.

Another glance at my watch, 7:32 AM. It's been three minutes since I last looked. My hand runs over my face and I take a deep breath, pacing the kitchen of my parent's home. A light tap comes from the back door and I hesitate to open it. I've been avoiding the windows and doors.

"It's us."

Finally. It's been three days since I've seen or talked to Gabby. Her wedding shit is taking all of her time and this was the only time we had to go through Courtney's room without drawing the attention of half the town.

I unlock the door and slide it open, allowing Gabby and Sydney to walk in.

"You're late. Where's Dan?" I look at the pink plastic caddy in Sydney's hand that's filled with nail polish. "And what's that for?"

"First off, we are late by three minutes. Calm down. Dad is taking everyone to town to see some carnival thing, giving us time. And this," she holds up the pink caddy, "is our alibi. We are supposed to be getting our manicures today. So before we go, I need to press on some fake nails to Gabby's fingers."

"You can go get a real manicure if you want..." I look to Gabby. She rolls her eyes at me as she puts her hair up into one of those knotty ponytails on top of her head. It looks like a mess but it's always looked good on her. She walks away in a pissy mood, slowly opening the door to Courtney's room and closing it behind her. I'm assuming she needs a few minutes alone in there. It's been a long time and there's a lot of memories.

"She's pissed at me."

Sydney chuckles and rolls her eyes, a Brooks girl trait. I wonder if my daughter does it too? "Do you blame her? She tried talking to you about Zo and you threw Kane in her face. She's trying to figure this out."

I don't answer her. What the hell was I supposed to do? Kiss her? Tell her I love her? Tell her to not marry that douche? I can't do that and I won't. I guess part of me always thought they would catch this son of a bitch. Then I could come back, find Gabby and we would be together. I thought it hurt when my mom informed me that Vicky had told her Gabby was engaged. But no, hurt was when Gabby told me she was engaged to Kane Porter. The one person that she assured me she didn't love, that she loved me. That's who gets my Books, that's who gets to raise my daughter. So Gabby can be mad at me. But I get to be mad at her too.

"Do you love her?" Sydney's voice cuts through my thoughts. I nod my head yes. There will never be a day where I don't love Gabby Brooks. That doesn't change the fact that she's getting married on Saturday. "Tell her before it's too late."

"I can't. I left, this is my own fault. If she is happy enough with him to marry him even though I'm here, then let her."

Another eye roll. "You're both idiots."

Before I can even ask Sydney what she means, Courtney's door swings open and Gabby reappears with her face covered in tears. I want nothing more than to hug her, hold her and not let go, to keep her safe.

"I'm not sure I feel comfortable digging through her stuff. I feel like I'm invading her privacy. I know how I was at that age and I had things I wouldn't want people to see."

"It's fine, Books. I think she'd understand why we have to do this."

She nods and looks back to the room. "Where do we start?" Snap. Snap.

God, she hasn't changed one bit. I can't help but to smile at her as she begins snapping the rubber band on her wrist. It snaps and falls to the floor. Her head falls back in frustration and her eyes press closed tight.

"Mother fucker - that's the second one this week." She mutters it beneath her breath but I hear it. I walk to her, take her hand in mine and slowly pull the purple rubber band from my wrist to hers. I pretend I'm not feeling the tingle of her skin against mine. She looks up from her wrist with eyes wide. "You kept it?"

"Yeah, don't break it. That thing kept me sane for seven years." I let go of her hand and let it drop to her side. "You take the closet, I'll take the desk, Sydney you take the big dresser. We will work our way around the room."

Sydney does as she's instructed and follows me into my little sister's hot pink bedroom. Gabby remains in the kitchen staring at her wrist. She rubs the rubber band between her fingers and then looks back to me with the saddest eyes. I waited. I love you and I'm here. I can't say those things to her, it would never be fair. It was me that messed up. I wanted her to have a normal life, she got it. So I divert my eyes from hers, and sit at the desk to begin searching through drawers. I don't turn around when I hear Gabby come in and begin opening the closet.

I'm not even sure what the hell I'm looking for. They think they will find something because they were once a teenage girl, so what am I doing in here? Am I needed, probably not. I think I'm just here to spend time with Gabby. Sydney gives us instructions, open every single page of every single book and look for notes, empty anything that opens, question anything that doesn't belong in the bedroom of a teenager. So that's what I do. I pick up one of her textbooks and begin flipping page by page, finding nothing but some highlighted notes for biology.

I try and catch glances of Gabby as she empties the bottom of the closet. She pulls out loads of shoes, running her hands through them as if something would be stuffed up inside the toe of them. Girls hide shit in their shoes? Her blue eyes catch mine and I turn quickly and begin moving the mouse of Courtney's computer. It's not even on. Smooth Jax. Real smooth.

We are in the room for hours sifting through everything. I lift the bed as Sydney pulls out items from under it. Stupid shit, shoe boxes of concert tickets, a bag of blue solo cups, board games, a stuffed animal she had when she was younger, a few cans of stolen beer from my parents fridge that I'm sure tastes like complete garbage now, her yearbooks, and a bunch of old photos from when we lived in Illinois.

"Nothing," I mutter and let go of the bed.

Sydney begins sifting through the concert tickets first. At one point I hear her ask "who are the Foo Fighters?" causing me to cringe and laugh at my age. I turn to Gabby to see if she's listening to the ridiculous shit coming out of her sister's mouth but she's not. She's sitting against the doorframe of the closet, holding a jean skirt and sniffling. Sydney takes notice too and leans in to whisper. "All this stuff and she's going to lose it over a skirt?"

