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“I love you, Mace, but I think you need to take a step back and think about it—really think about it—before you give up on Liam. I saw the way he looked at you, how he treated you. Like a princess! Trust me, that kind of thing doesn’t come around often. If ever.”
“Thanks for the advice, Ev, but I need to move on. Liam’s not coming back. Madame Scarlet predicted this.”
“You can’t be serious. You know that’s all for show! Please tell me you’re not making a real-life decision based on a festival fortune teller.”
“Hey, you’re the one that dragged me in there! I thought you believed in that stuff.”
“For fun, Macy! Not as any kind of life guidance. Come on!” she said, shaking her head.
I huffed, chewing on a hangnail. “Next time I’m going on the tilt-a-whirl. Because I don’t need any more terrible fortune in my life. And now Idobelieve in Madame Scarlet’s vision. She called it. She was right, Ev. There was an earthquake—Aria—and now things are all shaken up. There’s a chasm between us, just like she said, and now I’m back here—” I motioned out the window, dark green fields whizzing by, “and he’s home in California. We made our choices. Now we have to deal with them.”
“Pshaw. Think about that, Macy. Of course you hit a chasm—every relationship does! It’s the natural progression of things. For all she knew, y’all would be fighting over the wedding guest list or the bridal registry. She doesn’t have any real powers, it was an educated guess.”
“But we made our decisions. She said there’d be no turning back,” I pointed out.
“She also said I’d get a boyfriend, but here I am, still single. She’s not really psychic, Mace. And you’ve yet to make an irreversible decision. So if I were you, I’d think long and hard about cutting Liam out of your life. I think you two are great together and you’d be insane to throw that away. Especially if the baby isn’t even his.”
“There’s a good chance the baby is his, so this entire conversation is futile.”
“I would still consider your options, Mace. So you’d be a stepmom to a kid. Big deal. You’re great with kids. Would life be more complicated? Sure. But probably also a helluva lot more exciting than hanging out here in Peachtree Grove. The most exciting part of our year already happened; now we’re all sitting around counting down the days till football season.”
I rubbed my swollen, puffy eyes, every inch of my body screaming at me from exhaustion. “I can’t leave you, anyway. You need me.”
“Mace. I love you, you know I do. But I’m a grown-ass woman. I can make it on my own, swear.”
Glancing over my shoulder, I stared at her. “Who’d wake you up in the morning? Bring your lunch to school when you forget it? Remind you to schedule your dentist appointment?”
Everly shrugged. “Guess I’d have to grow all the way up. Don’t stay in Peachtree Grove on my account, Mace. I could never live with myself if you threw away a love like that for me.”
My heart squeezed hard in my chest; I knew my sister was right. She didn’t really need me anymore.
Oddly, that thought made me feel even worse.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Okay, I’ll stop bugging you about it. For today.” She shot me a cheeky grin as she took the off-ramp, heading towards Peachtree Grove.
I loved her, but sometimes my sister could be a real pain in the ass.
26
LIAM
The drive home from LAX never felt longer—or lonelier. I kept replaying the awful scene with Aria and her ‘surprise delivery.’ Once that clip ended, the fight with Macy rolled. Then back to Aria, then again to Macy, on fucking repeat.
To get out of my jumbled head, I mashed the call button on the steering wheel, dialing Benji. If any of my friends knew about paternity tests, it’d be him.
“Dude, what’s up? Epic night last night, huh?” Even though it was well into the afternoon, Benji’s voice sounded husky, like he was still half-asleep. Maybe still half-drunk.
“Yeah, it was. Followed by an even more epic morning.”
“That doesn’t sound good at all. What happened? Where’s Macy?”
“I just dropped her at LAX.”
“What? Why didn’t she take the jet? And why aren’t you with her?” I could almost see his wrinkled look of confusion through the phone.
“Buckle up, because you’re about to go on a bumpy ride. And before I tell you any of this, it goes without saying that this stays between me and you. Don’t even tell Gabe. Please.”
