Cats dart under the pink Victorian loveseat, rocking chair, and up the narrowed staircase of my old townhouse. I’m back home.

I missed the little things: the historic brick walls, all my family photos on the mantel, and how it always smells like coffee and hot tea. I could’ve stayed on the road longer. But I’m not racing to find a way back.

A year ago, the early tour cancellation would’ve just fucking devastated me. I know I hurt people. I’ve seen Twitter. Fans called me an asshole, a heartless human being, a stuck-up celebrity pretending to be humble. That I only wanted the praise. And I don’t really care about you.

I’m done.

I’m done trying to prove anything to anyone. Even you. I am who I fucking am, and the truth will always be that I wish I could’ve done more. But I’m finally satisfied with the fact that I’ve given all that I can. Even if you can’t see it or refuse to believe it.

Now I need to be home.

With all the people who love me unconditionally.

My family and security zip in and out of the townhouse, carrying cardboard boxes, plastic tubs and clothes on hangers. Alpha blocked paparazzi off the street. So it’s been a pretty easy move-in day.

Dear World, don’t jinx me. Sincerely, an unlucky human.

Jesus.

Christ.

I rush down the stairs. “Luna, watch out!”

Dear World, you suck.

Worst regards.

My skateboard rolls out from under the loveseat. Luna cradles four lava lamps and steps on the board. Tripping forward.

I sprint, and the skateboard bangs into the coffee table.

Luna starts tumbling, about to face-plant, and I snag her arm before she goes down. And I hold her upright. She hot-potatoes a lamp, and catches it by the cord.

That was fucking close. I take her lamps.

“Bad start, the usual,” Luna breathes and crouches to pet Lady Macbeth. “I warned you I’d be a shitty roommate, right?”

I untangle the lamps. “And I reminded you that we used to be roommates for thirteen years.”

Farrow isn’t here to voice the technicality, but technically, we’ve never shared a room before. It’s not like we’ll be sharing a room now either. She’s moving into the guest room, her own small space.

Luna rises as the black cat scampers away. “That’s different. We were kids back then.”

I smile. “Yeah, and now you’re a high school graduate with a diploma and everything…” I trail off at her smile that she can’t contain. Luna finished her last homeschool exam yesterday.

Luna shimmies her shoulders. “It’s pretty cool, huh?”

“Really fucking cool.” A few cousins pass us with boxes, and we edge near the fireplace. Staying out of the way.

I stare at my little sister and memories surface of us being just kids. I must’ve been five or six, and I’d constantly ask my mom if I could push Luna’s stroller. Wanting to help out. I buckled her into a car seat and held her hand while we crossed the street. We’d play-fight with plastic lightsabers in Superheroes & Scones and swap comics.

Now she’s eighteen.

I’m no longer holding her hand across the street. But she could’ve gone anywhere after graduating. And I’m highly aware that out of the entire world, she chose to be here with me.

I didn’t even hesitate to say yes. “Don’t worry about any of this stuff.” I gesture to the frilly pillows, the skateboard, the coat rack with Jane’s many bright-colored rain jackets. “This house is yours now, too. I want it to feel like your home.”

She looks at the family photos on the mantel. “It kind of already does.”

I smile, and as security trickles inside, I leave to the guest room and drop off her lava lamps. Kinney and Xander are unpacking her sci-fi books and stacking them on a shelf.

Trip number five, I descend the staircase again. This time, Farrow walks in from the adjoining door to security’s townhouse.

Casually, he kicks back on the door, an open jar of peanut butter under his arm, and he unpeels a banana.

I hone in on his fingers that move precisely, assuredly. That shouldn’t be that goddamn hot.

My blood heats, and his lips quirk—he’s not even looking at me or even in my direction. How the fuck he can see me is superhuman. And strange.

But hot.

I almost groan at myself as I reach the bottom of the stairs. I could detour and go grab another box from the SUV, but my feet are already moving. Towards him.

Big shocker.

I pull out a folded paper from my back pocket.

“What’s that?” Farrow asks, motioning to the paper. Coolly, he squats down to my ankles.

I watch him, my curiosity piquing. “A list.” It’s more than a list, but he is a walking, talking distraction that my brain subconsciously…and consciously loves.

“A list,” Farrow repeats and lifts the leg of my jeans, revealing my bare shin and a sheathed knife.

I cross my arms, our eyes glued together while he unsheathes my knife. Fuck me.

Farrow smiles and rises, one inch taller. “He’s still trying to turn me into a follower.” Before I can respond, he says, “Let me guess what your list doesn’t say. Number one: I’m in love with Farrow Keene. Number two: he’s always right.”

“How’d you know?” I ask sarcastically.

Farrow dips my knife in peanut butter and then slices the banana. He eats the piece directly off the blade and licks the peanut butter off the tip.