I sigh and look back to Gabby as she covers her face and her shoulders begin to quake. "This isn't about Courtney it's about me. Can you give us a minute?"

Sydney nods and picks up the rest of the concert tickets and the stack of yearbooks to take them out to the living room. I move down to the floor across from Gabby, leaning against the opposite end of the closet frame. "I saw you once."

"What?" Her head lifts from the skirt. She sniffles again. "What do you mean you saw me?"

"I saw you. I went back to college in Wisconsin and I needed to transfer my credits from UNI. While I was there I made a trip to the library to catch up with Gary Clark who runs it..."

"I know who Gary is," she nods.

"Yeah, obviously because when I walked in you were working. I saw you behind the counter, you were smiling and trying to explain The Odyssey to some guy that I think liked you and honestly gave zero shits about Greek mythology." I chuckle and see a little bit a smile come through to her cheeks. "I wanted to walk up to you so bad Gabby. I wanted to grab you by the hand, run out the door with you, and never look back. But then I heard you laugh and I knew you were okay. You were where you needed to be. You were in school, you had a job I knew was awesome because I had the same one when I was there, and you were alive. You were safe. I wasn't. I needed to keep you that way."

She sets down the jean skirt on top of the other folded clothes and looks back to me. "That wasn't your choice to make. None of it was."

"Gabby, someone was trying to kill us!"

"No Jax, someone was trying to kill you. And I get it, that is fucking scary. But you hid it from me, you and dad both did. There are no tallies on my picture. I was eighteen, an adult. You and my dad knew exactly what you were doing. I could have gone with you. I could have met up with you a month later and gone to the same school as you. But you guys knew that I would go to UNI with Cole and Morgan. Dad knew I would be finally be away from the tattooed devil in chucks. That's exactly what happened. He just wasn't planning on me coming home pregnant that day and it ate at him that he may have ruined something real. And you... you wanted me to have this normal college life that you didn't get to finish. I didn't want to be normal! I wanted you! I would have gone with you to any town, any school, as long as I was you I was going to be okay. But you left me and I still didn't get to choose for myself. I left this fucking town thinking that for once... I had made my own decision. I was having a baby, going to school and I was NEVER coming back here. Then I get dragged back here by my fiancé and my family and find out it was all a lie! I didn't get to make any of those decisions for me."

"I'm sorry, Books. I would do it again if I knew that there would never be a tally or an X on your picture. Yours or Zooey's."

"My dad knew I was lonely in Minnesota. I didn't date, Cole and Morgan weren't there and I refused to come home. So he sent Kane to a football game. One game, that's all it took. I wasn't lonely anymore and he apologized for senior year, he was like a little slice of home, friends and family that I was missing. You were gone. You weren't an option..."

She buries her head in her hands with sobs as I try and stop the knot in my throat from unleashing my own. "It's okay that you love him, Gabby. I left, I never expected you to stay single."

"He's not you."

"Gabby..." I choke out her name and shake my head. I don't want to listen to this anymore.

"I'm engaged. And he's not you. I love him though. And I'm marrying him on Saturday."

"I know, Books. Trust me, I know."

"I found something weird!" Sydney appears in the doorway holding the stack of yearbooks. Gabby and I both wipe our soaked faces and give her our attention. She sits on the floor, pushing the cups, beer and board games back under the bed to give us room to spread out. She tosses the books into the center. "Gabby, look at those."

Gabby's face hardens as she looks at the covers of the yearbooks. "Why would Courtney have Luxberg High yearbooks from 2012 through 2018 when she only went there for the 2018 school year?"

They are right. We moved here in 2018, these aren't her yearbooks. I pick one up and begin flipping through it. The girls each grab one and begin doing the same.

"Does yours have stickers?" Gabby looks to us and holds her book open for us to see. She's displaying the pictures towards the end of the book of the actual students by name. Some of them have stickers in the corners of their pictures. So I flip to the back of my book; sure enough, there are stickers on some of the photos. Not all of them, only a few.

"Mine has them."

"Mine too," Sydney agrees.

We pull another set of the books and begin flipping, more sticker filled pages appear. They are random stickers too. Some are stars, some are little hearts, some are Backstreet Boys. It's as if she was using whatever she had lying around.

"I have a sticker on me, maybe she was just putting stickers by her friends. I mean look, I have one," she skips the pages. "Lilly has one, Morgan has one..." Then she holds up an older book. "Kane and Felix both have one."

"But how the hell would Courtney know Thomas Kelley?" Sydney points to another random kid. "He moved away to Oregon before the Parkers moved here. This was his house. And look... Cole doesn't have a sticker. I thought they were friends."

Gabby shrugs and then pulls out her phone to look at the time. "Syd, we need to be back before Kane and Tyler get back with the truck. You need to glue those stupid nails on me."

Sydney gets up quickly to retrieve her pink caddy while Gabby begins stacking the yearbooks.

"Bar-Boy, didn't go to the carnival?"

She doesn't look at me as she stands with the books. "No. Their dad is dying of COPD and they are moving him into a nursing home after the wedding. They had to empty out their old rooms today."

"Sorry," I mutter, feeling like an ass. I can hate the Porter brothers all I want but I know they lost their mom to cancer too. Losing a family member sucks.

"You didn't know." She gives another shrug as she walks into the kitchen.

"Jax, can I take those yearbooks with me to work? I'll keep them hidden, I want to look into them further." I watch as Sydney begins to glue on nails to Gabby. Gabby looks as though she has zero interest in these, which knowing Books, she doesn't.

"Yeah, Syd. That's fine."