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come back to this place, and it felt like more of a nightmare than the dream his parents thought it would be for him.

"Isn't this nice?" his mother asked, dumping a armful of cardboard boxes in the hallway and smiling around the bare white walls that had once been filled with family photos. "I was worried we wouldn't be able to get the same house back, but luckily, it happened to be on the market just as we were looking!"

Oliver made a noncommittal sound of agreement and let his parents discuss the supposed luck behind getting his childhood home back. It felt a lot more like unfortunate coincidence to Oliver, that he was moving back into the house only down the street from one of his ex-bestfriends Adam Montgomery, and he didn't believe in coincidences. He didn't want to think about what that said about this move. He paused in the doorway of the house, down the wide hallway that branched out into countless rooms and the wide spiral staircase leading up to his old bedroom. It was a big house, but it never felt too big to Oliver. It had always felt like home but not now, not knowing what it meant.

He glanced back outside, to the street lined with tall trees and even taller buildings, and marvelled at how little things had changed. He knew it had only been gone for five years but it felt like so many more when Oliver had changed so much in that time. Or maybe not. Maybe he was just trying to find excuses for why he shouldn't be here, when life here would have moved on without him and wanted nothing to do with him. He knew the people certainly wanted nothing to do with him and he didn't blame them.

"Oli!" He looked down at the impatient tugging on his sleeve to see his Lexie hanging off his arm. "Show me your room! I wanna see your room!"

Oliver rolled his eyes. "You don't want to see your own room first?"

"I want to see your room," she said bossily. "Take me to your room, Oli!"

Oliver sighed and knew he wouldn't get any peace until he complied to the little princess's demands. He loved his little sister, he really did, but he missed her younger years when she did little more than toddle about on fat legs and sleep. Now she was six and she'd turned into quite the bossy little brat, ordering him around and using a nickname she knew he hated. If she was like this now, he was not looking forward to her moody teenage years.

He let her grab his hand and led her upstairs, across the landing to the room he'd been given when he was four years old. It had nothing on the master bedroom his parents had gotten, on the top floor to themselves, but it had a window seat and an ensuite so he'd take what he could get. There was even a narrow balcony, although it didn't look over anything particularly exciting — just the front of the house and the front garden. That didn't stop Lexie from tugging aggressively on the doors to the balcony, right after she'd stomped all over the plush velvet covering of the window seat with her dirty little shoes.

"Open," she demanded, with an impatient look towards Oliver. "Why won't it open, Oli?"

"Because it's locked."

"Then unlock it!"

"No," Oliver said, turning her around by the shoulders and practically pushing her out of his room before she could start destroying things. "I'm not unlocking it because you'll end up falling off the balcony somehow, and then it'll be my fault."

"But — "

"Look," Oliver said randomly, pointing at her room opposite his. "Don't you want to go see your room?"

Her green eyes lit up and she skipped off towards the room without another word, exclaiming happily at the pink walls and fluffy carpet the last owners of this house hadn't changed. Lexie might be annoying sometimes, but it too easy to distract her with something else and he knew her weakness when he needed her to leave him alone: ice cream. She'd do anything he said if he bribed her with ice cream. He shook his head with a smile and headed downstairs to help his parents begging unpacking all boxes that they'd just finished piling up in the house.

"You don't have to stick around here, Oliver," his mother said, after an hour or so of unpacking appliances in the kitchen. He was sorting through the cutlery, separating the fancy type for dinner guests from the basic type, and looked up questioningly at that. "It's been, what, four years since we left? Go and see your friends!"

"Five," Oliver corrected quietly.

He didn't bother adding that he didn't think he had any friends here anymore and even if he wanted to reach out to them, he'd deleted all their numbers the day after he left town.

"It's okay. I'll see them at school," he said instead, even when the words left a bitter taste in his mouth. Even if he went out of his way to avoid them, him in particular, it was inevitable they'd notice when he turned up at Woodway on the first day of term in a uniform he hadn't worn in years. "I don't mind helping."

