’s. The two men have finished beating the stuffing out of one another and are now…shaking hands? God, the Irish are confusing as hell.

“Faith, I—”

A car door slams, and I stare wide-eyed as Faith rounds the front of the cab, marching toward O’Kelly’s with bring on the trouble written all over her. Both bloodied men notice and say something undoubtedly crude to her as she walks past them into the bar. Into the bar. Shit. I spring into motion, throwing a handful of Euro—which honestly looks like Monopoly money to me—at the cab driver and hustle my ass toward the entrance.

When I walk inside, the first thing I notice is the cigarette smoke. Smoking is banned inside bars in this country, but this place clearly isn’t following the rules. Red flag number one. Second red flag? The four men arguing over a table strewn with playing cards and cash. And enough whiskey to drown two sumo wrestlers. As if I’d walked in shouting through a bullhorn, every one of the men looks at me. I do my best to look bored as I scope the crowded bar to determine in which direction Faith took off.

“Bad Samaritan.” One of them shouts over the loud music that has just started. His accent is so thick I can barely understand him. “Show me your tender mercies, and I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.”

I pretend to choke on my own finger and keep walking. So many people crowd the bar, calling out drink orders, I wouldn’t be able to see Faith unless she was standing right beside me. I take a moment to marvel over customers having casual conversations with the bartenders in the middle of this chaos, natural and easy, as if they are standing in their own living room. As I move closer to the back of the bar, the music increases in volume. It’s the fast-paced fiddle, foot stomping, storytelling music I’ve heard coming up through my floorboards all week, but tonight it sounds different. There’s urgency behind every word, passion being communicated through the collection of instruments. Patrons surrounding the performance area sing along at the top of their lungs, taking long pulls from their pints in between verses.

I push through the thick mass of people, searching for Faith. At this point, I’m starting to get nervous. It appears I’ve opened up a Pandora’s Box of issues by giving Faith a taste of freedom, and she’s clearly decided to take full advantage. A fleeting image of Shane’s face when I tell him I lost his little sister propels me faster through the crowd. When I make it to the stage, I do a double take when I see Brian and Patrick are the musicians. Brian, sweating profusely under a newsboy cap, is so focused on his furious fiddle playing, he doesn’t see me, but Patrick’s eyebrows shoot up in shocked delight.

He waits until he reaches the end of a chorus before pointing me out on the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, joining us all the way from the Unites States…Beyoncé!”

I’ve never seen so many people disappointed to see me. It’s a little demoralizing. Enough to make me wish, just for a second, that I look sexy shaking my ass. I don’t have too much time to think about it, though, because I’ve just spotted Faith. She’s talking to some dude who has handed her a drink. Alarm bells begin clanging in my head. I can hear Ginger’s drawl, reciting the lesson she’s repeated too many times to count. Willa, never, ever take a drink from anyone with a penis. He’ll only ever want two things. To sleep with you, or drug you and then sleep with you.

Ignoring Patrick’s request for me to join him on stage for an Irish rendition of “Crazy in Love,” I stomp toward Faith and pluck the drink from her hand before it can reach her mouth.