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“Henry.”

He took off laughing.

“Tell my cousins-slash-whatever-the-hell they are I said hey too!”

“You’re really trying to get put out tonight!”

His laugh carried upstairs.

I shook my head.

Little asshole.

But I was smiling.

I looked around the kitchen after he disappeared.

Four months.

My brother was dead.

My mother was trying to get clean.

My son was upstairs roasting the fuck out of our family tree.

And somehow, Sam and I were trying to build something real out of something that had started for all the wrong reasons.

She hadn’t completely forgiven me.

I knew that.

Maybe part of her never would.

So I wasn’t asking her to forget.

I was just trying to give her enough truth now to make up for how we’d started.

My phone buzzed.

Don’t take all night either.

I grabbed my keys.

For once, I wasn’t going to Sam because I wanted Xay to know I could have what belonged to him.

Xay didn’t own her.

Neither did I.

And there wasn’t a motherfucker left to get revenge on anyway.

I was going because she asked me to come.

And because somewhere inside all the fucked-up shit we’d done to each other⁠—

I’d fallen in love with her for real.

I grabbed my jacket.