“Thomas and I both came from large families,” Cynthia says to me, when she catches me looking. “I know it seemed silly, to a lot of people, that we had so many children.” She hands me a cup of tea, her cheeks flushing in the exact same spot Reid’s do.

“I don’t think it’s silly,” I say, even though I definitely want to get ten extra birth-control shots at the very thought of it. “I think it looks like it would’ve been fun.”

“Fun,” Thomas says, deadpan.

Reid swoonshes, hides it by taking a sip of his tea.

“We always planned it,” Cynthia says, sending a warning—but somehow still loving and indulgent—glance Thomas’s way.

“I mean,” Cady says, laughing, “I definitely wasn’t planned.” I smile over at her. “Me neither.”

“You know, what you really want to see is this,” Cady says, leaning forward to pull a photo album from the lower shelf of the coffee table.

“Cady,” Reid says.

“This is payback. Recall your visit home on the weekend of my senior prom.”

Reid’s face goes stern. “He needed a reminder,” is all he says, stern and protective, and I feel an inconvenient pulse of desire.

Involuntarily, my eyes drift to his brow, unstitched now but still bisected by the tiny line of his mostly healed cut. He seems to notice, raising that eyebrow at me in gentle teasing, as though he can read my mind.

I turn my focus to the photo album, my face heating. “Anyway,” Cady says, directing her mom to sit on the other side of me. Within seconds I’ve set my tea down—the truth is, it still has the taste of gardening to me—and I have the photo album in my lap, Cady and Cynthia providing commentary on the assembled pictures. I try to keep my mind only on the details they’re happily sharing with me, but really I’m distracted by the flush of warmth I feel at being included in this specific way, the way that says, Welcome to our family history.

I spell to myself, just in case.

But when Cady turns the page from the set of pictures featuring Reid as a baby, I feel my heart squeeze from the loops of that other, more-than-L-I-K-E I try so hard to ignore.

“Oh,” I say softly, staring down at the photo in front of me.