4

“Can I steal him?” Olivia asked, hugging Archie closer and kissing the top of his head.

Ella’s Yorkie may have been the cutest, sweetest dog to ever exist. Like ever.

“No,” Ella replied with a smile. “You may not.”

Olivia sighed and ran her hand over Archie’s side. “Fair enough.”

The two of them were sitting on the sofa in Ella’s living room after a long week of college classes. The plan had been to do some work before they binged Bridgerton. Instead, they’d wound up on the sofa listening to Taylor Swift while Olivia cuddled with Archie.

“I’m going to make us some popcorn, and we can start the first episode,” Ella said, standing from the sofa and giving Archie a pat.

“Do you need help with anything?”

“I’ve got it,” Ella replied with a wave of her hand.

Olivia shifted on the sofa, getting more comfortable and moving Archie to her lap. She stroked his back, and he let out a content sigh, making her smile. She was suddenly even more grateful to Ella for inviting her over. Otherwise, she would have probably been lying on her bed with only her memories of Drew and the ghost of Chris’s harsh words keeping her company. Not to mention the incident in the library a few days earlier that was still hanging over her head.

Like she’d told Chris, she’d found out about Drew’s cheating before the accident, so the woman’s brazen admittance of having slept with him hadn’t been that much of a shock. It was the fact that she’d blamed Drew’s death on Olivia and called her a murderer that had stayed with her since. The accusation wasn’t a new one, but it added another voice to the crowd chanting that she was guilty.

After all, the two girls in the library hadn’t been the only ones to come up to Olivia on campus. One of the women in her calculus class had recognized her name, maybe from gossip or from the news coverage months earlier, and had made a spectacular scene in front of a handful of their classmates after one of their lectures.

Being told she should be in jail was, again, nothing new, but Olivia was used to being told that through a phone screen. Not in person or in front of witnesses. It had been humiliating. Humiliating enough that she hadn’t told anyone about it. Noah might find out about it through his friends or teammates at some point, but she could only hope that he remained blissfully ignorant.

Olivia now dreaded going to that class, and she was sure the tale of her guilt would start to spread until she dreaded attending every one of her lectures.

Sometimes, Olivia wondered if one day she’d arrive on campus to find protestors camped outside her classes, screaming for justice and for her to be sent to jail. Most people at Georgetown were simply trying to get through their classes every day. Still, there was obviously a minority who cared enough about gossip and their own uninformed assumptions that they’d seek her out and let her know their opinions.

Before her thoughts could spiral further down that dark hole, Olivia’s phone buzzed. She pulled it from her back pocket to find a message from Riley.

Hey. Your dad told me you’re spending the night at Ella’s, but do you wanna maybe do something tomorrow?

Olivia read the message twice before locking her phone without replying. She stared at the dark screen, wondering how to respond. For so long, she’d wanted a relationship with her half-sister, but now that Riley finally wanted one as well, Olivia couldn’t help but feel it was too late.

Her feelings about Riley were a tangled mess. Olivia may have been the one who’d been raised by Edith, but their shared mother had always sung Riley’s praises and made everything about the daughter she’d walked away from when Riley was only a baby.

Riley may have felt abandoned by Edith, but Olivia had always felt forgotten by the mother who’d been around for her whole life and overshadowed by the half-sister who’d never shown any interest in being in her life until she’d been forced to move in with them after her dad died.

Maybe Olivia was being too harsh on Riley, but it felt unfair to her that her half-sister was suddenly expecting them to bond after years of silence. Olivia’s reluctance might have had something to do with her jealousy over their mother’s clear favoring of her first daughter, but it was Riley’s cutting all of them, including Olivia, out of her life years earlier that prevented Olivia from getting closer to her half-sibling.

She considered for another minute before unlocking her screen and typing her response.

Can’t. Sorry. Have too much work to do.

She knew Riley would probably read the lie in her words and know Olivia was avoiding her, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel that bad about it. It was nothing that Riley hadn’t done before moving in with them.

“I totally burned the popcorn,” Ella said, walking back into the room and plonking down on the sofa beside Olivia. “But I picked out the really bad pieces and salvaged most of it.”

She placed the bowl of popcorn between them, and Olivia looked down at it. It didn’t look too bad, but it had that slightly charred smell.

She grabbed two pieces and popped them in her mouth. “Still edible.”

Ella chuckled. “I aim to please.”

“How are things with you and Noah, by the way?” Olivia asked. “Is my brother still worshiping the ground you walk on?”

Ella’s smile was the kind worn by smitten people and teenagers with crushes. “Things are great.”

They hadn’t always been, so Olivia was glad to hear it. Noah had been an absolute asshat to Ella for a long time, but the two of them were now as in love as two people could be, and Olivia was happy her brother had found someone like Ella.

