Burn (Harbor Hill #3)

Chapter 1

LILY

Idrop my bag on the bed and stand in the middle of the room. My room. My apartment. My decision that Rome hates and I am going to love out of spite if nothing else.

The fresh paint smell mixes with new wood, and it's small, sure, but everything's clean and renovated, and mine. New floors. Countertops that don't have mysterious stains from previous tenants. Appliances that look like they were installed this decade.

A living room with a window so big it takes up half the wall, and through it I can see straight into Erin's flower shop across the street.

I can already picture it. Early mornings, coffee in hand, watching her arrange peonies while the sun comes up. That sounds like peace. That sounds like the kind of life I'm trying to build.

Rome sets down my last bag, and immediately starts scanning the ceiling like he's searching for structural damage. Here we go.

"Outlet placement could be better," he mutters, already opening cabinets, running his thumb along the countertop edge like he's conducting an inspection. "Grout's decent."

"High praise," I shoot back, but he's not listening. He's too busy examining hinges or whatever else his architect brain has decided needs scrutiny.

He turns to me and I know that face. That face has never once preceded good news. That face means he's about to suggest something I don't want to hear, frame it like it's for my own good, and make me fight him on it, even though I'm exhausted and just want to put my shirts in a drawer.

"I still think you should reconsider the travel option," he tries again in the voice he uses when he's trying not to start a fight, but is absolutely about to start a fight.

"Take a friend even. I'll pay for that too."

I unzip my bag and start pulling out clothes, not looking at him. "I'm standing in the option I chose, Rome. A year from now we can argue about what comes next."

"Portugal is nice this time of year," he offers, moving to the window, testing the seal with his fingers like air might be leaking through.

"So is Harbor Hill."

"Harbor Hill is twenty-eight degrees."

I shove t-shirts into a drawer harder than necessary. "I like the cold."

He turns from the window. "Since when?"

"Since right now." I slam the drawer shut. "New personality trait. I'm evolving."

He doesn't laugh. Rome rarely laughs when he's worried, and Rome is always worried about me. Has been since I was ten and he was eighteen and our parents decided that their next dig site was more important than us. More important than me.

Our parents are archaeologists. They're the restless kind. The kind who hear about a new excavation in Jordan or a discovery in Peru and pack bags before the phone call ends. The kind who see the whole world as something to unearth, except their own children.

They dragged us from dig to dig for years. New country every few months. New school. New temporary friends I'd never see again.

Rome and I learned to pack light and say goodbye easily. We learned that home was wherever our suitcases landed, and that our parents' eyes always drifted toward the horizon, the next thing that wasn't us.

Eventually Rome said no more. He was eighteen, I was ten, and he told them he wasn't following them to the next dig. Told them I needed a real school. A real bed. A real life that didn't fit in a duffel bag.

And when he'd suggested they let him take me, let him give me something stable, something that looked like an actual childhood...

They'd agreed too easily. That's the part that still hurts to this day. How fast they said yes. How relieved they looked. Like he was solving a problem they'd been hoping someone else would fix. Like we were artifacts they'd catalogued and were ready to archive.

I had never felt so unloved or unwanted in my life, and no matter how hard Rome tried, that feeling sticks to this day.

So Rome became serious, practical. The kind of person who checks window seals and grout lines and worries about outlet placement. And I became the opposite. Reckless, he says. I say I'm just trying to live.

He's a little right. I'm a little right. We're both too stubborn to admit the other has a point.

"You could rest somewhere bigger," he continues, still hovering by the window like he can't help himself. "Somewhere with more options. You don't have to stay in one place."

I watch him. My brother who gave up his twenties so I could have a childhood. Who wants me on a plane because in his mind, planes equal possibility and Harbor Hill equals stuck.

He doesn't understand. He gave me stability. He gave me someone to call when I was scared, someone to show up at every school event, someone who made sure I ate breakfast and did my homework and knew, always, that I was loved.

But he can't give me what I actually want. He can't plant the roots I'm desperate for.

I want people. Plural. I want to stop being someone's responsibility and start being someone's person. I want family so badly I ache with it. Rome was it for so long and now we have Erin, too. I need them both close enough to touch.

