december, age 10
Asher’s house was the ideal location for a New Year’s Eve party with huge rooms in a huge house that sat on a sprawling estate. In the summer, guests spilled out onto the lawns and floated in and out of marquees while at the end of December, they filled various reception rooms as Ishaana brewed mulled wine, popped champagne corks, and cooked up hors d’oeuvres.
The house was busy, her friends and family drifting between the maze of connected rooms on the ground floor. The grand piano at one end of the house seemed to act as a point of congregation, where people gathered as the occasional guest decided to try their hand at tinkling the ivories. Audrie had spent a good twenty minutes impressing everyone with her grade six pieces, just a couple of years away from earning her elusive grade eight certificate, though Dylan had stolen her attention away before long.
Lucas didn’t like the crowd too much. There were too many people he didn’t quite know, the adults laughing and drinking as they summed up the year and made promises they wouldn’t stick to once the clock hit midnight and ticked over into the first minute of the following year. Within an hour of arriving, he and Asher had headed up to the turret though now that the party was in full swing, they weren’t alone.
Tom was curled up in the corner of the room with his nose buried in a book. Isabella, Matilda and Liliana had been with them at one point though the three girls were social butterflies who seemed to survive off attention, throwing on impromptu performances for their parents. Lucas loved his sisters, but he was nothing like them. Both of his parents seemed perfectly capable of producing utterly normal children, just not together, and he had found himself wondering in the past what was wrong: if he’d ever had a sibling, one to whom he was one hundred percent related, would they be like him? But he knew better than to let his mother know that the thought had ever crossed his mind.
An hour ago, Mika had arrived with her sister and her parents. Lucas hadn’t known she was coming but he hadn’t been too put off by her arrival when he had grown quite used to her. She was a gentle, smiling girl who had never questioned him or his quirks. If anything, she had taken them on board: ever since she had joined the school a couple of years ago, she had treated Lucas like everybody else while managed to respect his boundaries and his habits. Perhaps more impressively, she had taken Tom under her wing despite being both younger than him and in the year above.
She sat on a beanbag with a Sudoku book in one hand and a pen in the other, scribbling in numbers with ease. Although being put in the year above her own had been a mistake, she had more than earnt her place in the same class as Lucas and Asher. She was sharp as a whip with a brain for numbers and puzzles. Strategy was her forte: she devoured riddles, whizzing her way through the puzzle page in the newspaper with her father each night, yet her logician’s brain didn’t affect her sympathy. An empathetic girl with possibly the most self-aware mind Maddie had ever seen in a Year Six student, it seemed like she could accomplish anything she put her mind to.
“Can you get any of these?” she asked Tom, looking over at him with no expectation of a verbal answer. She passed him the page she was on, putting the pen down on the floor between them. They both knew that he could do the puzzles too. Lucas knew that Mika didn’t really need his help, but he kept his mouth shut as he sat the table and selected another pencil crayon.
For his tenth birthday, four months ago, Truman had bought him an adult colouring book. The patterns were intricate – he had also bought him a better sharpener for the finest tip – and each page took a little longer, but he loved it. He no longer felt like a child for enjoying the calming sensation of a pencil in his hand, watching the colours appear on the page in a million shades that told a story. When he put down the brightest red, he lifted his eyes from the page to see Tom holding the Sudoku book with the pen clutched in his other hand, filling in one number Mika had missed before another, then another, until the box was full and he handed it back.
“Thank you,” she said with a sunny smile. Her teachers had nicknamed her Sunny. Such monikers were usually reserved for the less distinctive children, the ones who didn’t already stand out with average names and average faces, though Mika didn’t fit that criteria at all. She was the only Mika around, and the only Japanese girl in the school – in any school in Farnleigh, now that her older sister Saori was at university – and yet Sunny had become her second name. Her grin could light up the darkest room, ignite a fire in the coldest heart.
“It’s ok,” Tom said. Mika’s eyebrows shot up to hear his voice, his words directed at her rather than the odd syllable she had heard when he spoke to his mother. She glanced over at Lucas, who looked as surprised as her, and she beamed. But she didn’t push it. She knew better than that.
