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“Laila. Laila? Are you awake? Laila!” My voice and my accompanying knock on the Kimballs’ front door grew more and more urgent

the longer it went unanswered.

Finally I heard footsteps. I could instantly tell they were not the dainty, delicate steps of Laila but the solid, manly steps

of her husband.

“What time is it?” Cole greeted me as he opened the door. He tried to focus on me, but he couldn’t do much more than squint,

thanks to the beginning-to-rise sun streaming directly into his eyes from the east. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I thought you guys would be up.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Six forty-six. Okay, so maybe I hadn’t so much

thought they would be up as not really slowed down long enough to decide if I cared. “Sorry. I just wanted to talk to Laila.

I can come back later.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Come in.”

I followed after him and shut the door behind me. As soon as I turned back around, I shrieked a little at the furry things

at my ankles attempting to trip me up with their cuteness (to which I was impervious) and their slithering (to which I was

not) like feline skip ball toys.

“Watch out for the cats. Cocaine Bear takes no prisoners.”

I stepped over them and joined him in the kitchen where coffee was already brewing. He didn’t wait for the pot to finish and

instead grabbed a mug and smoothly swapped it in place of the carafe so the dark, rich roast could go directly into his cup.

“Want some?”

“No, thanks. So is Laila up?”

He kept his eyes on his mug and deftly placed the carafe back under the drip. “Um...” He took a steaming-hot gulp and stared

at me. “No. I don’t think so. Oh, hang on. Yes. She went to the Bean early. She was expecting a delivery. I think.” He closed

his eyes briefly and then opened them again as he nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.”

I groaned and turned back toward the door. “Okay. Thanks. Sorry again.”

“Well, hang on.”

I stopped and faced him.

“I’m here. What do you need? Can I help with something?”

What do I need?

I needed to turn back time. Or better yet, jump ahead to some point at which my brain and my heart wouldn’t be twisted and

jumbled like old boxes of Christmas string lights. I needed to sleep. I needed to stop dreaming of Wes every time I did fall asleep, so that I didn’t wake up more twisted and more jumbled and more unable to sleep.

“I think I need to talk to Laila.”

“Okay. If that’s what you need.” He sat down on a stool at the island in the center of the kitchen. “But I have ears too.

Just sayin’.”

I closed one eye and squinted at him through the other. “I fear you may not approve.”

“Ah. Would I be correct in assuming you wish to discuss Senator Hobbes?” He set his mug down and got up and grabbed another,

ignoring my words and pouring me a cup of coffee anyway. He set it down at the spot across from him and then returned to his

seat. “Sit. Drink. Talk.”

I chuckled and took a seat. “Okay.”

We sipped our coffee and looked at each other as if we were both waiting for the other to begin. Which was ridiculous, of

course. He was supposed to be the listener. I was supposed to be the talker. But the fact was I had just barely worked myself

up to the idea of talking to Laila—a person with whom I had once shared everything. Cole and I had been close, of course,

and in so many ways, he had been the only person I allowed myself to feel close to at all after Wes left. But since I’d been

back in Adelaide Springs, everything had been kept at surface level. Truthfully, I was confused even by the desire to talk

to someone.

Wes Hobbes had ruined me yet again.

“Are you sure this won’t be awkward for you?” I asked. Yeah, because I’m so worried about it being awkward for him . “It really can wait until Laila—”

“You do what you want, Addie, but don’t forget, there was a time when I was the world’s foremost expert on Atwater-Hobbes

relations. If one of you had sued the other, both sides would have attempted to retain my services as the expert witness.

If somebody had wanted to do a big news story on the two of you, I would have been the specialist they called in to give my

objective opinion. I don’t think there’s a whole lot you could say that would surprise me.”

“I think I want to be with him again.” I allowed the words to dump out of me before I could stop them and then held my mug

in front of my face and waited.

Cole took a leisurely drink. “As I was saying...”

My eyes flew open wide. “Oh, come on! You can’t tell me you’re not surprised by that.”

“Are you kidding? I saw the two of you at dinner.”

“Well, yeah, but at that point we were just being kind of flirty...”

“And then I saw you a couple days ago, evoking the spirit of The Little Mermaid .”

“ What? ”

“Oh, you know, hiding behind your Prince Eric statue and crying out, ‘Daddy, I love him!’ to King Triton.”

