Page 44 of The Bookbinder's Guide to Love

“To be fair, my hair usually just does this and I’m okay with it.”

“You’re so lucky,” she said.

He’d never felt that way. He was so much a product of his mom’s actions that it was hard to see luck anywhere in his past or his present, to be honest. Sera made him almost hopeful he could be lucky someday. He’d seen some changes in his dad in the car, so maybe...

“Your dad apologized for letting you use his company letterhead,” she said. “I can’t believe I never thought to call the law firm.”

“Probably because I followed up the letter with an in-person asshole visit.”

“You were a bit of a dick. Asking me if I was your grandfather’s lover.”

“Well...to be fair,” he started, but how was it fair to assume the only reason Grandpa would have left her anything was in exchange for sex? That was outdated thinking and he’d always considered himself a modern man. “It wasn’t. I was mad and jealous that Grandpa hadn’t left them to me.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t fair at all. And why do you need those books anyway? Hamish gave them to me today,” she said. “They are mostly ones Ford recommended or lent to me. There are a few old journals and some loose parchment paper I could use in my work. But nothing like the books you have in here.”

She was right. She had been from the beginning. But it wasn’t easy to admit, even to himself, that he’d wanted those books because he’d thought of all these volumes in Grandpa’s house as his. He’d been the one to come and live with Grandpa for three years. Wes had earned them.

“Because I’m a greedy bastard,” he said.

“But you’re not. I think there is something else going on with you and Ford. Maybe with your entire family.”

Yeah, something else. That unspoken thing that even today he couldn’t find the courage to bring up. When they’d been six and had been returned to his dad, he and Oz had just been happy to be home. But that happiness had been tarnished by life. Was he really still whining about his childhood? He should suck it up and get over it. But he’d never been able to.

Probably because they never talked about it. And now hecouldn’ttalk about it with Grandpa.

“Definitely something else,” he said when she turned and put her hand on his forearm.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

No. But yes. He did want to have a big conversation with his dad. To ask why he’d worked so hard to get them back from his mom, mortgaging his house and borrowing money from Grandpa to pay her off. Then, when he got his sons back, why he seemed to regret it.

“It’s complicated, and I always feel like a bit of a whiny bitch when I think about it,” Wes admitted.

Something about being in this room with Sera made him want to talk. But at the same time, no one wanted to emotionally vomit up their life. Especially to someone as arresting as Sera.

“Stop it. You’re not a whiny bitch for saying you deserved to be treated better in childhood. I used to always qualify my feelings of loneliness and sadness over not having a family by acknowledging I had a roof over my head and didn’t go hungry and wasn’t molested. But there is more to life than that. And we’re entitled to want it.”

Sera liked this new side of Wes. She suspected he wasn’t going to be open to sharing his emotions for long. Today had been cathartic in a way she hadn’t expected, but also draining. She’d never experienced—or maybe she’d neverletherself truly experience—anything like the grief and love that had flowed through her today.

She felt it for Liberty and Poppy, but the truth was that she never sat in those feelings the way she’d sat in them at the church during the funeral.

And then afterward, walking through Ford’s home, expecting to see him in his chair or in the kitchen and instead finding only an empty spot.

Wes was in a worse way than she was when it came to dealing with his emotions. She could sense it in him. The vibes he was giving off weren’t comfortable. They seemed all wrapped in thorny vines, she thought. Probably because she’d just finished rereading the Grimm’s fairy tales collection Ford had recommended.

Unexpectedly, she felt like crying. Ford wasn’t going to recommend anything else to her again.

“Thanks for that. I think...my family doesn’t talk about our shit,” he said.

“Foster parents want to talk about everything and you get sent to see a counselor who ‘is there for you,’ but not really,” Sera said. “I guess that’s not fair, but I was never directly helped by rehashing my parents’ death or how I felt being moved around from place to place.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t talk about it?”

“Dude, you definitely need to talk to someone,” she said. There wasn’t just one way to solve something; the solution wasn’t always easy. But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t try to talk. “It doesn’t have to be me alone.”

He stretched his arm behind her, his hand still toying with the strand of hair that hadn’t made it into the bun. She was so glad she hadn’t noticed it until now. But it was typical of her to feel put together and like she was nailing her look, and then find out her hair was doing its own thing.

“I want it to be you. You didn’t have to tell me about your childhood, but you did,” he said. “Why?”

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