Fuck.

Me.

I flex, my muscles blazing.

His smile stretches. “I have a PhD in Maximoff Hale Studies.”

I compose myself and give him a look. “How’d you earn that degree? By following me around?”

“By beating you at everything.”

My brows bunch in agitation.

He notices, and the corners of his lips lift more.

I need to hand him the paper, but I don’t want this to end yet. “There is no such thing. So you actually earned a degree in Liars 101.”

He whistles. “He can’t even put me in a higher level than basic 101.” He eyes the paper and sets the peanut butter jar aside. “Give me.”

I hand him the paper.

He barely skims it and his brows rise. “This is called a wedding itinerary.”

“That’s what I fucking said,” I combat, and I rub my mouth. Christ, I feel my smile. “All the details are there.” The upside to the tour ending early, I can attend my parent’s vow renewal.

He’s fixated on some portion of the itinerary.

“What?” I look at the paper upside-down, and the words Maximoff Hale, no date, no plus one stands out. “My assistant typed that.”

Farrow puts the paper in his back pocket, still at ease. “Not a big deal, Maximoff.” He eats another piece of banana off the blade. “I’m going to the wedding as your bodyguard. It’s what I am.”

I frown, thinking. He’s more than a bodyguard to me, but he knows that. So then why does something feel off?

My eyes descend, and I just now notice Thatcher written in Sharpie on the banana peel. I’m less surprised that Farrow is eating Thatcher’s food than I am by this, “Who writes on fruit?”

“Hall monitors,” Farrow says as he slices the banana. He tosses the peel on my iron café table. “And I have to live with one.”

“Sucks you don’t have a boyfriend to crash with.” I draw towards him, our legs knocking.

Farrow eats the last slice of banana, and his other hand clasps my neck.

I’m the first to grab him by the shirt, then wrap an arm around his shoulder—he spins us in a swift maneuver.

My back thuds into the closed door. God. Breath flames in my lungs.

Farrow sheaths the knife in his black leather belt. “You’re not my boyfriend then?” He eyes my lips in a way that says, I won’t kiss you. I won’t fuck you. Unless you tell me I’m yours and you’re mine.

It electrocutes every fucking part of me. His weight pins me to the door, and my cock begs for more hot friction.

“You must’ve lost your boyfriend,” I say, my voice low.

Bleach-white hair hangs in his lashes. Our mouths edging close, he whispers, “You failed Liars 101, wolf scout. Because he’s right in front of me.”

Kiss me, man. I can’t wait. I clutch the back of his head and kiss him deeply. Hungrily, our mouths crash together. I spin him around, his back to the door. When I think I have the lead, his hand slides down my back, and he grabs my ass.

Fuck. I groan against his lips, and he smiles against mine.

Someone clears their throat. Behind us.

Great.

I pull back, but I play as cool as I fucking can and stand straight. This is my townhouse. I live here. We kissed. He grabbed my ass. On the PDA scale, this is minor level.

Farrow rests his shoulders on the wood. A lot more naturally at ease than me. But that’s normal.

Who saw us?

My dad.

He stands in the doorway, light rain pelting the street behind him. A box labeled Luna from Thebula is in his arms, biceps cut and features sharp-edged. His brows are cinched like he’s slowly processing something. Maybe that Farrow and I are really a couple. Or maybe he’s just stunned to see me with anyone.

He looks good though. Healthy, not edged or antsy.

He opens his mouth to speak, but voices escalate behind him. We all listen, but from where I stand, I can’t see anyone.

“If I go in there it’s going to be real,” my mom says. “Maybe we should all have breakfast first. Anyone hungry? I could eat a waffle. Daisy?”

“Chocolate pancakes,” my aunt says.

“She’s not moving to fucking New York or across the country,” Uncle Ryke retorts. “It’s nothing to fucking agonize over.”

“Easy for you to say,” my mom replies. “Sulli wants to live at home for another year. My daughter is leaving. OhmyGod, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry this fast. I’m already crying. Rose—”

“Chin up, shoulders back,” Aunt Rose snaps icily. “What our gremlins don’t know is that they’re ours forever. No matter what geographical location they run off to and whether they like it or not.”

My dad swings his head back and calls out to my aunt, “Take your talons off my kids, Cruella.”

“Bite me, Loren.”

“Weak,” my dad retorts.

Farrow almost laughs, and I smile. God, I love my family

“They’re all going to leave,” Uncle Connor pipes in. “It’s generally what children do when they get older.”

“And now she’s really crying. Good job, Richard,” Aunt Rose says.

“No, no,” my mom protests. “These are happy tears. Luna is grown up. That’s a good thing.”

My dad glances at me, then Farrow, and I stand more uncomfortably. I can’t tell what my dad is thinking. At all.

