Page 14 of 50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover

“Holy shit.” Lennon whoops and punches the air. “Holy fucking shit.”

I don’t whoop and yell. I mean, I used to pray for this day: Victor Becerra dead, the rival Quintero family having eliminated their enemies. Allegiances would shift. The threat on our lives would end, and I’d finally be able to leave WITSEC. Go home and tell Delilah the truth. Reboot my life and start over. But there’s no running to Delilah.

Delilah Moon is engaged to some dick.

“Dude.” Lennon gives me a light shove. “Why aren’t you celebrating?”

“I think I’m in shock,” I say. It’s all so much. Seeing Delilah recently, learning she’s engaged, the possibility of my family’s lives changing dramatically again. I press my hand to my stomach, worried the developing ache is an indication I have an ulcer. I press harder, try to stop the pain from cracking wider, spreading to my limbs. I close my eyes, force some deeper breaths.

Feeling like I’m tumbling out of control, I glance at Jake, our captain, the leader of our ramshackle troop. “I don’t trust it.”

He grips my shoulders—his standard oldest-brother move, holding us together—and says, “I felt the same, but it’s true. It’s over, E. They’re all gone.”

I crumple. Full sobs. A fierce wave of emotion that almost takes me under. It’s not the confirmation that sets me off or the adrenaline crash of the shock. This, right now, is the first time in ten years anyone’s called me by my real name, E.

Jake hugs me tighter and grips the back of my neck. “Tough decade, huh?”

I laugh, wiping my face. “I don’t remember signing up for any of this.”

He pounds my back and releases me. “Don’t say a word to anyone yet.” His voice hardens into its usual commandeering tone. “There are still details to discuss. I called a family meeting. Figured we’d do it here.”

Thirty minutes later, everyone’s in our beige apartment. Beige isn’t just the color of our walls. Since being forcefully dragged from Windfall, all the Bower-turned-Baker boys live beige lives. None of us have close friends or girlfriends. There are no personal pictures or tasteful accessories in our homes, unless you count our vintage The Invisible Man movie poster on our wall. Lennon gets the credit for that next-level irony.

I fit myself onto our small end table. Jake’s and Callahan’s big bodies overtake the sofa. Lennon’s hipster self is propped on one of the kitchen stools. Desmond, who disappears for stretches of time, is miraculously here. He’s leaning his angry shoulder into the beige wall, his angry man bun sloppily piled on top of his angry head.

None of us speaks. We’re waiting on Mom, who’s taken up her family-meeting spot, standing in front of the TV. Between her auburn hair swept up into a ponytail and the dark circles under her lined eyes, she looks both younger and older than her fifty-nine years. The only person missing from this family gathering is our father. If you’re wondering where that special brand of asshole is, here’s a hint: we don’t fucking care. Once we got settled in Houston and Mom regained her mental fortitude, she gave him the boot. There were no sentimental goodbyes.

“It’s so nice to have you all together,” she starts, her eyes flicking to Desmond.

His jaw pops. “Jesus, why are you looking at me? You called, I showed.”

Our thirty-three-year-old problem child.

As much stress as my oversensitive outbursts (or as I like to call them, inbursts) have caused, no one took our upheaval worse than Desmond.

Before WITSEC, he was Windfall’s golden boy—a former quarterback acing his first year of law school. Since then, he’s given up on law. And on life. And on cutting his hair. The blue-splotched tattoo on his neck in particular pisses me off. The lion’s face resembles a bloated, hairy amoeba, when I could’ve designed him something sharp and dynamic, or he could’ve found a proper tattoo artist who doesn’t work out of a bar bathroom for cheap beer. This is the first time we’ve seen him in three months, hence Mom’s eye flicking. He’s as angry as ever, and I understand why. I may have loved Delilah madly, but he planned to propose to his girlfriend before WITSEC shoved our lives into a trash compactor.

“You’re looking great,” Cal tells him, always the peacekeeper. “Love the new piercing.”

No, he doesn’t. The ring in his eyebrow looks infected.

Desmond grunts.

Lennon gives his full-body hipster smirk: bearded chin tucked, right shoulder cocked, condescending eyebrows raised. “Peeing on needles doesn’t sanitize them.”

Des snarls. “Says the guy who has last week’s dinner living in his beard.”

“Says the guy who thinks vodka is a food group,” Lennon shoots back, still smirking. “But it’s great to see you.”

“Vodka is made from potatoes,” I say. Facts are facts.

“Good point.” Cal practically gives me a thumbs-up.

“Enough with the heckling.” Jake’s strong voice cuts through our ribbing, the conductor of our rickety train. “Listen to Mom.”

“Seriously,” Des says, his lip curled. “I don’t know what kind of emergency meeting this is, but I have somewhere to be.”

I freeze midblink and shoot a look at Mom.