If the old me could see me now.
Smiling, I swipe onto the text and my mouth curves further when I see who’s messaged.
Blake: All the pieces are in place.
Kylie: How’d your mom take it?
Blake: There were threats. There was drama. But the tickets are booked and the plan’s a go.
Kylie: You’re a rock star!
Blake: Nah. I’m just a genius.
I giggle as I tug on my pajamas.
Kylie: How humble of you.
Blake:
Blake: A-man and I defeated some evil dragons today.
Kylie: So that’s why he didn’t do his homework.
Blake: I would never lead the children astray.
Kylie: Just adults?
Blake: Rude.
Kylie: Yup. Little sister energy meet little brother energy.
Blake:
Blake: You going to watch the game tonight?
Kylie: I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Blake: I knew there was a reason I liked you.
Kylie: Because I love your brother?
Blake: That…and because you actually see him when he’s spent too much of his life living in the shadows of my health shit.
My heart squeezes.
Kylie: I don’t think he ever resented it.
Blake: How could he not?
Now my heart does more than squeeze.
It hurts for these men who both went through so much—and whose parents failed them in spectacularly different ways.
Different, but still damaging.
And while I’m beginning to know Blake in all the ways that matter, I don’t understand him like I understand Colt.
Though I know enough to write?—