“Good,” she said, taking another few pieces of popcorn. “He can be an idiot, but he’s one of the better ones.”

Ella snickered. “I’ll be sure to mention that to him.”

“Make sure to emphasize the idiot part.”

She grinned. “Oh, I will.”

Olivia’s phone buzzed again, and she checked it to find Riley’s reply.

Okay. Maybe next weekend.

Olivia felt a pinch of guilt in her chest, and she groaned.

“What’s wrong?” Ella asked.

“It’s Riley,” Olivia explained. “She wants to hang out.”

Ella’s eyebrows shot up. “And that makes you annoyed because…?”

Olivia sighed. “Because she wanted nothing to do with me until she moved here two years ago, and now she suddenly wants to be best buds.”

She knew that Ella and Riley were good friends, too—better friends than Ella and Olivia probably were. She also knew that Ella would never betray her confidence, so she could be honest about her relationship with her half-sister without Ella running off to tell Riley everything she’d said.

“I get why you’d be reluctant to let her in,” Ella said.

Olivia narrowed her eyes. “But?” she asked because she knew there was a but coming.

Ella bit her bottom lip and rested a hand on Olivia’s knee. “But I know for a fact that Riley really wants to be a better sister to you and that she regrets cutting you out of her life when she cut off contact with Edith.”

Olivia’s anger started to stir, its awakening heating her blood and making her muscles tense. “She didn’t even realize what she’d done was something to regret until I pointed it out to her.”

Ella had been at the family dinner nearly a year earlier when Olivia had finally snapped and told her half-sister how she felt about the years of silence. She’d witnessed how Riley had floundered in the face of Olivia’s accusations, seemingly struck silent by the years-late realization that she’d abandoned her half-sibling the same way Edith had abandoned her.

Ella hummed in agreement. “True, but wasn’t she trying to have a relationship with you as soon as she moved here?”

“Yes,” Olivia admitted grudgingly. She’d been an absolute bitch to Riley when she’d first moved in because she’d held so much resentment for her half-sister, but even with her being a cow, Riley had kept trying.

“So, even if she made some big mistakes, she was trying to be a better sister even before that dinner, right?”

Olivia pressed her lips together. People could be so annoying when they made good points. “I suppose.”

“So, do you think maybe you should give her a chance?” Ella pressed in that gentle, kind way that made Olivia wonder how Noah had managed to convince someone so amazing to be with him.

Olivia wished she was a big enough person to say, Yes, of course, I should give her a chance . Unfortunately for most of the people in her life, she was not that forgiving of a person. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “I’m just still so angry.” And hurt , she added silently.

“I know,” Ella replied with a soft smile.

Olivia looked down at Archie. “Most people in my situation would probably be rushing to make amends after the accident,” she admitted.

She knew how things like that usually went. When someone nearly died, or they lost someone close to them, it was like a switch finally clicking. Forgiveness was suddenly so much easier. Past grievances were suddenly so easy to move past.

That wasn’t the case for her, though. The anger had still been there when she’d woken up in the hospital. It was another thing Chris would probably fault her for. She’d been given an opportunity to do better, to be better, but the accident hadn’t transformed her into some new, forgiving, optimistic, wonderful human being.

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Ella said. “There’s a lot of baggage between you and Riley, and I don’t think it’s going to be a quick process to work through it all.”

“But you think we should work through it?” Olivia asked.

“Absolutely,” Ella said. “I probably sound like a hypocrite since I’ve given up on trying to have a good relationship with my parents, but Riley is trying to be a good sister. She’s putting in the effort that my parents never have, and I think that’s important.”

Olivia let out a weary sigh. “So, you don’t think I should keep avoiding her?”

It was a hard thing to accomplish, given that they went to the same college and often had to eat dinner together on the weekends with their mom, Olivia’s dad, and occasionally Noah. But Olivia had made an art of ignoring Riley whenever she could and making her visits to the main house as minimal and short as possible whenever Riley was around.

Ella shook her head. “No.”

“I’ll take it under advisement.” It was the best Olivia could do.

She just wasn’t ready to put the past behind her yet. She knew people like Chris probably thought she was being a childish brat, but she had a right to her anger and to protect herself from someone who’d hurt her before.

Ella smiled, proving she was far more understanding than most. “You’re a hard nut to crack, but we’ll get you there eventually.”

Olivia rolled her eyes and picked up the TV remote. “I think that’s enough family therapy for today.”

If they got started on her relationship with her mom, which was something Ella asked Olivia about often, they wouldn’t ever get around to watching the show.

“I’ll send you the invoice tomorrow,” Ella joked.

“And here I thought we were friends.” Olivia clicked her tongue and pressed play. Ella had to drop her back off at home early the next morning, but they could get in a few episodes before they needed to get ready for bed.