"You've helped plenty. Go on," she insisted, taking the remaining cutlery from his hands and shooing him out of the door. "Feel free to stay out for dinner, if you want. Does Adam still live down the road?"

"Dunno," Oliver muttered, reluctant to talk about this topic.

She looked surprised. "You haven't talked to him?"

"Not really," he admitted.

"What about Reed? You two were always so close," she mused, seemingly unaware of how her words were like a punch to the gut for Oliver. "I can't imagine you haven't spoken at all. Surely you told him you were coming back."

Oliver had never told his parents that he'd fallen out of touch with his friends because then he'd have to explain why, and that was a conversation he wasn't ready to have yet, certainly not with them. He'd finally managed to convince himself he didn't care about what had happened that night, that Reed was irrelevant and everything about this place was too, when his parents decided to uproot his life again to bring him back. He couldn't even complain about it, because they thought they were doing him a favour, letting him complete his final year of high school with Reed and Adam.

"Yeah, well," Oliver said vaguely. "It was busy, moving and all. There wasn't much time to talk."

He finally took up his mother's offer to leave the house, only so he didn't have to deal with anymore interrogations, and decided to bring Lexie along with him as an excuse for why he wasn't meeting anyone. He told his parents she was the one who wanted to go out with him, when in reality, she'd been happily playing with her dolls in her new room when he bribed her out with the promise of ice cream. There were always benefits to having Lexie around. The only problem was, he had to entertain her now.

"Oli," she whined, clinging to his hand as she hopped and bounced alongside him. She was so restless he was half-tempted to pick her up just to keep her still, even though she should have been too old for that. She was light and tiny for her age so it would have been easy. "You said we were getting ice cream. Where's the ice cream? I want chocolate ice cream, lots of sprinkles with three scoops — "

"There's no way I'm letting you have three scoops," Oliver said flatly.

"What?" She looked at him accusingly. "Why?"

"Because you're hyper enough as it is without all that extra sugar," he said, looking both ways before crossing the road and holding on to Lexie so she couldn't suddenly decide to run off. He wasn't sure where exactly he was going but he was more interested in familiarising himself with his surroundings and seeing if he remembered this place. "Look, if you want ice cream with sprinkles, you have to walk normally. Like I am."

Like an obedient puppet, she planted her feet and stopped making it difficult for Oliver to keep her off the road. When she wasn't being a problem child and kept her mouth shut, he had to admit she was actually very cute. Her long blonde ringlets were clipped back with little rainbow bows to keep them out of her small face, huge green eyes taking in the cafes and shops they walked past with fascination. They'd managed to get her to eat properly recently, so even though she was still too small for her age, the doctors had deemed she wasn't dangerously skinny anymore.

"Where are we going, Oli?" she chirped.

He considered that question. He knew where he wanted to go — he hadn't been to Conway Leisure Centre in so long, but it was a place filled with some of his favourite childhood memories. It was where he'd learnt to swim, splashing in the blue water and the comforting scent of chlorine, and swum in so many competitions. It was also where he'd met Reed. The thought made his chest tighten and he decided he was staying well away from Conway. If there was one place he'd accidentally run into Reed, it would be there. That was not an encounter he wanted to deal with right now.

"To get ice cream," he answered. "That's what you want, right?"

"Yes! Chocolate, with sprinkles, and marshmallows, and..."

Oliver wasn't listening to her ice cream rambling when he spotted Juniper's, with huge green letters above the door declaring the name of the cafe and the array of pastries and cakes displayed in the window. It was exactly the same as he remembered and it was also a place he has to steer clear of. He didn't know if it was still, but it has been a popular hangout for students from the nearby schools Lexus and Woodway when he had lived here, meaning the place was always full of teenagers.

He'd know — this used to be his favourite place to go to after school, to do homework or grab some food or just to hang out with friends. He couldn't count how many times he'd made bets with Reed, over the dumbest things, and the loser had to buy the other a hot chocolate from Juniper's. Adam never partook in their bets because he liked to act as if he was too superior for childish trivialities such as betting. Oliver shook himself out of the memories of a simpler time and looked away from Juniper's. Even thought it was still summer, the chances were too high he could see a familiar face if he went in there.

