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Aiden gentles, his eyes liquid. “We’re just a little worried about you is all. This isn’t the first time we’ve noticed you don’t eat as much as?—”

“As much as who?” I interrupt. “You don’t know whatmy eating habits are. This is the first time we’ve been together like this.”

“Honestly? You’re right.” Aiden looks around the table to his cousin and his friend. “But you’re here, and since you aren’t leaving, it’s impossible to ignore your habits. I speak for everyone when I say we’re concerned.”

“Especially since you refuse to tell us why you’re here in the first place.” Soren sneers in a way that makes every hair on my body bristle. “We know you’re running from something.”

“You have the look,” Tase agrees.

A chill rattles along my spine. “The look of what?”

“The look of someone with her past nipping at her heels and closing in fast.” Aiden is solemn.

I’m not sure I care for it. Soren scoffs again, his arms crossing over his chest, but he doesn’t disagree.

“My secrets could get you hurt,” I finally say with a heavy sigh. “It’s safer if you don’t know. I’m running, and they’re fast. So stop pushing.”

I can’t tell them everything, yet I can’t keep lying to them. That feels wrong.

“There are three of us to help with whatever it is you’re up against, Gillian,” Tase says softly. “It can’t be something impossible for us to handle.”

Soren leans forward on the table and uses it to push himself up. He’s a bulky brute underneath a thin layer of civility and I wonder, when he’s showing his multi-million dollar high rise apartments, if his clients consider him the same way. A lion in a suit.

“It’s time for you to come clean,” he says.

My nostrils flare. “So you can use it against me? So you can judge me even more harshly than you’re already judging me?”

He winces. “I’m sorry I’ve given you the worst impression of me. We’ve got our shit, but?—”

“You want to make suremyshit doesn’t darken your doorstep,” I interrupt Soren. “I’m obliging you.”

He shakes his head. “I want you to get out. I’ve been clear about it, because you’re a problem in my life.” His voice is actually softer than I’ve heard it before. “You come and make me care about you and it throws things into a spin and I fucking hate it.”

“Stop it. You don’t care about me.” My heart thumps against my ribs.

I see in a flash of insight how it could be if I got close to these men. Any of them. If we started acting like the fucking family his father once claimed we’d be.

I never felt like family had my back. Not really. The ones I counted on were Suz and Lorie because they werethere, they were present for the daily struggles, and wherever the chips fell, I knew they would step up.

Not to mention we had nowhere else to go. No one to lean on outside of each other.

With the marriage, there might have been a few more bodies now related to me legally, but we weren’t the way a normal family would be. My mother and Soren’s father, they’ve always been too wrapped up in each other and content to let their children fend for themselves and make their own way in life.

Soren hasn’t answered me, though. Aiden chuckles and says, “Wrong. We care about you. You’ve given us no choice. You’re too sweet for us to ignore. We want to help you.”

He found his way, but he’s not content to let me find mine. Not when my “baggage” is there on his doorstep, like a child playing a prank and lighting the paper bag on fire.

Having him hate me is safer, though, because I know how that feels. I understand the richness of the emotion. Unexpected at first until you think about it and it just makes sense.

Having him care makes no sense.

“Will you tell us who’s chasing you?” Tase asks gently. “And why?”

They’ve ganged up on me. I’m not having it.

I push away from the table and stand. “I appreciate your concern, boys, but I’m handling it. I just needed time to regroup. I wasn’t sure where else to go, so I came to Jersey hoping no one would track me.”

Aiden nods like he’s satisfied with what little I’ve said. Tase looks let down, like he was expecting more from me. And Soren…well, Soren is just Soren and always will be.