I don’t know what’s different now—maybe it’s the town or maybe it’s me—but something seems fresh this time, like a clean slate. Ifinally feel ready to settle. Put down roots. Iwant to rejoin the Volunteer Fire Department, get involved with Little League, and make a permanent place for myself here. I’d love to heal my relationship with this town and make new memories to snuff out the bad ones.
But unfortunately, it might be too late to convince Arthur of that.
My phone buzzes on the desk, and my sister’s face brightens the screen.
I try to sound like nothing’s wrong as I bring the phone to my ear. “Hey. How are you?”
“Has Mom made it there yet?” Mia asks in a rush.
My brows furrow. “What do you mean? I’m at work.”
“Yeah, I know. Iam too.” I roll my eyes, picturing my sisterat work—which means she’s curled up in the corner of her couch with her laptop, in her most comfortable loungewear. There’s probably an iced latte nearby. “She’s not there?”
“No. Should she be?”
“Perfect. Iwant to hear what happens when she arrives.”
I rub my temple. “Mia, what the hell is going on?”
“What’s going on,” she replies, sounding annoyed, “is you’re keeping secrets from me, and you better believe I’m going to get you back for this.”
A familiar voice echoes from the clinic’s lobby. “—need to chat with him before his first patient,” Mom says, and I can’t make out Jenna’s reply, but then Mom’s voice sounds closer as she adds, “Thank you!”
“She’s here,” I announce warily.
A squeal of excitement leaps through the phone. “You’re in deep shit, big brother. Now put me on speaker and pretend I’m not here.”
I follow her instructions (mostly because I’m too curious not to at this point) and set the phone on my desk right as Mom appears in the doorway.
“Theodore Alexander Nikolaou,” she says sharply.
Oh shit. My middle name. Must be serious. “If this is about the gutters, I promise I’m going to get to them this weekend.”
She crosses her arms and glares down at me, looking exactly like she did every time she found out I’d gone to detention for fighting. But I haven’t been in a fight in... well, I guess I almost was last night. If Maddox hadn’t been there to calm me down, Ithink I would’ve really enjoyed the crunch of Philip’s nose against my fist.
Instead, I found his phone under our table—where it must’ve fallen out of his pocket when he tumbled to the ground—and being the mature, twenty-nine-year-old that I am, I turned the phone off and hid it behind the dumpster at the bar. A sick sort of pleasure warms my chest at the thought of him searching for it. Fuck him for crashing into Fable and not even bothering to apologize. Icouldn’t stand him in high school and turns out I still can’t.
“You know exactly what this is about.” Mom’s eyes narrow. “When were you going to tell me you’redating Fable?”
My brain stumbles. Iopen my mouth. Then shut it. Then open it again. Surely, I heard her wrong. “What?”
“You and Fable. Together.”
Standing quickly, I pull her farther into the office. “Mom, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cathy sent the photo an hour ago,” she explains as she sits down. Cathy? What does that busybody have to do with this? “Itried to give you time to tell me yourself, but I called your sister, andshehad no clue.”
“Hold on. I’m lost—”
“Then I calledMaryand she didn’t even know!”
I shake my head. “You called Fable’s mom before you called me?”
“Well, of course. We’ve been dreaming of this for years.”
I drag a hand down my face. “There’s apparently been some sort of mix-up.”
“Show him the picture,” Mia calls through the speaker.