When it reaches the point of maximum awkwardness, my dad rotates to the door again. “If you all keep lingering, we’re never going to finish moving her in!”

One-by-one, my mom, two aunts, and two uncles file into the townhouse. Rain jackets on, and some shut their umbrellas.

This is the first time we’ve all really been together since Camp Calloway. In the same room, at least. But we’ve talked. All of us. I’m not going to pretend those conversations never happened just because they didn’t take place altogether.

Anyway, kissing Farrow at the Camp-Away event feels like eons ago.

I feel different since then. Stronger in a different way. Maybe that’s what happens when you meet quicksand and discover how to pull yourself out.

I break the silence before they do. “Can we not make this awkward?” I ask. “You all know Farrow. He’s my boyfriend. That’s not changing.”

“I don’t actually know him as your boyfriend,” Connor says as he hooks his expensive umbrella on the coat rack. His all-knowing eyes meet Farrow’s. “But I’d love to change that.”

“Agreed.” Ryke nods and then turns to my dad. “I’m sensing a fucking invitation here?”

And my dad—he’s smiling. Genuine, and happy. It lifts the last bit of weight off my chest. “I think so, big brother.” He looks to my boyfriend. “How about you start coming to our lunches with Moffy?”

My eyes widen. Seriously. That’s what they want? To grill Farrow over tacos and salsa? “You can say no,” I tell Farrow. “They’re a lot to fucking handle.”

“I can handle anything, wolf scout,” Farrow says easily, and with a smile, he tells my dad, “Sounds like a plan.”

My dad nods and adjusts his grip on the box.

“And,” Connor adds to Farrow, “if we decide we don’t like your company, your invitation is revoked.”

“That’s not happening,” I say firmly.

Farrow hangs his head, his smile out of this fucking world right now, and he tries to downplay it a bit.

A calico cat rubs up on my dad’s ankles. He tells me, “If Farrow is shitty company, it’ll go to a vote.”

I shake my head. “After my week, voting is permanently banned.”

My dad winces. “You know I could—”

“No,” I cut him off. “We talked about this.” None of them are vouching on my behalf like I’m a kid. “It’s my job. I’ll take care of it.”

My dad squints at me. “It’s like you’re an eighty-year-old man in a twenty-two-year-old body.” He looks to my mom who bites her thumbnail, nervous about Luna leaving. “Love, you sure you birthed him?”

“I remember every second of it, Lo.” She pauses. “Okay, not every second. But most of it.”

My mouth curves upward. This right here. Us. It feels like we’re back on some sort of track. Sure, there’ll be blips and drama and some fights, but my family isn’t going anywhere. Any world where they’re missing is too lonely to conceive.

“Mom…” Jane’s voice tugs our attention towards the staircase. She descends in a lilac tulle skirt, leopard-print sweater, and her brunette hair frizzes around her face.

Jane never ended up speaking to her mom. Not that day in Kansas. Not the night she returned home. This is the first real gesture.

We’re all quiet, but Rose hastily unclasps her Chanel purse, her nails painted a matte black. Tabloids call my aunt an “ice queen” but her heart is fucking giant. I saw it as a kid when five-year-old Ben got poison ivy and she told her son she’d bear his pain for him if she could. She whispered in French, made him a hot bath, and sat with him the whole night.

And I definitely see her heart now. As she pulls out a pair of heels.

They look more like pink suede sandals with a chunky glittery heel attached. My aunt mostly wears simple black dresses and classic heels. These are eccentric.

These are Jane.

At the sight of them, Jane stops mid-stair. “What are those?”

Rose delicately holds the heeled sandals. “They’re for you—but I’m not trying to buy your love,” she snaps. “I saw them and they screamed Jane Eleanor Cobalt, my beautiful, brilliant firstborn daughter… If you don’t want them, I’ll return them to the store or I can throw them in a fire. Watch them burn…” She tries to raise her chin, fighting tears. She quickly brushes the corners of her eyes. “Whatever you want.”

Jane smiles with a watery gaze. “I’d love them.” She reaches the bottom of the stairs.

“Really?” Rose asks. “Because if you don’t like the buckle or the sequins, I can have them altered.”

“No,” Jane says, holding the heels with her mom for an extra beat. “They’re perfect.”

I smile with practically everyone else.

My dad pipes in, “Good, she’s been carrying those things around for four months.”

“Lo!” my mom whisper-hisses and slugs his shoulder. “That’s a secret.”

“Oops,” my dad says dryly, but he smiles at Jane who looks overwhelmed

“You did?” Jane almost bursts into tears.

Rose rubs her daughter’s cheek. “I thought one day, you’d want to speak to me again. But I didn’t know when.”

Jane wraps her arms around her mom. Aunt Rose is notorious for hating hugs, but she reciprocates tenfold. I can’t hear them whisper to one another, but I’m sure they’re exchanging I miss yous, I’m sorrys, and I love yous.

