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His eyes lit up. “Really?”

“Really. If you want to be good at anything, you have to practice and keep at it.”

Foster hovered near the counter, watching me while he took a sip of his beer. He’d pulled a second one out of the fridge for me.

“You good?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He studied me for a second, then glanced out to the living room. “Is she?”

“She will be. She’s a little tender right now. Her parents were…” Rage filled like a fire in my chest just thinking about the bullshit her mom had said to her.

Foster winced. “That bad?”

“Let’s just put it this way. Your dad, my parents, and Sam’s parents should start a club.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Foster’s dad was a piece of work who’d tried to break up him and Abby when they got together. Foster hadn’t spoken to him since he found out.

I glanced out toward the living room, needing to check on her after everything she’d been through. Sam and Abby were on the couch, Sam’s legs curled underneath her and Abby mirroring her pose. They were staring at each other, but each of them were keeping their voices too low to hear from in here. I hoped Sam was finally opening up to Abby. If anyone deserved the truth from Sam, it was her.

TWENTY-SEVEN

I hadn’t consciously decided about whether or not I would tell Abby all the sordid details of Seattle and the last five years, but the second I saw her and she came running up and hugging me, I couldn’t not tell her. The guilt had been eating away at me that she didn’t know the truth, and now that Harry knew and there had been some form of resolution—even if it meant closure on what I had always known as family—it still felt like Abby deserved the truth. Because really Abby was more family than my parents had been since the accident, and she had trusted me with her grief.

It was time I trusted her with mine.

While the guys went into the kitchen to keep working on dinner, Abby pulled me to the couch. We sat across from each other and she reached out a hand, giving mine a squeeze.

“I don’t know where to start,” I confessed.

“Start at the beginning.”

I grabbed the pillow behind me and hugged it to my chest. It was one we had bought together at a local boutique in Missoula and had cute purple frills along the edges.

“Sam, you know you can trust me, right?”

I hated that she even felt she had to ask the question, but I hated even more the concern in her voice. She didn’t deserve to feel that way. Never once had I doubted that I could trust her. I trusted her with more than she knew.

I just hadn’t trusted her with my full truth. But, to be fair, I hadn’t trusted anyone.

“I told you I had three brothers,” I said. “And I did have three brothers, but I lost my brother Bryce five years ago in a car accident.”

The words tumbled out of my mouth like they had been waiting for ages to come out, and once I got started, the words spilled out like a torrent of water rushing out of me. Occasionally, Abby’s eyes would fill with tears, but she’d quickly brush them away and squeeze my hand, giving me all her strength, even though I felt so undeserving of it. When I got to the part about my parents and the ice rink, any sadness in her eyes had turned to anger, and her scowl mimicked Harry’s so much it almost made me laugh.

“I cannot believe they treated you that way. What the hell?”

I put my hand on top of hers and squeezed it back. “It’s okay⁠—”

“It’s not okay,” she interrupted. “It’s never okay for your family to treat you that way. Sam, you are incredible. You’ve been my best friend since freshman year when we got randomly assigned to be roommates. You pulled me out of my shell. You’ve carried me through all my trauma and grief. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t even know if I would have given Foster a chance.”

I shook my head at that. “You and Foster were inevitable.”

“Still,” she said, “you are far and away the best person I know. I can’t fathom anyone disrespecting you this way and not seeing how special you are.”