Page 16 of Liam

As soon as we’re done with the dishes, Mia pours herself a glass of wine, and I pour myself a tea—our usual routine—and then we make our way to the front door and sit on the porch swing Leo built for her when he bought them the house.

“So…” she says, tucking her feet beneath her. “What’s going on with you?”

I shrug, sip my tea. “Not much.”

Mia’s quiet a beat, and I stare ahead, knowing damn well she’s watching me… studying and scrutinizing me.Then, with a little more emphasis this time, she repeats, “What’s going on with you?”

Mia and I have gotten closer over the past year. It started when Lincoln wanted to spend time with her dad in New York, and so she’d visit me just to see how I was doing. Prior to Linc’s “business trips”, we’d barely spent time apart. I guess Mia picked up on that—something myactualsiblings didn’t—and so we started talking, and not just about Linc or the business, but abouteverything. There was a lot Mia and I had in common. A lot of traumas to unpack. But while mine came from two people who hardly knew me, hers came from her now family. Fromus.

Her mom used to be our nanny, and so she’d spent a few summers with us. Leo says he loved her on sight, since they were twelve, but he kept that love a secret. I sometimes wonder if Lucas and Logan would’ve treated her as badly as they did had they known, or if they would’ve treated her worse. Never mind. We wereallfucking horrible to her, even when we knew. Even when Benny was in the picture.

I hate myself.

With a heavy sigh, I half turn to her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

I clear my throat, try to balance my thoughts. “How did you forgive them?”

Mia’s eyes widen, just a tad, surprised by my question. “Your brothers?”

“And us, I guess. Me and Linc.”

“Well, you and Linc weren’tsobad.”

Not compared to Lucas and Logan, sure, but still…

“And it was easy,” she adds, shrugging. “I loved Leo more than I hated you idiots.” There’s a humorous lilt in her tone, and I wish I knew how she did it… how she just continues on with her life with that amount of forgiveness in her heart and not want to questioneverything. “Besides,” she continues, “we all make mistakes, and Lucas and Logan were young. It wouldn’t feel right to hold it against them forever. But… you know what really helped?”

“What?”

“Logan actually talking to me, explaining his situation and his emotional state at the time. It took a lot of…”

Mia hates dirty words, and so I bite back a chuckle and finish her sentence for her. “Balls?”

“That…” she sighs out, almost relieved. “It took a lot ofthatto do what he did. To open up to me, and… even if I didn’t forgive him, I have to respect him.”

I mull over her words, let them replay in my mind, cause havoc on my emotions.

“Can I askyousomething?” she asks.

I relay her response. “Anything.”

“Is this about a girl?”

I only have one biological sister, but I’ve gained three more through my older brothers. Laney through Lucas, though she’salways been around. Aubrey, orRedas we all call her, through Logan, and then Mia through Leo. And all four of them are always on my back aboutA Girl. Any girl. “Not in the way you want to believe,” I answer, rolling my eyes. “Butyes.”

Mia nods, understanding. Then she sips on her wine, her eyes never leaving mine. When she lowers the glass, she hits me withthatlook. That all-seeing, all-knowing look I’ve come to recognize. “And who of you needs to do the forgiving?”

Addie

“I’ve literally never seen this before,” Wyatt says, handing me back the photograph that somehow magically appeared in my backpack. “And I swear, I didn’t go back to that trailer after we left.”

I take the picture from him and try to resettle my thoughts. For days, I’ve been attempting to come up with an explanation as to how it could’ve come into my possession, and the only thing I came up with is that Wyatt went back there after dropping me home, found the backpack left there by the cop, turned the place upside down for the baseball, found it, as well as the photo, and then… what? Brought it to the police station and asked a random cop to deliver it to Roman? It didn’t even make sense in my mind, so I don’t know why I even bothered asking.

“Maybe Roman put it in there after he got it.”

That’s also an option I’ve come up with, and a much more likely one at that. But, he said he never opened the bag, and I should probably press him on it, but I don’t know… I don’t want to do anything that might cause a divide between us—or an evenbiggerdivide.

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