"I don't want options," I tell him. "I want a kitchen table and family dinners."

He stares at me, brows furrowing, before he exhales through his nose and turns back to the faucet, twisting the handle like he can fix whatever's wrong just by looking at it hard enough.

"The hot water takes about thirty seconds to kick in," he says gruffly. "Don't panic."

"Noted."

"And the bedroom window sticks if you open it past halfway." He's already moving toward it, testing the frame.

"Okay."

"And if you need anything..."

"Rome."

He stops, hand still on the window frame, shoulders tense.

"Go home," I say gently. "Erin's waiting for you."

His shoulders drop at her name. They always do. My serious, stoic brother goes soft at the edges whenever anyone mentions Erin Scott. It would be nauseating if it wasn't so adorable.

"Call me if you need anything," he says.

"I won't need anything."

"Call me anyway."

He crosses the room and hugs me. Tight, brief, one hand on the back of my head the way he's done since I was small. Since I was ten years old and crying in an airport and he was the only person left who wanted me.

When he leaves, closing the door carefully behind him, I stand in the silence.

I'm burned out at twenty-two. It sounds dramatic when I say it like that, but it's true.

Undergrad wasn't easy, four years of orgo and anatomy and MCAT prep books stacked so high on my desk they blocked the window, but I could have handled it.

I was going to handle it. I had the score, the personal statement, the whole trajectory mapped out since I was seventeen.

Medical school was never a question for me. It was the plan. The only plan.

What I couldn't handle was Rome leaving Chicago to oversee a compound build for Ramsey, a client turned close friend who'd hired him for the job and inadvertently changed both our lives. Because that build didn't just give Rome a project. It gave him Erin.

Not only that, but he has formed such a close bond with Ramsey and Callahan that I think for the first time in his life, Rome has actual friends instead of "work people." They gave him a reason to stay in Harbor Hill. And it left me in Chicago without my only family for the first time.

I didn't handle it well. I didn't handle it at all.

I just broke, slowly but surely. In the way where you keep showing up to class but you're not really there.

In the way where you stop eating regular meals and start crying in the shower and tell everyone you're fine, you're fine, you're fine.

In the way where you stare at secondaries from schools you'd dreamed about and can't make your hands type a single answer.

So I made the hard decision. Not just a year off. A full stop. I deferred nothing, applied nowhere. Walked away from the only future I'd ever pictured for myself. Rest. Recover. Figure out who I am when I'm not running on fumes and fear and the ghost of a plan that was supposed to save me.

All that has to wait as I take in my apartment. My apartment. My decision. My Harbor Hill.

The bell chimes when I push open the door to Wildflower & Thorn the next day, and the smell hits me before anything else.

Green and sweet, something alive. Buckets of flowers line the walls. Half-finished arrangements cover every surface. Stems scattered everywhere like beautiful chaos. One slow breath, and some of the weight on my shoulders lifts.

Last year, when I'd had enough of missing Rome, I'd hopped on a plane to visit him unannounced. I found him making out with Erin in an alley. Boy, had he been pissed.

But I'd fallen for Erin straight away, and spent more time with her than my brother, honestly. A lot of that time had been right here, in this shop, learning the names of flowers and watching her work.

The only “job” Rome approves of is helping out Erin here. Her head lifts from behind a mountain of white roses, and her whole face changes.

"You're here," she beams, already coming around the counter with her arms open.

We hug hard. She smells like soil and flowery perfume, and I hold on longer than casual because I need to. Because she's the closest thing I have to a sister and I've missed her so much.

"I'm here," I mumble into her shoulder, muffled and a little pathetic, but I don't care.

"You look tired," she says softly, pulling back to study my face.

"I look fantastic."

"You look tired and fantastic," she amends, smiling.

"I'll take it."

She pulls me behind the counter, hands me an apron, and points at a bucket of dahlias that need trimming. No preamble. No treating me like I'm fragile. Just: make yourself useful.

I love her for it. Rome would have made me sit down. Would have asked if I was sure I was up for this. Erin just hands me scissors and lets me work.

She's the only person who called my gap year a gap year instead of a mistake.

"Rome called me twice this morning," she mentions casually, snipping a stem without looking up.