Asher shifted over to Lucas. He was sitting at a right angle to him at the table, wearing the glasses he detested having to wear, with the shaded lenses that helped his dyslexia to some degree. As much as he ordinarily hated to read, avoiding books when the words never seemed to stay still for long enough for him to figure out what they were saying, his father’s and Lucas’s love of Harry Potter was beginning to rub off on him. “What’s this?” he asked, pointing at a word. Lucas cast his eyes down.
“Apothecary,” he said. Asher pulled a face.
“What’s one of those?”
“It’s…” He trailed off, his mind failing him. “Mika?”
“Yes?” She looked up with bright, interested eyes that seemed to light up even more when she saw that Asher was reading the first Harry Potter novel: she adored the books even more than Lucas did, her bedroom a shrine to the novels her literary mother had brought her up on.
“What’s an apothecary?”
“It’s like an old fashioned pharmacist,” she said. Asher pursed his lips and nodded to himself, returning his eyes to the page, and Mika started a new Sudoku puzzle. Tom was half watching her now: he was holding his book but his eyes weren’t on the page, his attention fixed on Mika and the pen in her hand.
Even when the door creaked open, he didn’t look up. Everyone else did, three pairs of eyes turning to look at Truman when he poked his head around the door and pushed it open a little wider.
“Mind if we join you?” he asked, the question directed at Lucas who nodded. Truman stepped into the room with Liliana’s hand in his. “I think it’s time for a little R and R before bed.”
“What’s that?” Liliana asked.
“Rest and relaxation,” he said. “We need to wind down, tater.”
She wrinkled her nose, looking up at her father with a giggle. “That’s not my name!”
Truman laughed and took a seat at the table, sitting his daughter on his lap. “You’re right. Your real name is Little Miss Potato Head,” he said, tapping her head. The nickname wasn’t borne from any relation to her skull, though, but her obsession with potatoes ever since she had been able to eat solid foods. “It’s nice and quiet up here, isn’t it?”
She nodded and yawned. The party was far from winding down, only getting louder and busier as it got closer to midnight, and Liliana was already shattered at only eight o’clock. It was an hour past her usual bedtime and after a couple of hours of running around with her godsisters, she was waning.
“I wanna colour,” she said, gripping the edge of the table to pull herself closer to Lucas. She watched his page slowly coming to life as he brightened the black and white lines.
“I don’t think there are any more colouring books up here,” Truman said, casting an eye around the room. Liliana pointed at the one Lucas was using but her father shook his head. “That’s Lucas’s book,” he said. “It’s a bit too difficult for you, sweetie.”
Lucas looked up at his stepfather. Then he looked down at his little sister. She stared up at him, her eyes huge behind the glasses she’d had since she had turned two. He held her innocent gaze for a moment, weighing up a hundred different decisions in his heart before he turned his page around to her. He didn’t flip over to a blank picture, nor did he carefully tear one from near the back of the book like he had in the past when his sister had wanted to join in.
“You can do this bit,” he said, handing her a blue pencil and pointing at the expanse of sky in the picture. “Try not to go over the lines, though.”
Liliana nodded. Lucas had drilled that into her every time she coloured, even on her own, though the fact that she was only three-and-a-half couldn’t be ignored.
“Lucas,” Truman said, his voice low. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“She can do it,” Lucas said, his eyes on his sister. He could rationalise the decision in his head, his ordinary logic abandoning him.
“She’s still learning how to hold a pencil,” Truman said, one arm holding his daughter on his lap. He was well familiar with Lucas’s colouring habits, his routines and perfections that he had honed over the years, and he knew that it wouldn’t take much for Liliana to throw all of that under the bus with one strike outside the lines.
“This?” she asked, pointing at the patch of white. Lucas nodded and with his blessing, she grinned and planted one splayed-out hand on the table before she began to colour. Truman’s watchful gaze switched between his daughter and his stepson, whose eyes were fixed on the page as Liliana did her best to copy the way her brother coloured.
Mika turned back to her Sudoku while Tom continued to watch her; Asher returned his attention to his book. Lucas just stared with bated breath as he began to regret the decision to let Liliana loose on his colouring book. Truman was right: she could hardly hold the pencil without her hand slipping.
But before he could stop her, a streak of blue pencil skittered over the line, tarnishing the tiny segments of white that were supposed to be green. Lucas gasped. Liliana dropped the pencil and looked up at him, shock on her face as though she knew she had done something wrong. She was a clever girl even at such a young age: she knew how meticulous Lucas was.
