She pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head, eyeing me as if to say:We don’t know if it’s someone from our past.
I purse my lips.Or if the Calloways have heat on them.
We nod at the same time, our mutual understanding. Going to a new fence is always a risk. And even if she’s established with Coco—and mildly established with Cruz—it doesn’t really mean shit for me. She could say yes to our faces and then do a backroom deal that sells justmeout.
In this life, everything is a risk. Some are greater than others, and it’s my responsibility to figure out which ones are worth it.
I step in and wrap my good arm around her shoulders. She stiffens, spine going ramrod straight, shoulders squared like armor. Three heartbeats pass between us. Then something gives way—the subtle shift of her weight forward, the pressure of herarms finding their place around my middle, the slight exhale against my collarbone.
There’s nothing like a hug from my sister.
She smells like fruity dry shampoo and hazelnut coffee and the expensive sunscreen she uses religiously. She smells likehome.
“I love you too,” I murmur into her hair.
She scoffs softly, the sound muffled against my neck. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
I pull back just enough to look at her, arching a brow. “That feels subjective. Who’s barometer are we using?”
Her lips twitch, but they stay in a frown Iknowshe’s forcing. “Definitely not a Calloway’s.”
My grin widens as amusement flutters through my veins like a kite on a breeze. “Yours, then.”
“God, no,” she sputters out on a laugh. “Bob’s! Definitely Bob’s.”
“Bob’s?! Shit, Lola, I haven’t thought about that turtle in years.” Something warm blooms in my chest, followed by a familiar hollowness. I can still picture his ancient, wrinkled neck stretching out of that moss-lined tank in Ms. Henley’s classroom. The way his shell gleamed under the heat lamp after we’d helped polish it with mineral oil.
“Remember how he’d just sit there for hours?” I say, my voice softer than I meant it to be. “He was so chill, even for a turtle.”
Lola’s smile falters at the edges. “Mm-hmm. That’s why he should be your new barometer. He never did anything stupid.”
“Right.” The word catches in the back of my throat.
She’s not wrong.Iwas the stupid one that day.
The memory tastes sour now. The weight of Bob’s aquarium in my arms as we brought him home from school that weekend. How excited we were to watch him. The empty tank when we returned twenty minutes later with our groceries for dinner.Mom’s glassy eyes as she murmured with conviction,“He wanted to be free, baby. Turtles belong in water.”
“C’mon, Lola. I’ve got shit to do,” Beckett hollers from the end of the driveway, already halfway inside the driver’s seat of my SUV.
Lola rolls her eyes, flashing our younger brother a glare. “Chill out, Beck. I’m talking to Bells.” The obviously is implied in her tone.
“You’ll see her at home in like two hours,” Beck drawls, impatience smothering every syllable.
She looks toward me and slowly arches both brows. “He rode with Bishop on this job, and all of a sudden, he’s got attitude?” She slides her sunglasses back over her eyes with a smirk and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Bells. I’ll set him straight on the drive home. And I’ll see you later, yeah?”
I smother my laugh and shake my head. “Go easy on him. He’s probably just stressed about everything that happened.”
She walks backward, tilting her head to look at me over the bridge of her sunglasses. “And we’re not? You were literally ejected from a moving vehicle like some kind of fucked-up cartoon, and you’re not the one bitching at me about hurrying.”
My laugh tapers into a grimace, and I nod a few times. “Yeah, well, we all process differently.”
“Exactly.” Her grin blooms wide across her face, but it’s a little to feral around the edges to be purely joyful. “Move over, little brother. I’m driving. And I havesomany errands to run this morning before we get home.”
Beckett groans, tilting his head toward the sky. “What the fuck, Lola,” he grumbles.
Cruz materializes next to me as I watch my siblings bicker. The SUV’s engine growls to life, and Lola’s hand appears through the open window, fingers waggling goodbye before they disappear around the bend.
“I gotta grab something inside, and then we’ll go,” he says, keys spinning around his middle finger is hypnotic circles. Metal catches sunlight with each rotation.
