As little as I come back here, and as wrapped up in my own life back in New York I am, there’s something just warm about walking into the house I grew up in. It feels wholesome, and comforting. It smells like Christmas trees of years gone by, family dinners at a full table, and summer vacations all at once, and I can’t help but just feel love the second I walk through the front door.

I guess that’s why they say home is where the heart is.

The same soft white curtains, the same wallpaper, and the same collection of wind-up clocks across the mantel. There are the same photographs on the wall leading into the kitchen - expanded a little with more memories, more friends, and Carter now, of course.

The wall is of course less a few pictures too - there’s one of Carter stuffing Jello in his mouth where I know a horribly awkward picture of Silas and I at prom once hung.

Where that’s gone to I can’t even imagine.

Nor do I need to.

“There she is!” My dad comes bursting out from his study, a big grin on his silver-bearded face, his still-thick hair combed back and to the side like it’s been for as long as I’ve been alive.

“There’s my big shot!”

He’s been calling me that since the first blog took off, and he chuckles deeply, his broad-chested frame booming as he brings me in for a big hug, squeezing me tight. He steps back, beaming like the king of a castle - ever the reverend at a pulpit watching over his flock.

He gives another squeeze before he puts an arm around our mom, and I can’t help but grin at the two of them - exactly the same. Maybe a bit grayer, a bit softer around the edges than they once were. But 40 years, five children, and more memories than I can imagine later, they’re still happy.

Still as in love as the day they got married.

There’s a shriek at the top of the stairs, before Sierra comes tumbling down in her usual whirlwind state. My little sister half jumps into me, shrieking again into my ear as she holds me tight.

“Well don’t knock her over, honey!” Mom chuckles, leaning her head against Dad’s chest.

“What? I see more of her on the stupid internet than I do in real life.”

I pull a face as Sierra sticks her tongue out at me. “I can’t believe you’re actually here.” Her eyes drop to my shoulder bag and her demeanor suddenly shifts. “God, where did you get that bag, I love it.”

“Now where’s that boy of yours?” Mom raises her brows and looks past me, as if Blaine’s hiding on the front porch.

My mom loves Blaine, and I think it’s for two very main reasons. For one, he makes me happy. But for two, he is nothing like the boy who I know broke her heart almost as much as mine. Sunny, cheery, golden-haired Blaine is nothing like the boy who always had a cloud over his right shoulder he could never shake.

Hell, even my dad seems totally enamored with him, which is no easy feat. But I know that part of that is that this man who his daughter is wrapped up in is from the right family, the strong family, without the baggage and the darkness that came with the one long before.

Dad clears his throat as mom bustles back into the kitchen with Stella in tow. “Rowan’s short-staffed right now, so he’s still at work.”

Work being O’Donnell’s, the townie bar up the hill from the piers. Back in high school, we used to steal warm beers off the loading dock out back and drink them on the roof. Now our older brother owns and runs the place.

The preacher’s son, running the town dive bar.

Perfect, really, for the family black sheep.

And I know most people - most people being our dad - think of that night as the kink in the ladder that threw Rowan off his path. But the truth of it is that the oldest Hammond’s been the black sheep since even before the rest of us were born. Given, the hockey scholarship to Boston University may have been a chance of leaving that moniker behind, but that all changed that night.

A lot changed that night.

Of course, Rowan also being Silas’s best friend explains why the little shit seems to have neglected to tell me about who I might run into back here in Shelter Harbor. I may have ended up being just some silly young fling for Silas Hart, but he and Row were like brothers up until the end.

“The end” being the night of rain and sirens and heartbreak.

I clear my head of the memory that I put to bed long before.

Because the boy I fell in love with who was almost a sixth sibling here in the Hammond house - the boy my father taught to shave and drive, the boy who my mom used to teach piano to, the boy who seemed to finally be leaving the criminality and zero direction of his home behind…

Well, that boy turned out to be exactly who he was always meant to be.

A criminal.

A liar.

A thief who stole my heart.

“Ok, dinner’s about ready, gang!” Mom calls from the kitchen. She pokes her head out and frowns. “Oh, shoot, should we wait for Blaine?”

I smile as I scoop Carter up, tickling him until he giggles and squirms in my arms. “I can always heat him up a plate later,” I say, tossing a shrieking Carter up and down.

My dad chuckles and puts an arm around both Sierra and I, kissing us both on the top of the head like he’s always done as we all head through the house to the backyard.

It’s been eight years.

Eight years later, I’m not the same person I was, and I honestly don’t even care if Silas is or not.

Because I’m past it. I’m taking it off the wall like the goofy prom pictures.

And right there as I step out through the kitchen door to picnic table in the backyard surrounded by family, I decide that I will see Silas Hart one more time.

And this time, we’re getting a fucking divorce.