Truman held his breath, waiting for the next move. He predicted some kind of a silent meltdown, the kind he had learnt how to deal with from Lucas, when he teetered on the cusp of despair before descending into a breathy, wide-eyed panic attack. Lucas was certainly wide-eyed, the blue mark seeming to get longer and thicker the more he stared at it. He sucked in a deep breath, swallowing down the bubble of panic that wanted to rise.
“Sorry,” Liliana said. He gritted his jaw then pulled his lips between his teeth and let out the breath he had held for a few seconds.
“It’s ok,” he said at last, the words a struggle to push out. “It’s just a mistake.” Those weren’t words he could accept himself, yet he found them easier to say to his sister. It wasn’t her fault: he had given her the book and put the pencil in her hand.
“Lucas,” Truman murmured, giving him a thumbs up. He couldn’t explain the swell in his chest to see Lucas react like that. “I’m really proud of you.”
“I don’t want to make her like me,” he said. The blunt words were honest. He cherished his little sister and he hated his own perfectionism: though it wasn’t something he quite knew how to put into words, he didn’t want to pass his own hang-ups onto her. It was ok to make mistakes. He couldn’t believe it, but he could make sure she did. Truman watched him for a moment before he gave him a soft smile.
“How’d you get so mature?”
“Mum says I was thirty when I was born,” he said. He looked up at Truman, his gaze as serious as his voice. “That confused me for a long time.”
*
The kitchen was surprisingly quiet, more of a staging area than somewhere to entertain the guests, and Sarah let out a sigh of relief when she slipped into the cool, calm room with her wailing baby. She knew that wail well: Felicity was hungry. The evening was getting on, past ten o’clock already, but the baby had never had any kind of official bedtime when she was tucked in whenever her parents made it to bed.
“Shh, hold on a minute. Nearly there, baby, nearly there,” Sarah said, rubbing her daughter’s back as she found a comfortable chair and pulled it up to the table for somewhere to rest her elbow. Sitting down with a sigh, she juggled her crying baby as she wrestled with her top and eventually freed her breast. She cradled Felicity to her chest and within seconds, the wails ceased. Sarah closed her eyes and filled her lungs, slowly letting out the long sigh.
“There we go,” she murmured, stroking Felicity’s back. At five months old, she was only just beginning to regularly sleep through the night for a good eight hours at a time. “All better, huh?”
“There you are!” Maddie swung into the kitchen. Sarah looked up at her tipsy mother with a smile, holding back her laughter. She had never really seen her mother drunk before, but she was well on the way there with yet another glass in her hand. “I was wondering where you’d got to.”
“I’ve only just sat down, Mum,” Sarah said. “I left five minutes ago – Fliss got hungry.”
Maddie dropped down onto a seat with a sigh and stroked her youngest grandchild’s silky hair. “I miss babies,” she said with a pout. “Even my baby isn’t a baby anymore.”
“That’s life, Mum. We grow up.”
“I know.” Maddie sighed, sipping her champagne. Sarah wondered how many glasses she’d had. “Time flies and all that. I wish it would saunter sometimes. I’m not ready for Tom to grow up.”
Sarah gave her mother a sad smile. Tom had turned ten almost exactly a week ago, his birthday shared with Christmas day, and even she struggled to believe that her quiet little brother had hit double digits.
“I worry about him so much,” Maddie said, honesty slipping past tipsy lips. She tapped the side of her head. “I never had to worry about you girls too much, but I worry so much about Tom. He lives in his head. He doesn’t believe in himself one bit. It kills me, Sar. It really does. I don’t know how to get through to him.”
“Hey, Mum, it’s ok,” Sarah said, her free hand squeezing her mother’s. “He’s going to be absolutely fine, I’m sure. He’s just different, but so is Lucas and I know he’ll be ok. Tom’s going to be fine. He’s a Langley – we’re strong stock. We don’t always go the same way but we get there in the end. He’s just taking the scenic route.”
Maddie smiled, her eyes welling up. “How’d you get to be so smart, baby?”
“Because I have the best parents,” she said, “and so does Tom.”
“You really think he’s going to be fine?”
“Do you really think he won’t?”
Maddie paused, sucking in a deep breath before she said, “No. I don’t think that. I don’t think so, anyway. I think you’re right, my clever little Sarah. You get that all from your dad. He’s so clever. He’s so smart.”
