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Even as I fry with the heat of my embarrassment, I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, Lauren!”

She gasps, hand flying to her chest. “It was! I knew it!”

Her wild cackle is hysterical and giddy, and so loud I have to shush her.

“Holy shit.” She sobers a pinch. “That man looks like he’d be a freak in bed. Ugh, I am so jealous. Does he have a brother?”

I raise an eyebrow. “You know he doesn’t.”

She huffs. “An uncle? Grandfather?”

I roll my eyes, lips twitching. “There’s only one of him.”

And he’s mine.

I don’t say it, but it curls around my heart like a warm blanket. It makes me ache with the need to find him and Van and crawl into their laps and let them hold me.

“Look,” Lauren shifts, all humor gone as she meets my eyes, “I don’t regret what I did. There is literally nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You are my twin flame. I knew it the moment we met, and I decided you were my person.” She lowers her gaze to her lap. “I am really pissed about what you did. My dad is the only person I love as much as I love you and if anyone hurts him, I will go in for murder.”

“I would never—”

“But you will,” she cuts in. “You slept with him and his best friend. What do you think will happen when he finds out? It’ll crush him. It’ll ruin things between him and Lachlan.” She breaks off abruptly with a shake of her head. “He’s still in love with my mom. That will never change. She was his whole world and losing her devastated him. It’s why he never remarried or had a serious relationship. No one will ever compare to her.”

It’s hard to stifle the wrench in my chest. The hard blow to my stomach, like getting kicked by Bron all over again.

Not once has Lachlan or Van told me they loved me in return. Even when I said it, there had been nothing from him. I know they care about me. I know they want me. But maybe Lauren’s right. Maybe that’s all this ever was.

But that’s fine,I quickly tell myself.It’s what I’ve wanted from the start.

A relationship between us would never work anyway.

Still, it hurts.

“Maybe we just need some space,” Lauren continues. “We’re both hurt and if we keep picking at this right now, we’re going to say something we can’t take back.”

I nod slowly. “Yeah,” is the best response I can come up with.

Her blue eyes meet mine. “I love you.”

I sigh. “I love you, too.”

With a single, measured bob of her head, Lauren opens her door and slips out. She doesn’t slam it, doesn’t storm off. She simply walks away, and I’m left staring after her with a throbbing ache in my chest.

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My home belongs to a stranger.

It’s a foreign place that no longer holds the warmth it used to. Everything from the dark windows to the silence thatseems to pulse off its walls, I feel nothing as I shove open my car door and shuffle out.

It’s no longer mine, I realize vaguely, distantly, somewhere at the back of my mind. The second I signed it over to Teddy, it ceased to be home. It’s just a place. A box I used to know. The realization only hurts more as I amble up the stairs and push through the front door.

It clicks shut behind me with the softest sound in the world, and yet, it’s a gunshot reverberating through the hall. The house. It rattles the windows. My bones.

Silence is a suffocating blanket swaddling me. The house is too still, the air, different like everything is holding its breath. It’s so intense, I’m terrified of exhaling. Of moving.

I stand still and broken, and empty.