Page 45 of On My Side (Quiblings #3)

Ren

Playlist: Everywhere, Everything (with Gracie Abrams) | Noah Kahan

“Unghhhh.”

I’m currently pantsless in my parents’ closet, while there’s apparently a ghost in the room.

“Uh, hello?” I call.

The ghost responds with another groan. I step out of the closet, a pair of sweats in hand and my jeans under my arm, and jump in surprise. “Jesus Christ, Leo.”

“Hnnghhhh,” Leo, who is currently sprawled face down across our parents’ bed, turns his head to the side and smirks. “Would you look at that, you're a boxer briefs guy. What if I told you that’s a family…”

“Stop.”

He turns his head until his face is pressed into the mattress, letting out a long-suffering sigh.

I pull the sweatpants on, and head toward the door to leave.

“ Wait , you’re gonna leave me here in my fragile emotional state?” I turn to see Leo’s flipped to his back, limbs spread out like a starfish.

“Uh…”

“How are you so good with girls?” He whines. “You’re such a nerd.”

I blink at him. “Thanks?”

“Not a compliment,” he specifies.

“Thanks for the clarification,” I sigh, rubbing a hand over my face. My parents raised eight children, but somehow, getting Leo to be a functioning adult is what’s going to get them canonized to sainthood. “What’s going on with you and Stella?”

Leo does the most un-Leo-like thing and is silent for a few seconds. He then lets out another long-suffering sigh and sits up. “I don’t know.”

I’ve never heard him sound so sad and dejected, and it’s disconcerting as fuck. I walk to the bed and sit on the edge, waiting for him to continue. “I don’t know if you heard,” he starts to say, fidgeting with a friendship bracelet on his left wrist, “but her mom has stage four uterine cancer.”

“Fuck,” I breathe.

“Yeah. Um… they thought it was treatable at first, but recently, her insurance said they wouldn’t cover the necessary, aggressive treatment doctors were recommending since it’s stage four and…

it feels like I’m losing her. No, it feels like I’ve already lost her, and I don’t know how to get her back.

She barely talks to me, and I get it. Her mom’s her priority, but I want to be there for her.

I told her I’d take the semester off to support her and she got so angry.

I don’t understand why she got so angry.

” His voice quiets with each word in his last sentence until it’s barely a whisper.

“She’s going through a lot right now,” I said gently, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Try to give her the time and space she needs.”

“I hate that she’s doing it alone,” Leo mumbled, staring intently at his tightly clasped hands in his lap.

“Sometimes people need to do things alone.”

“Quinns don’t,” Leo says, so confidently wrong it makes me laugh.

“Maybe Leo Quinn doesn’t. But the rest of us have had to, at one point or another. There’s no right way. Everyone deals with life differently.”

“What if she breaks up with me?”

Leo and Stella have been together for years. She’s part of our family. It is weird when she’s not with him.

There’s no guarantee a relationship won’t end, and sometimes, it’s best they do. That’s not what he needs to hear right now.

“If she breaks up with you, you’ll be heartbroken.” I say simply. “You’ll grieve and it’ll hurt like hell, and you’ll be okay.”

Leo sniffs and swipes at his nose with the back of his wrist. “You’re supposed to promise she won’t break up with me.”

“I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear, Leo. Not if I don’t know it’s true. That won’t help anything.”

He narrows his eyes. “Who are you and what have you done with my brother?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask with a laugh.

“It means that’s exactly what you do. You’re the optimist, the one who says the cup is half full when the rest of us are convinced it’s half empty.”

I’m taken aback by his words, but I shouldn’t be. He’s right, I have always told people what they want to hear, whether it’s true or not.

“I’m turning over a new leaf,” I say slowly. “I’m trying this thing where I don’t jump through hoops to make everyone happy, and seeing if I’m still worthwhile if I’m not a show pony.”

“Are you kidding me?!” Leo looks absolutely horrified by my words.

“We don’t like you because you tell us what we want to hear.

We love you because you’re one of us. One of the best of us, as much as it pains me to say.

You could provide nothing and guess what?

You’d still be my favorite big brother.”

“I’m your only big brother,” I remind him.

He ignores this. “Why do you love people? Because of what they do for you, or because their presence in your life is a fucking delight?”

“Whose existence is a fucking delight?” I stand and turn to see my dad leaning against the door frame.

