Bryce patted my knee. “It makes him feel better.”
Cole paused the game and turned to smile at me. “Alright?”
I grinned back at him. “Aye. How’s the game?”
“Rigged, I swear.”
He said the same thing every time. “It helped though?”
Cole nodded, his ruddy brown hair bobbing with the movement. “Yeah. Brain’s quieter now.”
I squeezed his ankle in understanding. Sometimes the world was too much, and that was okay. We all needed to silence the noise occasionally.
Mac reappeared with two beers in each hand. He waited until we’d each taken a sip before fixing me with a serious look. “Okay, Reid, you’ve got the floor.”
I scratched at the label on the bottle. How the fuck was I meant to explain without going into all the shifter stuff?
“I saw someone today,” I said eventually. “Someone from my past that I wasn’t expecting to see.”
Bryce’s already pale face went lighter. “From your family?”
My friends might not have known anything about the supe world, but they knew the rest. How I’d been treated. That I’d been ostracised for being different. I’d let them believe it was because of my sexuality or ADHD. The reason wasn’t relevant. No child should be made to feel other for something out of their control.
“No. Not my family.”
Cole and Mac exchanged a dark look before the latter spoke. “Someone who hurt you?”
“Yes.” I peeled the label back a bit. “Not physically, and he didn’t mean to. But he did.”
Bryce’s hand came to rest on my knee. “I hate him already.”
That had me glancing up. The fire in his eyes had a smile lifting my lips. “You’d say that even if I was in the wrong.”
“So?” Bryce lifted his chin, for a moment looking likethe entitled earl his father wished he was. “He hurt you, so he can go rot for all I care.”
Mac and Cole murmured in agreement. The weight I’d been carrying since seeing Evan lightened a little more.
This wasn’t like the first time Evan had strolled into my life. I wasn’t alone now. I had friends. People who cared for me. Who’d be in my corner even if I was in the wrong.
His entrance into my world wouldn’t shatter it like last time. It wasn’t going to turn my life on its head. Nothing was going to change.
In a few weeks, Evan would be nothing more than a distant memory. A fly in the ointment of my otherwise happy life. Our paths may cross—with Finn in Chester’s life now, it was inevitable—but it wouldn’t mean anything.
With that in mind, I gave my friends a sanitised version of what happened all those years ago. I made it sound like Evan was a family friend who’d come to stay. Everything else, I kept the same—even our ages. As a shifter, Evan looked a solid decade older than me.
When I was done, the silence had me fidgeting in my seat. Were they judging me for being too harsh on Evan? Did they think I should give him a chance to explain himself?
“Well?” I exploded, unable to take it anymore. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
Bryce stood up abruptly, lifting his chin at Cole. “Budge up.”
When he’d made some space, Bryce sat next to me. Without saying a word, he hauled me into his lap. Not a small feat, considering I was bigger than him.
Wrapping his arms around me, he hugged me fiercely. “I’msorry, Reid.”
I patted his back, slightly bewildered. “About what? Sure, it was hard to see him again, but?—”
My words were cut off as both Cole and Mac added their arms to our embrace. Limbs were everywhere now, like an octopus who’d gotten into a spot of bother.
