Page 74 of The Bookbinder's Guide to Love

There was so much he didn’t know about his mother.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I mean, I’m not surprised. You’ve always been a lot like me,” his dad said.

The fuck? He wasn’t anything like his dad. Oz was his dad’s little mini-me in looks and career choice. Wes had always felt like the odd man out.

“Shocked you?”

“Yeah. How do you figure?”

“You keep everything inside, and truthfully, that was probably part of why your mother left.”

“But why did she take us and demand money from you?”

His dad shrugged and took a long sip of his whiskey, and Wes did the same, feeling it burn down the back of his throat. His mom had to really hate all of them. And pure hate wasn’t an emotion he understood. Being pissed at someone and holding a grudge, yeah. But hatred?

“She didn’t say. And frankly, I was pissed off and didn’t care. I wanted to see you boys, and she said the only way I’d be able to was if I had sole custody and paid her one hundred thousand dollars. Your grandpa and I scraped together the money. Making it a formal legal battle would have dragged it out, so I just did what she asked. I knew I wanted you back,” he said.

Wes had a lot of love for his father and this quiet, truncated confession of his. “Why didn’t you act like it?”

His dad shook his head in a slow, almost sad way. “I was still mad at first about the money, and then too much time had passed and I had no idea how to bridge the gap.”

Wes pondered those words after his father went upstairs. He wasn’t going to allow himself to make the same mistakes his father had.

“I’ve missed this,” Sera said as she was lying on her back on top of Hanging Hill under a thick blanket with her friends next to her. The full moon looked huge tonight in the clear sky.

They had all been focusing so much on WiCKed Sisters and their own personal lives they hadn’t taken time for their friendship.

“Me too,” Poppy said.

Liberty was dancing around them and singing the Lizzo song about it being bad bitch o’clock. She only knew those words so kept repeating them. They’d gone through two and a half bottles of white wine and had finally stopped crying and gotten to the numbed-out fun part of their buzz.

Sera turned her head to look at Poppy. “Sorry I bailed the night you needed me.”

It had been on her mind a lot. The other night when Poppy had brought up her ex, Sera had wanted to stay, but her mind had been in a different place.

“It’s cool. We talked later. I’m not one to hold on to things like that,” Poppy said. “I love you, Sera. That’s never going to change.”

“Love you too,” she said.

Poppy rolled over so they were facing each other. “I hope you and Wes had hot sex after you left. One of us should be getting laid regularly.”

“We did,” Sera said, laughing. “Oh, Pop, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Wes is turning out to be great and I’m still holding back.”

“There’s plenty of time. Let things develop naturally between the two of you,” Poppy said. “Because of how you were raised, it seems like you want connections to happen fast—otherwise you might miss them.” Poppy was talking truth right now and Sera realized that she needed to hear it.

“That’s so true.”

“Hey. What are you two talking about?” Liberty dropped down next to Sera and then poured the last of the wine evenly into their three glasses.

“Me and Wes.”

“Toady Sitwell! Actually, I like him. Sometimes I can’t stop being mean. I think that’s why I’m alone,” Liberty said.

“You’re not mean,” Sera reassured her. “You just have high standards.”

“That’s Mom’s fault,” Liberty said, then downed the last of her wine and laced her arm through Sera’s.

Sera did the same to Poppy and the three of them lay there.

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