He ran a finger over the bottle with a shocking, bone-deep yearning. It’d be so easy. So damn easy. For a painfully long moment, he stood there, during which time he’d have paid any amount of money to have his mom or dad appear to tell him that he had this. To tell him they believed in him. To hug him, just one more time.

But because wishes, like lightsabers, butter beer, and Prince Charming, weren’t real, he remained alone. Swallowing hard, he shut the cabinet. But he was shaking when he took out his phone and sent a text to his sponsor.

He got an immediate response: You need me?

Did he? All he wanted was to be of value, but everything he touched turned to shit. And God, he hated a self-pity party. So he forced in a deep breath and shook his head. He was stronger than this. He was. So he texted back: No, I’m okay now, thanks.

He received another text that read: Anytime, you know that . . .

And he did. He was shoving his phone into a pocket when he heard something, a crinkling sound, like maybe there was a rodent riffling around in the pantry. After that last storm, he wouldn’t be surprised if an entire colony had moved in. Moving silently to the pantry door, he accessed the flashlight on his phone and . . . yanked it open.

Not a rodent.

Piper. She was sitting on a five-gallon container of cat food, inhaling a family-sized bag of cheese puffs and—shock—writing in her journal. Not as jumpy as Winnie, not even close, his badass sister merely lifted her gaze, casual as you please, and her brows went up.

“My alone time is for your safety,” she said around a mouthful of cheese puffs.

How well he knew. Growing up, she’d hidden in this very closet whenever she’d needed a moment from him and Winnie, which with hindsight he totally understood. They’d been a couple of wild, feral kids, and she’d been saddled with them. As they’d all gotten older, she’d continued to hide whenever she’d had a problem, especially if she’d gotten broken up with, something that tended to happen once a guy got to know her.

“You get dumped?” he asked.

In a move that proved she wasn’t that different from Winnie at all, she flipped him off and went back to munching and writing.

“So that’s a yes.” He leaned against the doorway.

“I don’t know if you know this,” she said in a frosty tone that he knew meant imminent death—his, “but alone time is when you’re, you know, alone.”

“I thought maybe it was more of a I-don’t-want-to-talk thing,” he said.

“That too. Definitely that.”

He nodded, but didn’t go away. “So who was it? You had some major sparks bouncing between you and what’s-his-name.”

“What’s-his-name who?”