“This pretty boy here,” Leo coos, squishing my cheeks between his hands from behind.

“Please don’t call me that,” I beg, words muffled by Leo’s squishing. That just became my new favorite phrase, but only when Audrey uses it.

“Leo, can I talk to your brother alone for a second?” Dad asks, stepping further into the room.

“Oooooh. Pretty boy’s in trouble,” Leo teases, finally freeing my cheeks from his imprisonment.

“I will kick your ass,” I warn.

He scoffs. “No, you won’t.”

“I’ll ask Nic to kick your ass.”

“Okay, well, that’s uncalled for,” Leo stammers, face paling.

“Boys,” Dad says in the warning voice I haven’t heard in a good decade. “Be nice to your brother.”

“Sorry,” Leo and I mumble unenthusiastically.

Once Leo leaves, Dad smirks at me. “He’s a little shit, isn’t he?”

I laugh. “You cannot just be realizing this about him.”

“Eh,” Dad says, stepping around me and sitting on the edge of the bed. He pats the mattress next to him, motioning for me to sit beside him. “I think you’ll realize soon enough you have a blind spot when it comes to your kids.”

I eye him suspiciously as I sit. “What does that mean? You mean like my students?”

“No. I mean you look at that girl the same way I look at you.” My face must adequately communicate my confusion, because Dad continues. “Piper. You look at Piper the same way I look at you and your siblings.”

My throat is thick with emotion and I find myself staring at my hands. “Is that a bad thing?” I wonder.

“No,” Dad says quickly. “I think it’s a really good thing. I’m proud of you, you seem happy, and you deserve that.”

I force myself to meet my dad’s eye. “Did you know about what Mom told her?”

My dad is taken aback, but averts his eyes. My heart sinks.

“It was a mutual decision,” he admits. “A wrong one. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not who you should be apologizing to.”

“No, I owe you an apology, too. I always wanted to be someone I’d be proud to see my sons be like, and I wasn’t. I let you and your siblings down. I will apologize to Audrey, too, because she deserves it. I can tell she’s really important to you.”

“No one’s ever mattered to me as much as she and Piper do,” I admit.

He clasps my shoulder. “I’m glad you have them, and I’m glad they have you. You’re a good man, and even though I made mistakes along the way, I can’t help but be proud of my kids and the people they are.”

As we return downstairs, I see Will arrived during our absence and Millie excitedly fills him in on the drama. Next to her, Poppy is the only person in the room not chattering, staring in silence at her wine glass.

When I sit, I realize the chair to my left is empty, as is my mom’s. My stomach sinks, and I’m back on my feet and heading to the kitchen, where Mom and Audrey are facing each other, because of course Mom had to corner Audrey while I wasn’t here.

Mom notices me first, and instead of looking like she fears me, which she should , she breaks out into a joyful smile.

“Hey,” I say through clenched teeth. I place a protective hand on Audrey’s lower back and she immediately leans into me. “What are you talking about?”

Audrey tilts her head up and presses her lips to my chin. I hate myself, because I’m immediately melting into a pile of Ren goo, absolutely smitten with this sweet woman. “Mom stuff. We’re okay, baby.”

I no longer can try to intimidate my mom, because now my insides are doing a complex cheerleading routine. She called me baby .

God, I can’t even be protective for fifteen seconds before this woman has me giggling and kicking my feet.

“You’re okay?” I repeat, lightheaded from the euphoria that her calling me baby elicited.

“Mmhmm. I wanted to talk to her,” Audrey says, leaning her head against my shoulder.

I meet Mom’s gaze. Her arms are crossed across her chest and she’s smiling smugly.

It’s the same face she made when Josh came over for the first time after he and Nic were official.

When Hunter and Jo came to their first espresso morning as a couple, and Mom happened to wake up and catch us.

When Stella and Leo snuggle on the couch, heads together as they laugh at a video on one of their phones.

She likes this. Likes us .

“I don’t know, Lorenzo,” Mom says teasingly as she walks to the fridge and grabs a single bottle of salad dressing that’s probably been in there for as long as I’ve been alive. “She might be too good for you.”

I meet Audrey’s gaze. Her eyes are watery, but shimmering, a soft smile turning the corners of her lips upward, like she has a secret that only the two of us know.

“Yeah,” I say absentmindedly as I cup her cheek. “She certainly is.”