Page 6 of Coastal Runaway

There were questions over the years, especially from Nolan, about why I destroyed our trio and suddenly ended my lifelong friendship with Luke. I felt bad about it occasionally, but I realized that I had to prioritize myself and my happiness.

Also, I wasn’t the one who ruined everything.

Dad was upset, initially, that I basically ran away in a family car without as much as a goodbye at seventeen years old, but he got over it pretty quickly when I spun the story that I was upset about becoming an adult without my mom around, and I wanted to spend time at her favorite house. He eventually sent Owen out to Malibu to watch over us for the summer; he couldn’t be bothered to come himself to see if I was okay.

My dad, Robert Kelly, built his wealth after he moved to New York City to attend Columbia University on a scholarship at eighteen years old. That was where he met his best friend, Sean Cavan. Mr. Cavan came from old East Coast money, so when my dad had an idea for a tech startup company, Sean decided to be his financial backer.

Everyone insisted my dad would fail. He got constant lectures from Gram where she bet money that he would crawl back to their small rural town in Kentucky by the end of the year: jobless, broke, and in desperate need of help. She was wrong.

The company took off in a way that no one, except my dad, saw coming. The company, KavTech, was now one of the leading software and design companies in the world. When the company wanted to relocate to the West Coast, my dad and Mr. Cavan opened two new offices, one in Silicon Valley and one in Los Angeles.

He met my mom at a nightclub in LA when he was twenty-seven and she was twenty-five. At that point KavTech was already leading the industry, but when my mom asked what my dad did for a living, he pretended to be like every other yuppie who moved to the west coast to become the next Steve Jobs. He simply said that he worked as a tech developer’s assistant and left it at that.

The next morning, my mom was looking down at the cocktail napkin with my dad’s name and phone number on it when my Aunt Kerry burst into the living room and shoved a newspaper in her face. The front page had the headline New Found Net Worth and beneath it was a photo of two men, one of them was my dad.

The description beneath the photo contained the tagline, “Robert Kelly and Sean Cavan, founders paving their way on the internet superhighway.” Supposedly my mom groaned while my aunt danced circles around their couch while squealing about how they were both going to be rich “once she got her hands on that Cavan man!”

Since my dad grew up in a poor town in the south, and was not used to this new found wealth, he took my mom on dates that cost very little; a picnic in the park, sightseeing in LA, a hike to see the Hollywood sign.

She loved every second of those dates, and when my dad eventually revealed that he owned a multi-million dollar corporation, my mom didn’t reveal that she already knew. She just wanted to get to know the man underneath the media; to fall in love with him despite his money and fame. She truly preferred a picnic in the park over a private jet to Paris any day.

From what I have been told, my mom was an incredible woman. Her and my dad fell in love hard and fast; they got engaged after only knowing each other for six months, and then got married less than a year later. My dad spoiled her with affection, and mom gave him the huge family that he always wanted.

After Aiden was born, my mom begged my dad to relocate our family to Connecticut where she grew up. She insisted that we could have a nice suburban upbringing near her family, with the pick of some of the best schools in the country.

My dad ultimately agreed and bought an obnoxious piece of land with an old mansion on it, which is now the Kelly Estate. My mom passed away from ovarian cancer about two years after my younger sister, Maeve, was born. I was only 4 years old, and as much as I try, I have no memories of her except the ones I have seen in pictures or the stories I have been told.

I grew up hearing about the epic love story hoping that would happen to me one day.

But, some things just aren’t meant to be.

two

Keegan

I strolled through the front door of the Malibu house an hour later to the smell of fresh coffee and crispy bacon. Aiden was in the kitchen in only shorts and an apron.

“Dude, can you at least wear a shirt, so you don’t sweat all over the goods?” I scoffed, hopping up to sit on the kitchen island.

Aiden snapped the tongs in my direction, “There’s our pretty little gremlin, we missed you.”

I flipped him off as he handed me a steaming cup of coffee. I instantly smiled as the warm liquid soothed my soul. “Ugh, that is orgasmic.” I sighed into my mug.

He shivered, horrified, “Please never say orgasm in front of me again.”

I laughed, pausing when something in the corner of the room caught my eye. I watched Maeve peeking into the kitchen looking around to see if anyone could see her. When she noticed that she caught my attention, she put her finger to her lips in a silent shhhhh, glancing at Aiden’s who was turned away from her.

Confident that he wasn’t paying attention, she grabbed a very muscular arm and booked it to the side door. I stifled a giggle so I wouldn’t give her away as she shoved the mystery man out the door that we used strategically because it’s the one where the security cameras could be avoided.

You had to get creative when you lived with two overprotective wardens. Once the intruder was safely outside, she made her way into the kitchen and started pouring a cup of coffee.

Growing up with three older brothers—plus Luke—was a lot most of the time. They were overprotective and overbearing. One time Nolan knocked Brad Hayward out cold for implying that I had two left feet at a high school dance. It wasn’t even a good dig, but Nolan and Luke didn’t care. He was trying to offend me, so they were trying to rearrange his teeth.

Brad's words didn’t even bruise my ego, but they hit him so hard that I eventually heard through the grapevine that his parents forked out a hefty sum for a corrective nose job. It definitely explained why Brad came back to school with facial bandages that January. He claimed it was caused by a skiing accident that he suffered over winter break ... but my family didn't see him when we visited Mohawk Mountain that year.

“Maevey, Maevey, Maevey, what are we going to do with you?” Aiden chastised without looking up from the frying pan.

“I simply don’t know what you’re talking about.” Maeve said with an innocent smirk.