Sarah chuckled. It was interesting to see her mother like this, a side she’d never experienced before. “You’re smart too, Mum.”
“Not like your dad,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re so lucky he’s your dad.” Then she laughed. “Can you believe there was a time I thought I’d marry Peter?”
Sarah pulled her eyebrows together. “What? Adler’s dad?”
“The one and only.” Maddie sipped her wine, a looseness in her wrist.
“What exactly happened with him, Mum? I feel like there’s a whole big story I’m missing out on. I didn’t even know who he was.”
Maddie spluttered a laugh. “Oh, baby. A whole huge story,” she said. “He was very special to me once upon a time. I even thought we might be for forever.” She circled her finger around the rim of her glass. “He was my best friend from the very first day of high school. We did everything together. My dad even thought we’d get together.”
“And you did?”
She rolled her eyes. “We made a pact. Such a stupid idea – never make a sex pact, baby.”
“Well, I’m very happily married,” Sarah said. “The only sex pact I have is … well, that we have sex.”
Her mother laughed, a loopy grin on her lips. “You’re sensible. You’re a good girl; you’d never make the decisions I made. I was so stupid.” She sighed, dropping her hands to the table.
“What was the pact?” Sarah asked. She knew that if she asked any other time, she would be brushed off with a laugh, but her mother seemed to have much less of a filter when she had a few drinks in her system.
“We were sixteen. Sixteen-year-olds are so stupid,” Maddie said, on the cusp of sharing too much with her daughter. She always did share too much when she drank. “We said we’d sleep together if we were virgins when we were twenty-one.” A dramatic finger poked her chest. “Well, I was a virgin. He wasn’t. I didn’t know that – we did it anyway. I fell in love with him too fast and he didn’t fall in love with me. He was in love with your Uncle Ryan.”
Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“They were together,” Maddie said, lacing her fingers before she split her hands, “then they were apart. Then Peter and I were together, then we were apart, because he fucked me over and he fucked Ryan over. And then they were together again, but Peter did a Peter – he fucked Ryan over all over again, my poor, poor Ryan.” Her lips took a nosedive, gravity pulling her features into a frown. “It’s complicated, baby. Your dad hates Peter. He did before we even got together – your dad and me, not Peter and me. I think.”
Sarah adjusted Felicity in her arms, relishing in the warmth of her baby when it was a cold December night outside, not far off turning to January. “Wow,” she said, the only word she could think of. “You’ve got quite a bit of history with him then.”
Maddie snorted. “You can say that again. But we put it all to bed when he broke Ryan’s heart again. I was ready to forgive him – I was with your dad and I was pregnant with you already – but then he had to fuck it all up again. And now he has to hurt my family again.”
“He’s not hurting any of us, Mum,” Sarah said, her voice soft.
“He let his daughter hurt Lucas. He’s weak and he’s spineless and he always was, and he still is, and that turned Adler into a mean little controller.”
“Lucas and Adler are ok now,” she said. “You told me they’re ok.”
Maddie flapped her hand and shook her head. Sarah sat up, immediately on edge.
“Did you lie to me, Mum? Is Adler still bullying Lucas?”
“No, no, no,” Maddie said. “They’re in my class – I would know. I may just be silly old Mum to you but I’m no fool. They’re ok.” She sat straight and took a deep, sobering breath. “Adler’s been better this year.”
“Good. I’m glad,” Sarah said, and she meant it. She was a believer in second chances: she couldn’t bring herself to shun a child for behaviour that could be changed.
“She’s been seeing a counsellor since the whole … debacle.”
“I don’t think you should be telling me this, Mum,” she said, though her mother only flapped her hand again, picking up her glass with a swooping hand to take a sip.
“She’s not as angry, I don’t think. She has coping mechanisms; she doesn’t lash out,” she said, ignoring Sarah. “There’s a little clique of them. There’s Lucas and Asher, and Mika and Adler. And Tom at break time.”
“Adler’s in the clique?” That surprised Sarah. She knew that Lucas wasn’t having the problems he’d kept from her in previous years, but she hadn’t thought he would let Adler into any friendship group of his when for years, that had just been him and Asher.
“That’s Asher’s doing. He’s a believer. So’s Mika. I think Lucas just … he tolerates her.” She finished off her wine and yawned. “I still don’t like her.”
“Adler?”
“Mmhmm.”