Except Lexie had spotted the huge muffins Juniper's was famous for making among the other cakes and ground to halt right in front of the glass window. "I want one of those," she declared, ignoring Oliver when he tugged insistently on her hand. "Oli! I want one!"

"Shhh," he hissed, when people began glancing their way at her loud and strident voice. "Lexie, I thought you want ice cream? That place doesn't do ice cream."

"No!" She stomped her foot and Oliver sensed a tantrum coming. "I want that fluffy cupcake, the big chocolate one! Please, Oli? Please can I have that?"

"No," he replied, groaning when her eyes filled with tears. He could have sworn she could do that little trick of tears on command when things weren't going her way. "Come on, Lex. You want ice cream and that isn't even a cupcake — it's a muffin."

"But I want that!"

She burst into loud wailing sobs and people were openly staring at them now. Oliver tried to quiet her but now that she'd started, there was no stopping her — the tears were rolling freely down her cheeks and he knew from experience that she was on the verge of screaming. That's when the onlookers started approaching him, asking if she was okay. One person had even been rude enough to assume he was kidnapping her, entirely unconvinced that Oliver was her brother considering they looked nothing alike. They'd only left him alone when Lexie stopped her little game and confirmed he wasn't, in fact, a kidnapper.

He had to end this before it got to that point again.

"Fine," he snapped, and almost instantly, her wailing quieted to sniffles as she stared at him with large watery eyes. "You want the goddamn muffin? Fine, you win. You can have the muffin."

"Thank you," she said brightly, tears forgotten as she beamed up at him. "Can we have ice cream after?"

"Don't push it," he warned.

He had little choice but to follow her into the cafe as she pushed the door open and skipped in. He was regretting the decision to ever bring her with him — he should have just left her at home with her dolls for some peace and quiet. Inside, it smelled like coffee and nostalgia, bringing back memories he'd locked away. He grabbed the chocolate muffin from the case before Lexie knocked something over trying to grab it and headed to the counter. Buy the muffin and get out. He didn't even risk letting his eyes linger on the people filling the tables, scared he might see someone he didn't want to.

"Would you like a drink with the muffin?" the girl at the cashier asked.

"No thanks," he replied. "Just the muffin."

She tapped it in into the cashier. "That'll be two pounds fifty, please."

She looked up to take the money from him and Oliver didn't miss the way her eyes widened slightly when they met his gaze. It wasn't the first time someone had been surprised by his strange eyes and it wouldn't be the last — he was used to the stares he drew because his left eye was a light brown and his right eye a startling shade of silvery grey. He'd gotten used to the fractured split in colour, considering he saw them every time he looked in the mirror, but he knew they could be a little disorientating on first glance.

"Here," Oliver prompted, dropping the coins in her palm when she still hadn't taken them. "Two pounds fifty."

"Oh, right!" She flushed at having been caught out and hurriedly dropped the money into the cashier. "Sorry, sorry...I didn't mean to seem like I was staring or anything, that's so rude, I just haven't seen...I mean, I've never seen anyone with — "

"It's fine," Oliver said, amused. "I don't mind."

If she thought that a curious look was rude, she hadn't heard half the things people had asked him about his eyes before. Did it hurt? Was his vision affected? Are you a monster? He'd heard variations of the last one pertaining to him being everything from a werewolf to a demon from almost every child he came across, and when he'd been a kid himself, it had been virtually impossible to avoid the prying and sometimes mean questions. Funnily enough, the only child who had never asked him about it was Lexie — maybe because she'd grown up around him, she's never considered it unusual.

The cashier still look embarrassed. "Sorry about — "

"Hi," Lexie interrupted, standing up on her tiptoes to peer up at the cashier girl and point to the muffin. "Did you know that's for me? That's my cupcake."

Oliver frowned. "It's not nice to interrupt people when they're talking, Lexie."

"That's okay," cashier girl said, smiling down at Lexie. "It's a nice cupcake. Do you like chocolate?"

