“Of course. What about?”

She stares down at her plate. “Um. About my…inheritance. I had some questions for you about it.”

“Of course,” he says again, but this time his expression is brighter.

The rest of dinner passes quickly. Afterward, the twins disappear into the game room, while Ella and my dad duck into his study. That leaves me and East to clean up. Normally, we’d be trying to make the task less boring by cracking jokes and talking about bullshit, but East doesn’t say a word as we load the dishwater and shove the leftovers in the fridge.

Fuck. I miss my brother. We’ve hardly spoken since Ella came back. Hell, we were barely speaking before that. I hate it. My life feels unbalanced when East and I are on the outs.

He closes the fridge and stalks toward the doorway, but I stop him before he can leave the kitchen. “East,” I say roughly.

He slowly turns around. “What?”

“We ever gonna be cool again?”

Either I imagine it, or I glimpse a flicker of remorse in his eyes. But it’s gone before I can be sure. “I need a smoke,” he mutters.

My chest sags in defeat as he turns away again. But he doesn’t walk out. He speaks without looking at me. “You coming?”

I hurry after him, hoping my eagerness doesn’t show. But hell, this is the first time he’s wanted to be around me in ages.

We leave the house through the side door and walk out to the carport. “Where we going?” I ask.

“Nowhere.” East flicks the back latch of his pickup, then hops up to sit on the truck bed. He fishes a small tin out of his pocket, flips it open, and pulls out a neatly rolled joint and a lighter.

After a beat, I hop up beside him.

He lights up and takes a long hit, then speaks through the curls of smoke that seep from his lips. “You got Ella her job back.”

“Who told you that?”

“Wade.” He passes me the joint. “I went over to his place after school.”

“Thought he had a threesome lined up.”

“Turned into a foursome.”

I exhale a cloud of smoke. “Yeah? I thought you were only interested in tapping Royal exes these days.”

He simply shrugs. “Nobody ever said I was smart.”

“Nobody ever said you were vindictive, either,” I point out quietly. “I get it. You’re pissed at me, and that’s why you made a move on Abby. But Savannah? You know Gid’s not over her.”

East has the decency to look guilty. “Wasn’t thinking of Gid when I hit on Sav,” he admits. “Wasn’t thinking at all, actually.”

I hand the joint back. “You gonna be honest and tell Gid about it?”

My brother offers a harsh smile. “I’ll be honest with Gid when he decides to be honest with me.”

What the hell does that mean? I don’t touch the comment, though, because I didn’t come out here to fix East’s relationship with Gideon. I came out here to save my relationship with East.

“I was wrong,” I tell him.

He wrinkles his forehead. “Wrong about what?”

“Everything.” I grab the joint and take a deep pull that leaves me light-headed. On the exhalation, I blurt out every bone-headed move I’ve made this year. “I shouldn’t have hooked up with Brooke. Shouldn’t have hid it from you. Shouldn’t have hid it from Ella.” The weed loosens not just the cobwebs in my head, but my tongue. “It’s my fault she ran off. I drove her away.”

“Yeah. You did.”

“I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t answer.

“I know it scared you when she left. It hurt you.” I turn to study his tense profile, and I tense up too as something occurs to me. “Do you love her?” I ask hoarsely.

His head whirls toward me. “No.”

“You sure about that?”

“I don’t. Not the way you do.”

I relax, just slightly. “Still. You care about her.”

Of course he does. We all do, because that girl flew into our house like a whirlwind and made everything come alive again. She brought steel and fire. She made us laugh again. She gave us a purpose—at first, it was us uniting against her. Then it turned into us standing beside her. Protecting her. Loving her.

“She made me happy.”

Helplessly, I nod. “I know.”

“And then she left. She left us and she didn’t look back. Like…”

Like Mom, I finish for him, and a jolt of agony arrows through my chest.

“Whatever,” East mumbles. “It’s no biggie, okay? She’s back now, so it’s all good.”

He’s lying. I can tell he’s still terrified that Ella might pack up and leave again.

It terrifies me, too. Ella’s barely spoken to me since the night we kissed. The night she cried. Cried so hard that it broke my fucking heart. I don’t know how to make it better with her. I don’t know how to make it better for East. Or for Gideon.

But what I do know is that this isn’t just about Ella. Easton’s abandonment issues run deeper than that.

“Mom’s not coming back,” I force myself to say.

“No shit, Reed. She’s goddamn dead.” Easton starts to laugh, but it’s a hard, humorless sound. “I killed her.”

Jesus. “How many joints did you smoke today, little brother? ’Cause you’re talking crazy right now.”

His eyes are grim. “Nah, I’ve never been saner.” Another laugh pops out, but we both know he’s not getting amusement out of any of this. “Mom would still be here if it weren’t for me.”

“That’s not true, East.”

“Yeah, it is.” He takes a quick drag. Blows out another gray cloud. “It was my oxy, man. She took it and OD’d.”

I look over sharply. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“She found my stash. A few days before she died. She was in my room putting away some laundry, and the shit was in my sock drawer and she found it. Confronted me, confiscated it, and threatened to send me to rehab if she ever caught me with ’scrips again. I figured she flushed the pills, but…” He shrugs.

“East…” I trail off. Does he really believe this? Has he believed it for two whole years? I draw a slow breath. “Mom didn’t OD on oxy.”