“She’s your student, Mum. She’s just a child.”
Maddie wrinkled her nose. “She’s still a loudmouth. She may not be so mean – maybe just because I’m Lucas’s granny – but she’s still a bossy little bitch.”
“Mum!”
Maddie covered her mouth. “I didn’t say that,” she said with a laugh. “That’s the wine talking.”
“You’re just honest when you drink,” Sarah muttered, switching Felicity to her other breast. “You can’t say that about a child. She’s only eleven.”
Maddie sat up and stared at her daughter. “I’ve been teaching Year Six for thirty-three years, Sarah. Trust me. Eleven-year-olds can be the bitchiest of bitches. And if Adler doesn’t sharpen up her act, then she’s going to end up stuck that way.”
*
Audrie sat on the sofa in the playroom, which was more of a games room now that Aaron and Dylan were teenagers, playing with the end of her plait as she and Dylan watched a film together. The party was busy and boring and early on, they had escaped to the other end of the house. They had spent a little while playing Super Mario Brothers games until Audrie had lost a few too many times and with a laugh, she had suggested they put a film on. Now it was coming to an end and so was the day. It would be midnight in fifteen minutes, the start of New Year’s Day.
Dylan sipped a can of cider. They had both had a couple over the evening, their parents unfazed by the insipid fruity alcohol that did little more than carbonate them. Audrie curled her hand around the bottle she’d been drinking from, a mixed fruit cider that didn’t taste alcoholic in the slightest. As dangerous as that could be, it was too fizzy for her to drink it quickly, and her stomach was already fizzing enough as it was.
“What’re your resolutions?” Dylan asked her. That was a loaded question. She didn’t know if he was fishing or if he was genuinely interested, so she assumed the latter.
“To practise piano more,” she said.
“You’re really good,” he said with a smile. “I really like hearing you play.”
Her skin prickled and she cursed the fluttering of butterflies in her stomach. “Thanks. What about you? What do you want to do?”
“I resolve to … be more confident,” he said. “I want to take more opportunities. I want to say yes more.”
Audrie grinned. “I like that one. I want to do that too.”
“Really?”
“Mmhmm. I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to say yes to every opportunity for a whole year.”
Dylan chuckled. “Well, now’s the perfect time to start,” he said, nodding at the clock. Ten minutes to midnight. The year was about to end, a new one on the cusp of beginning.
“Want to practice?” Audrie asked, a sudden rush of confidence flooding her chest. It was now or never.
“Saying yes?” he asked. She nodded. “Ok.”
“Will you kiss me at midnight?” she asked. Her cheeks flushed bright pink, her chest heating up as her blush spread down her neck. Dylan laughed when he realised what she had done.
“Yes,” he said. “But…”
Audrie’s face fell, suddenly terrified that she had embarrassed herself. “What?”
“I’ve never done it before,” Dylan said. She shook her head.
“Me neither.”
“Maybe we should practice that too,” he said. “You know, just in case. I think it’s bad luck to start the year with a bad kiss.”
“That makes sense,” Audrie said, nodding. She twisted on the sofa so she was sitting sideways, directly facing Dylan. The lighting was poor, the room illuminated by the TV and nothing else, but she didn’t mind that. It wasn’t exactly romantic, but it was better than the harsh light of day when there was nowhere to hide.
“Ok,” Dylan said, the two of them psyching themselves up. It was Audrie who made the first move: it almost always was. She leant forward, letting her instincts take over. Her hands started out on his shoulders, moving up his neck until she cupped his jaw as she leant in and pressed her lips to his. Premature fireworks went off outside and she laughed against Dylan’s lips at the irony, until he stole her attention again when he kissed her back with his hand on the back of her neck.
Bishop backed away from the open door when he spotted the two of them locked together, his eyes wide as he reversed back to the party. He had only meant to tell them that the countdown would be on soon, expecting to interrupt a film session, and instead he had walked in on his son’s first kiss. Neither Dylan nor Audrie had noticed him, too preoccupied with each other to hear his shoes on the wooden floor as he made a swift exit.
Ishaana called him over when she spotted him, looping her arm around his waist and kissing his cheek. “Why d’you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” she whispered, away from the ears of her friends and family.
“I…” He faltered and laughed, taking his wallet out of his pocket. He passed a twenty pound note to his wife who frowned at the money.