"Yes!" Lexie looked overjoyed at someone taking interest in her random conversations. "I like strawberry and vanilla, too, but chocolate is my favourite. I like it with sprinkles too, but only the rainbow ones, and it's nice when you can mix flavours..."

Oliver could have pointed out to Lexie that the girl had asked her about muffins and she was going off on a rave about ice cream, but he knew there wouldn't be any point. The girl was polite enough to smile and nod along as if Lexie's high speed chatter held any interest to her, but a queue was forming behind them to order and Lexie was holding it up.

"Lexie, come on," Oliver said, picking up the muffin and grabbing her hand. "Say thank you to the nice girl for giving you the muffin."

Lexi yanked her hand free. "But I wasn't finished telling her about my ice cream!"

"She doesn't care. Now come on — "

"No, I wanna — "

"Oliver?"

He froze at his name, which hadn't come from Lexie and it hadn't come from the cashier girl, but someone standing behind him. He slowly turned and thought for a second that some horrifying turn of fate had brought him face to face with Adam Montgomery, of all people, on his first day back. He had the same caramel coloured hair and vivid blue-green eyes — but no, Adam's hair was slightly darker and his features a little sharper. Oliver had bumped into a Montgomery all right, just not the one he'd been expecting.

"Brooks," he said, startled. He'd shot up since Oliver had last seen him, considering he'd been twelve then, but the guilelessness in his wide eyes was exactly the same. He glanced at the guy standing with him and was relieved he didn't recognise him. That meant just one face from the past to deal with. "Wow, long time no see, huh?"

"You don't say," Brooks said in disbelief. "We all thought you were dead, you know."

Oliver stared at him. "What?"

"Because you just...disappeared," he frowned. "Not even Adam knew what happened to you and it wasn't until one of your teachers told him you'd moved away that we had any idea where you went."

There was no accusation or anger in his words, just confusion, but Oliver felt a little guilty anyway. He knew he'd made a mess of that summer before he left in more ways than one, starting by not mentioning the move, but there was little he could do about it now. Apologising now felt a little like too mocking and besides, Brooks wasn't the right person to start with if he was about to start giving out apologies. Oliver had always liked him but he was just Adam's little brother, at the end of the day.

"Yeah," Oliver said. "I moved away."

Brooks must have been curious as to why he moved, and more pressingly, why he hadn't told anyone, but he didn't push for answers. Oliver was grateful for that. He was sure Adam wouldn't have given him the same consideration, but in all fairness, he'd been the one on the receiving end of the cold shoulder so he had every right to want answers. Under normal circumstances, Reed was relentless when it came to finding out what he wanted, but Oliver was certain he hated him now. He doubted he'd be in any mood for a discussion with Oliver.

"So, what are you doing here?" Brooks wondered.

"Yeah, about that," Oliver said, running an absent hand through his hair. "We've moved back now so I'm finishing my last year of high school at Woodway."

"Seriously?" Brooks asked. "Wait, does Adam know about this? He never said anything about it to me."

Oliver hesitated. "That's because he doesn't know."

"You didn't tell him?" Brooks hesitated before adding, "or Reed?"

"No," Oliver said shortly. "We don't talk anymore."

Oliver didn't miss the way the dark-haired guy with Brooks narrowed his eyes at the mention of Reed's name. Oliver couldn't bring himself to be surprised that there was some bad blood there, considering Reed was involved. He'd always had an uncanny ability of riling people up and was a little too good at making enemies. All it meant to Oliver was that he was one of the few who he didn't want to pick a fight with. Or at least, he had been. Until he fucked up.

He narrowed his eyes further at Oliver's assessing gaze. "How do you know Brooks, anyway?"

"Used to be friends with his brother," Oliver replied.

"And Reed?"

"Yeah," Oliver said. "Him too. How do you know Reed?"

"Oh, I don't." He shot a significant look at Brooks, who turned red. "But Brooks is pretty well acquainted with him."

Brooks glared at him half-heartedly. "Shut the hell up, Hale."