It was brighter. Fuller. Louder. More chaotic. Sometimes frustrating. Sometimes thrilling.
Better.
Life was better with Kevin.
It had taken a long time for me to get here, and right here was where I wanted to stay. Where I wanted to be. I didn’t want or need to look back. All I wanted to focus on was the here and now, and the future.
I wanted to leave things like old photo albums and old journals—old Charlie—behind in the past just as much as I wanted to leave Deirdre Sharpe’s human dolls in the past.
“Although...” Kevin drew the word out as he tapped the front cover of the photo album. “I think there’s a couple of photos in here you might get a kick out of. You didn’t write KEEP OUTor anything on the front of it, and like I said, I’ve already had a quick peek.”
I blanched.
“You were a cute little nerd, by the way,” he said. “I like how you used to tuck your little t-shirts into your jeans. Which it looks like you ironed.”
“Thanks.”
“Adam and Jasper, on the other hand…”
“There are pictures of Adam and Jasper in there?”
He nodded. “And there’s a shoebox full of loads more loose photos.”
I’d known Adam Blake almost my whole life. He’d gone to school with my sister, Amalie. If you wanted to be precise about it, I’d known him since he was five years old. While I’d never paid any attention to Amalie’s gaggle of gremlin friends, as I was a few years older than them, Adam with his attitude and that bright copper-blond hair had always been impossible to miss.
Jasper hadn’t arrived in Chipping Fairford until his parents moved here when he was about thirteen years old, and after a rocky start, he and Adam had been inseparable.
As Amalie’s friends, the pair of them had often been over at our house and the coffee shop, to hang out and be obnoxious.
Adam was now a tall, lean, beautiful architect with a degree from Oxford, a Masters from Cambridge, and a modelling career behind him. The disgusting overachiever.
Jasper was a tall, muscular sweetheart with a thriving business as the most in-demand personal trainer in a hundred-mile radius, who was so happy with Liam Nash that he irradiated people with good cheer, just by standing near them.
But, like me, past-Adam and past-Jasper had been very, very different.
I began to smile.
I’d been a grumpy and earnest loner nerd who ironed his jeans.
The boys had been more…adventurous in their fashion choices.
They were far too young for frosted tips.
But not for emo.
Adam, in particular, had been very fond of eyeliner.
“Show me,” I said, holding out a demanding hand.
“No.”
“What? Kevin?—”
“No.” He pushed the photo album away. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to leave the garage and all your bits and bobs completely to me.”
“If you insist,” I said.Thank you.
“I’m not going to be nosy about it. I’m going to get it all tidy and squared away, and you can go through it in your own time. How’s that sound?”