“What’s this for?” she asked. He cleared his throat and nodded at the door at the far end of the room. As the time ticked closer to midnight, people were beginning to gather in the one room and that included Audrie and Dylan, who tried to slip in unnoticed as though they had been there the whole time. Ishaana’s jaw dropped when she saw their fingers laced together and the blush on Audrie’s cheeks.
“Wait, what?” she asked, whipping round to face Bishop. “They’re together?”
He shrugged and laughed. “I don’t know, but I just walked in on them kissing.”
“Oh my God!” Ishaana cried out, instantly lowering her voice to more of a hiss. “I fucking told you, I’m always right! Oh my God. Did they see you?”
“Oh, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I made a swift exit. He’d never forgive me if I ruined his first kiss.”
“Jesus,” Ishaana muttered. “Look at them, the little cuties.” She nodded at Audrie, who was painfully aware of her heartbeat in her ears and her eyes and every inch of her skin. She had never held a boy’s hand before: she had never really wanted to hold anyone but Dylan’s anyway, and now his fingers were entwined with hers as they inched their way into the room. His palm was warm. So were his lips. He had tasted of apple cider; his tongue had fizzed against hers, though perhaps that was just the nerves.
A few minutes before midnight, Asher and Lucas came downstairs with Tom and Mika. Tom made a beeline for his mother, who wrapped her arms around him as though he was younger than his ten years. Mika’s mother, Pearl, beckoned her over and she waved at the boys with her trademark grin before she joined her family for the last few minutes of the year. Lucas cast his eyes around the room and spotted both sets of his parents. Floyd stood with Cora’s head against his chest, his arms around her as they both watched the television; Sarah stood with her baby in her arms, the little girl somehow sleeping despite the racket, and Truman had his arms around her shoulders.
Everyone had someone, Lucas thought. He didn’t know where to go, not wanting to pledge allegiance to either of his families when he loved them both, so he stayed where he was standing. Asher stood right by his side, the two of them watching the television footage of the bank of the River Thames in London. The crowd there was packed even tighter than the party, thousands of revellers cramming the streets to be right there in the capital city when the clock struck midnight and the fireworks went off.
The countdown began. Lucas tried to zone out the sudden eruption of noise as adults in varying states of tipsiness yelled out with questionable timing. It was too much, the noise and the crowd, and he stumbled out of the room when the countdown got to twenty-one. He pushed his way out into the hallway and he didn’t stop until he got to the kitchen. It was quiet in there, muffling the sound of the party.
“Lucas!” Asher called, following him. “Where’d you go?”
“I don’t like that,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “There are too many people and it’s too hot and loud.”
“Do you want to watch from the door? You don’t have to go back in, but it’s a bit lonely in here. There’s only a few seconds left on the countdown so it won’t last long.” He extended his hand to his best friend. Lucas hesitated before he took Asher’s hand and allowed him to pull him back to the door to the party room. They didn’t step inside; Asher didn’t try to make him. They watched as Big Ben ticked down from nine to eight, the last seconds of the year slipping away.
When midnight struck, a cheer went around the room and the couples kissed. Cora tipped her head back against Floyd’s chest and he bent his neck to kiss her; Truman and Sarah sandwiched their baby between them as their lips met; Bishop held Ishaana close. Audrie had Dylan; Maddie had Nick; even Mika kissed her sister on the cheek. Lucas watched them, taking it all in for a fraction of a second before Asher stood in front of him and blocked his view.
It was a peck on the lips, nothing more. The most innocent kiss. But Lucas felt as though the floor had dropped out from under him, his heart racing a million miles a minute. He couldn’t process what had just happened.
“Everyone’s kissing,” Asher said with a shrug as though it was no big deal, something any pair of best friends would do. “Happy New Year, Lucas.” He pulled him into a tight hug, knowing just how Lucas liked it. A secure hug; one that meant something.
Lucas tripped over his tongue when he tried to speak, his mouth hanging open for a second and then two. When Asher let go, he laughed to see Lucas looking so utterly dumbfounded, though his laughter was cut short when Lucas wrapped his arms around him in an even tighter hug. “Happy New Year.”
+ – + – +
official HOH welcome to the flores children! i hope you liked this chapter – i have a feeling you will have enjoyed it! as always, your feedback so far has overwhelmed me and it is incredible to see the story’s ranking rise!
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