Drops of coffee dribbled out of my mouth as I sputtered laughter. “It was not like that.” I leaned over and tore off a sheet of paper towel from the roll at the end of the island.

“It was a little like that,” he murmured into his cup. “How’s he doing, by the way? King Triton, I mean.”

“He’s good. He slept most of the way home yesterday. I think he was able to get better rest in Jo’s truck than he was at the

hospital, so I know he’s glad to be home.”

“Good. I’m working on some new heart-healthy recipes I think he’ll like, so tell him to come to Milo’s when he’s up to it.”

I smiled up at him. “That’s really sweet. I will. Thanks.” I tilted my head to survey the countertop at an angle to make sure

I hadn’t missed any wet spots. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Where did the name Milo’s Steakhouse come from?”

“You know... Milo Ventimiglia.”

“Oh, obviously. ”

He laughed. “No, seriously. Because that week we were in New York with Brynn and Seb, Lai skipped out on her date with Milo

Ventimiglia.”

“ What? You’re serious?”

“Have we not told you about that?” He took another sip of coffee. “We really haven’t spent much time together since you got

back if we haven’t even told you that one. It’s one of our better stories.”

I sighed. “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. You guys have made a lot of effort to welcome me back. Brynn too. I mean, I don’t even

feel like I’ve gotten to know Sebastian very well at all. I really am sorry. I’m going to try to be a better friend.”

“I think more than anything, we’ve just felt like we haven’t known how to be good friends to you.” He stepped back over to

the coffeepot and refilled his cup, then leaned his hip against the counter. “It’s a weird thing, being as close as we all

were for the first portion of our lives and then going in such different directions. We’re family, you know? And we always

will be. But you don’t always stay tight with every member of your family.”

I’d wanted to talk to Laila—a little bit because I just wanted to talk, like I would have talked to her about Wes in the old days, but mostly because something had changed in me over the course of the past few days.

I didn’t want to isolate anymore. I didn’t want to do life alone.

I’d enjoyed laughing again, and it had felt so good to cry, and I’d finally realized how exhausting it was to put in all that effort just to avoid feeling something.

“I’ve been sober one year today.”

His eyes softened, and the corner of his mouth rose in a smile. “Congratulations, Add. That’s huge.”

“Thanks.” I dabbed at the bridge of my nose where a tear had begun its ticklish descent. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you

don’t seem all that surprised.”

“I didn’t know. But at one point I suspected something—only because I think Brynn and Seb suspected something.” I quirked

my eyebrow, and he continued as he returned to his stool. “Do you remember that one time we all got together for dinner a

month or two after you got back to town?”

“Yeah.”

“And we were drinking that bottle of wine—well, the four of us were—and obviously you didn’t have any. And Laila was telling

Sebastian that we’d all been such good kids growing up that we didn’t drink in high school or anything. And it was the first

time we’d all had anything to drink together.”

“Yeah,” I repeated.

“And then you went to the bathroom.”

“That wasn’t anything. I think I just had to go to the bathroom.”

“No, I know. But while you were gone Laila asked me if we had any beer or something to offer you because maybe you didn’t

like wine, and I said maybe there was a reason you didn’t want to drink.” Laughter bubbled up in him and escaped. “Sorry.

That isn’t funny, of course. It’s just that, like, at the exact same time, Sebastian said he thought you had an early-morning

conference call, and Brynn said you were harvesting your eggs.”

“ What? ” I set my coffee cup down with a thud, sending the brown liquid sloshing over and causing Cole to laugh even harder. He got

the paper towels this time and began cleaning up my mess for me. “Harvesting my eggs?”

“Yes. And it was so beyond obvious that they were trying to act normal after that. Brynn changed the subject, and Sebastian

just went silent, and then you came back and none of us ever mentioned it again. I kept waiting for Lai to bring it up with

me at some point along the line, but she never did. So I figured she forgot.”

He threw the wet paper towel into the garbage can and smiled at me. “Of course I’m realizing now that probably all four of

us individually suspected something, and we love you far too much to gossip about it. And I’d be willing to bet money you

haven’t seen a single one of us drink a drop of alcohol around you since then.”

I jumped up from the stool and hurried around to the other side of the island and hugged him. He held on to me, and I could

feel him smiling against my head as he said, “We really do love you. And we love Wes. Nothing can change that.”

“Can you believe he might be president?”

He pulled back a few inches to look at me. “I know he’s all mature now and everything, but this is still the dude who used