“Sean stood there with a mischievous grin, hand still forming a claw. He’d tapped on the door with his fingernails to fool me.I slammed the door in his face.Before the latch caught, the door bounced open again. Cameron stood just behind Sean with the rubber toe of his shoe blocking the door from shutting. “You look likehell,” Cameron said.“I look like Sean.” is was a joke from my darkest memory. If Sean told me I was ugly, I could deflect the insult easily, because he was calling himself the same name. IfCameron told me I was ugly, he was also insulting Sean, and Sean would get revenge on him without me having to do a thing.”

“I open the door wide to reveal the answer. They all look at Sean standing there with his hands in his pocket and the other hand around loaf of bread and it occurs to me all in a rush as they stare at him that Sean looks a little, just a little, like he's courting. I don't have time to explain the truth of it before Tommy laughs and jumps to his feet. "Sean Kendrick, the devil. How are you?”

“I think of Sean folded low over the red stallion, riding bareback at the top of the cliffs. Of the easy way they had with each other when I met him to look at the uisce mare. I think, even, of the way Sean looked when he stood on the bloody festival rock and said his name, and then Corr's, like it was just one fact after the other. Of the way he said "the sky and the sand and the sea and Corr" to me. And I feel a bite of unfairness, because in everything but name, it seems to me that Sean Kendrick already owns Corr.”

“Better you than Cameron " McGillicuddy grumbled. "I know where Cameron's been." Sean snorted. Cameron said "I already told you I did NOT come on to Lori.”

“There's a tap on the door then. We all exchange looks, Tommy Falk's as uncertain as the rest of ours. No one moves, so I finally wipe my hands off on my pants, go to the door, and open it a crack. Sean stands on the other side, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other holding a loaf of bread. I wasn't prepared for it to be Sean, so my stomach does a neat little trick that feels like either hunger or escaping.”

“They're saying that you and Sean Kendrick were burning up the cliffs." Tommy spins me again and grins at me. "And when I say you and Sean Kendrick, I mean you and Sean Kendrick. And by burning, I mean burning.”