Coastal Runaway (Coast to Coast #1)

One

one

Keegan

three years later

My head was pounding when I startled awake. A heavy arm was draped over my middle. A harsh snore vibrated behind my ear. I squinted in the bright light pouring through my window. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw the light passing through navy curtains. Gross navy curtains that I didn’t remember ordering.

Not my window. I wasn’t in my room.

Shit.

I groaned as the memories of last night came flooding back to me.

It was the start of CCU Athlete Training Week when all athletes came back to campus. Last night Maeve had the brilliant idea that we should go to the local college bar, The Trojan.

It was one of the only bars around campus that let girls in as long as you had a half-decent fake ID and a low cut shirt. It’s literally disgusting inside, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I remembered saying that we had a three drink maximum and then it was around tequila shot number five that things got a little fuzzy.

That's how I ended up in the bed of Patrick Sinclair, star CCU football player, and my ex-boyfriend. I slowly removed his arm and quietly got out of bed. I tugged on my clothes just as Patrick stirred awake.

“You know, you’re making me feel a little cheap right now, Keegan,” he chuckled.

“Oh, don’t be dramatic. We were celebrating the start of our senior year and got carried away. I’ll see you later.” I leaned down and kissed his cheek, as he scoffed and turned to face the wall.

This was our pattern. Patrick and I met in the first week of freshman year. He was the shiny new football star who held lots of promise, and I was the cheerleader who shocked everyone by walking onto the team as a flyer. We dated for two and a half years and had fun; at least I thought it was fun. He thought we were “get-engaged-before-graduation and meet-the-parents” serious.

Patrick was fine most of the time, if not a little annoying. We fought endlessly as a couple. He was pompous, and honestly a bit of a spoiled brat. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it.

But he was hot.

Sue me .

Whenever neither of us had someone to take home for the night, we ended up together.

I vowed to myself that I would stop doing this. I was graduating in the fall and I was remarkably lost regarding my future plans. In ten months I would have a degree in Digital Marketing, and would have to decide what I wanted to do with my life. So I guess having a little fun wasn’t so bad, right?

I left his house and pulled up the Uber app on my phone. The closest ride was twenty minutes away, typical LA, so I sat on his front steps in West Hollywood to wait as I pulled up my many, many , texts from the family group chat.

Nolan

Anyone heard from Keegan this morning?

Aiden

She usually slinks in around 6am screaming for coffee after a night out. The house is still quiet. I’m worried.

Maeve

Pretty sure she went to Sinclair’s last night.

Again.

Nolan

KEEGAN MICHAEL KEY THIS IS NOT HOW WE’RE STARTING SENIOR YEAR.

Luke

Will you all shut up? I’m trying to sleep.

Maeve

Luke, you’re 3 hours ahead of us. Why are you even still in bed?

Nolan

He probably stayed up too late kiss emoji

Luke

Fuck all the way off.

Luke left the “2 chicks, 2 dicks, and Luke” chat.

Nolan added Luke to the “2 chicks, 2 dicks, and Luke” chat.

Nolan

You can’t shake us that easily, sweetie.

Luke

When did you change the name of the chat to that? Wtf.

Maeve

Last night when he was drunk. He laughed so hard he peed his pants.

Nolan

It was worth a little pee.

I’m on my way home now, just called an Uber.

@Nolan, don’t call me that.

@Everyone, get a life and stop being so concerned about my whereabouts.

Nolan

Sorry, Michelle Keegan, it won’t happen again :)

The grumpy twins need coast to coast coffee this morning, apparently.

Aiden changed the name of the “2 chicks, 2 dicks, and Luke” chat to “You’re All Paying For My Therapy, and Luke ”

This was a daily occurrence in this chat: Nolan thinking that he was the class clown, Aiden egging him on, Maeve keeping the peace, and Luke and I completely ignoring each other.

Being part of a big family means that very little of your business actually stays your business. There were six Kelly children in total, three boys and three girls. Owen and Ryleigh were the oldest; fraternal twins who practically finished each other’s sentences, but had entirely opposite personalities. Aiden was born two years later. Followed by Nolan and I, another set of fraternal twins, eleven months after that. Maeve was the youngest, and was the only one who got the “only child” experience when she completed the last two years of high school in the newly emptied nest.

My parents definitely knew how to get busy after they got married and, apparently, didn’t believe in wrapping it up.

Nolan and I were still close, but there was a rift since I moved to Malibu. It was subtle, but still there. Nolan liked to act like he was the life of the party and shrugged things off, never showing on his face how much a situation affected him, but I could see the hurt in his eyes every time that he had to choose between LA with me or Connecticut with Luke for the summers.

Luke .

Avoiding Luke turned out to be pretty easy from the other side of the country. I hadn’t uttered one word to him in the three years since I took off and never looked back. He didn’t chase me and didn’t call. I got the memo loud and clear. I just wanted to forget it ever happened .

Luke was blocked on all social media, and I knew that he didn't ask Nolan about me. Neither of us told Nolan what happened on the night of the graduation party so they were, of course, still best friends.

In fact, I heard through the family grapevine that only a few weeks after I left town, Luke was in a committed relationship with Kiara Brighton.

Because of course he was, she’s perfect.

It was the last reminder that I was forgettable and that it was dangerous to let his sweet words intoxicate me.

The only person who knew what happened was Maeve. When she arrived in Malibu four years ago, I broke down sobbing. We spent the summer healing and swore off boys forever—that lasted all of two weeks before we met some surfers who showed us the time of our lives. Maeve and I haven’t talked about it since. She gave me the space to heal, and we bonded more than we ever had before.

Once I committed to CCU, more than half of the family was on the west coast. Dad and Maeve started to visit as often as they could, and everyone started preferring a California winter to the bitter cold and snow of Connecticut.

When Owen graduated, he took over a junior leadership role at KavTech LA. Ryleigh, well, she’s kind of a free spirit and moved around the country in her van, only popping in on major holidays. Then, Maeve shocked no one by coming to CCU on a full cheerleading scholarship, so dad now spent seven months out of the year at his LA office.

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.