I glance at my family. My mom and dad in a loving embrace: his arms around her waist, her body clung to him. And Ryke picks up Daisy and tosses his wife playfully over his shoulder. So she hangs upside-down, her smile as bright as the sun.

Everyone is okay.

For the moment. But it fills me up to the fucking brim.

When Rose and Jane break apart, her blue eyes land on her dad. Silently, Connor goes and hugs his daughter.

Jane caves instantly.

“Mon cœur,” he whispers. My heart. “I emailed you an essay this morning.”

She slightly pulls back. “I didn’t ask for another one.”

“It’s a prelude to the first one,” he says smoothly. “Three-thousand words on why you’re an extraordinary daughter. The best we could ever have.”

She puts her palms to her cheeks, overwhelmed. Tearful. Happy. And she just nods in thanks. Jane looks to me.

I smile more. You did the hardest part, Janie. And everything is better than what it was.

She smiles into a tearful laugh, wiping her cheeks.

My mom detaches from my dad and wanders towards me…no, not me. She faces Farrow. Those two haven’t talked either. Not once.

Farrow straightens up off the door. “Lily—”

“No wait,” my mom says and wipes her sweaty palms on her baggy Avengers Assemble shirt. “So I have something for you too…and just to be clear, I can’t take back anything that I said or did at the Camp-Away. Because Maximoff is my son, and I want to be the kind of mother who’s strong enough to stand up for him and protect him.” She nods resolutely. “I didn’t cower, and I’m proud of that.”

You’ve always been that kind of mom, I want to say, but I inhale a tight breath, having no goddamn clue where this is going. But my dad sends me sharp looks to let them talk.

So I stay quiet.

Farrow nods just as confidently. “I’m glad you did.”

My mom sniffs and reaches for a small hand-wrapped package she set on the coffee table. “So this is a welcome back to Philly…thingy.”

“It’s not a thingy,” Rose snaps.

“Yeah,” Daisy agrees, still upside-down, “you said you wouldn’t call it that.”

“It’s a gift,” my mom says in a strong nod.

My pulse speeds. Is this normal? Mom’s gifting their son’s boyfriend a present. I think I’m overthinking. No, I know I’m over-fucking-thinking.

Farrow smiles, eyeing me a bit, and then he starts to tear at the tape. The package is wrapped in newspaper. Minimal effort—I’m thankful for that. Keeping it casual, Mom.

“You didn’t have to give me anything,” Farrow tells her. “This is enough.” He means being on speaking terms and her acceptance.

“I wanted to,” my mom says and she backs up into my dad’s chest. He holds her and hunches to rest his chin on her bony shoulder.

Farrow slowly unwraps the square-shaped package. Glancing at me, he asks, “You didn’t know about this?”

I shake my head. “No clue.”

He tears off the last piece of paper, and his smile stretches from cheek-to-cheek—and I’m groaning.

“Mom.”

“What?” She balks. “You probably don’t have any photos together of you two in public. I just thought it’d be nice—”

“I love it,” Farrow says.

“You do?” My mouth parts, my pulse still beating in my ears.

Farrow rotates the wooden-framed photograph to me. The picture was taken from a celebrity news site, a little watermark in the corner. In the photo, I stand with crossed arms near the love sign at LOVE Park. Farrow is close as my bodyguard, earpiece wire hanging.

But our eyes are on each other. I’m laughing like he said something funny. His smile is full-on James Franco. If it weren’t for the earpiece and the radio on his belt, he might look like a friend.

Maybe even a boyfriend.

But I hone in on the setting. Philadelphia. I remember that day. I was doing a photo-shoot for The Hollywood Reporter. It was before the tour. We’d just started dating.

My brows furrow. “Mom, this was before you knew we were a couple.”

“Yeah.” She clears her throat. “I had to scour some magazines for that one.”

“She was stalking you,” my dad says.

“Lo!” My mom slugs his arm.

He smiles affectionately. “Alright, love.” He looks to me. “She wasn’t stalking you.”

Farrow only focuses on my mom as he says, “Thank you.”

My mom practically beams. Her eyes dart from him, to me, back to him. Like she’s fully feeling our relationship as reality. Her smile kind of looks giddy. Like she could root for us. Wave flags for us. Create banners and move mountains for us.

That means a fucking ton.

My dad is almost there. Maybe. Progress.

Farrow seems a little off as he wraps the photograph back up, his lips drawn into a thin line. I suddenly realize it was what my dad said.

Stalking.

He’s thinking about the stalker.

My parents have no idea that someone is stalking me. I don’t plan to tell them or worry them. The stalker hasn’t been found yet, but now that we’re back in Philly, the possibility is imminent.