I laugh at the nickname I was given as a child and my shoulders relax a little. My eyes find Josh leaning against the pool table, his arms folded across his chest. He is going to be the difficult one. He challenges me with a lift of his brow and I shake my head. Josh is the youngest of us, only recently twenty-one and I know he took it the hardest when I left. How can I blame him? He was only twelve and the five of us had been the only family he had ever known.

“Don’t be like that, Bubs.” I say, but I can’t hide the guilt in my voice. I’m the one who pushes them away when it all gets too much, when I can no longer take the pressure of juggling both worlds. Carter hands me a beer and I twist off the cap, flicking it into the pot belly beside me.

“How long are you gonna stick around for this time?” Josh asks, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with his zippo.

I mull over his question, trying to find the right words to answer him. If only my parents didn’t turn their nose at the mention of my brothers. Sometimes I wonder what life for us all would be like if I chose Juvenile Detention over the arranged adoption nine years ago. I was only sixteen and Harley encouraged me to take the adoption, he told me it would help set us all up for our future if one of us had a family with money behind them. In some ways it has, I guess. But in other ways, like right now, I’m left wondering if I messed up.

“I fucking knew it!” Josh kicks a drum of empty beer bottles over as he walks towards the door.

I move to follow him when Zach appears and speaks for the first time since I’ve got here. “I’ll go,” he grunts, his light blue eyes giving me the once over before dismissing me. Other than growing out his hair, which he has tied back in a man-bun, he hasn’t seemed to have changed much.

I rub the creases forming on my brow and sink into the couch beside Carter and his girl. Her hands are playing in his hair and the hoodie she is wearing swims on her, I can only assume it’s one of his. She smiles in my direction. “So, I’m finally in the presence of the mysterious Tanner Hayes.”

I chuckle. “Something like that, don’t believe anything these four tell you, though.”