LOGINAvery's POVDean had gone out that morning, something about needing air, and I had not asked where because I did not particularly want to know. He had been in the house four days by now, quiet mostly, careful in a way that looked deliberate, and this was the first morning he had left at all.So when the car pulled up outside on Sunday, a dark saloon that did not belong on our street, it was just my mom and me in the house.I saw it first from the window. Two men got out, unremarkable in dark jackets, nothing that marked them as anything specific. They could have been anyone. Salesmen. Council workers. Men delivering something to the wrong address. There was nothing about them, at a glance, that suggested anything out of the ordinary.They knocked.My mom answered."Can I help you," she said."We are looking for Dean Porter," the taller one said. His voice was flat, professional, entirely without menace on the surface. "We understand he may be staying at this address."My mom's face d
Avery's POVI made dinner for three, and it was the strangest thing I had done in weeks.Dean came down when I called him, and he stood in the doorway for a moment before he sat, the way a guest sat in someone else's house rather than the way he used to sit here, sprawled and certain of his place at the table, elbows wide, never once asking if the chair he took was the one someone else wanted."Thank you," he said, when I put a plate down in front of him."Do not make it a thing. It is dinner. Nobody is being kind."My mom sat across from him and did not look at him directly for most of the meal. Her eyes stayed on her plate, on the window, on anything that was not his face. I understood that. There were years of things between them that a plate of pasta was not going to smooth over, and I did not expect it to."How is your course going," Dean said, looking at me. It was such an ordinary question, the kind of thing anyone might ask across a dinner table, and it landed strangely in a r
Avery's POVI had finally decided to get over the information and move on with my life as I usually did with every other thing that has happened recently. Little did I know I was in for a treat.He was on the doorstep when I opened the door on Thursday evening, and I almost closed it again before my brain caught up with what I was looking at.Dean. Standing there in a coat that had seen better winters, a bag over one shoulder, thinner than I remembered him being when he still lived under this roof. His hands were shaking slightly, whether from cold or something else I could not tell."Avery," he said. "Please. Just five minutes.""You are not supposed to be here," I said."I know," he said. "I know that. I am asking anyway."I should have shut the door. Every part of the last two months had been building toward the moment where I finally shut the door on this man and meant it, the way I had promised myself I would if he ever showed his face here again. But I stood there instead, my
Avery's POVI did not eat breakfast.I stood in the kitchen for a while, looking at the gap in the fence, and then I put on my jacket and I went over. The street outside was quiet in the way it always was this early, nobody out yet, just the sound of my own footsteps on the pavement.It was early. His car was still in the drive. I did not check for Carter's. I knocked before I could stand there long enough to change my mind.Liam opened the door.He looked at me the way he had been looking at me every time we accidentally crossed parts since our falling out."Are you looking for Jade? She's in her room." he said."I need to talk to you," I said, before he could turn around and walk away.He stepped back to let me in.We went to the kitchen. I did not sit down. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms and waited, like as if he knew exactly what I was going to say."Is your dad home?" I said.Something crossed his face. "He left early. Why?""Because what I am about to tell yo
Avery's POVJade was in our kitchen when I came back in.She did not ask what happened. She looked at my face and she knew that it must not have been good.I took the chair across from her.Neither of us said anything."She told you everything," Jade said. Not as a question."Yes."She looked at the table. I watched her face change from different expressions. She had been living with Carter in that house for almost five months. Carter at her breakfast table. Carter's shoes in the hallway."Are you okay?" she said finally."I do not know yet. I think knowing the truth is better. Even when it is this.""Is it?"I nodded slowly."What are you going to do?""Tell Liam.""When?""Tomorrow. I have been waiting for him to talk to me for weeks now. Maybe I just need to approach him physically first."She looked at me for a second."Do you know what you are going to say?""Not yet. But it has to be all of it. Not a bridged account. Everything.""He is not going to take it easily.""I know.""H
Avery's POVShe stood across from me in the kitchen and did not sit down, and I understood that she needed to be on her feet for this the same way I needed to be standing rather than seated. Some conversations required that. The ability to move if you needed to. The option to turn away."Carter told me before we married that he had done things he was not proud of," she said. "He said there was money he had moved through a company that was not entirely clean, and that he had paid people to keep quiet about it. He was not detailed. I did not push him to be. I told myself that everyone had a past and that what mattered was the man he was now, not the man he had been then."She paused."I believed that because I wanted to," she said. "I want you to know I am not confused about that."I held that. She had known there was something beneath the surface and she had chosen not to dig. I understood that. I had done the same thing with Dean, year after year, telling myself the situation was mana
Avery's POVI did not move for a while.I was standing at the sink with my back against it and my eyes closed and the two tests sitting on the porcelain beside me, and the word negative was doing something to my body that I had not been prepared for. It was not a clean relief. It was not joy. It wa
Avery's POVI got into my car without looking back at the pharmacy door.My hand was not steady on the key at all and I tried several times before I got it turned on. I turned the engine over on the second try and pulled out before I had even checked my mirror. I took the back road out of the carpa
Avery's POVJade was making pasta.Not from a packet, actual pasta, which meant she had either had a good day or was stress-cooking, and based on the focused way she was chopping an onion when I came in I suspected it was the second one. I pulled a stool out from under the breakfast bar and sat dow
Liam's POVI picked her out before she had even reached the side path.The grey beanie. The hood up over it. Hands jammed into the pockets of the hoodie. She was walking the way she walked when she was trying to make herself smaller, head a little down, shoulders pulled in, none of the usual square







