Love Me Again - Aiden Bates

June

I sat on my couch and idly scrolled the screen on my phone, barely even looking at all of the apartments I could rent in surrounding cities. I checked this website every day, and all of the listings had started to look the same. Mushroom-colored walls, cream carpets, and no soul. I hadn’t even viewed any yet. Figured I could just pick one and move in. It wasn’t like I needed to do anything besides live and work there. It was just a place to hide.

I didn’t care about the complex facilities—the size of the pool or the number of treadmills in the gym. I just wanted it to be plenty far enough from Lakeshore, away from the memories I’d never been able to outrun before, away from the man who’d brought every last one of them spiraling back, black and grasping for me, desperate to pull me under again.

I clicked on the description of an apartment in a small city. It boasted a wraparound balcony overlooking a wood. Maybe there were running trails there. Some solitude appealed after so many years living among my brothers. My parents and brothers all cared about me, I’d never doubt that, but their closeness could be smothering.

Especially when I had things I really didn’t want to talk about. I didn’t want to be forced to wallow in my misery. Left to my own devices, I could push that misery down, deep inside myself, and deal with it later. Or never deal with at all—that was my preference.

I glanced at a second listing, and the glass bricks in the bathroom reminded me of my parents’ glass box house. I chuckled. Maybe I’d never truly escape my family. That damn glass box house. I’d always felt so exposed living there. Being able to see from end to end of the house and even see brothers who weren’t in the same room meant I was almost never alone.

As a teenager, that had been hard. My brothers were all blessed with perfect genes and the perfect bodies that matched those. I’d been less. That thought lingered with me even now, and I dismissed the apartment with the glass bricks for the shower.

I also dismissed anywhere with too many mirrors.

I threw my phone onto the cushion beside me and it bounced before coming to land beside the arm at the far side of the couch. I hadn’t formally announced my plans to move out just yet. We no longer all lived in the same house, but we’d never lived in different cities.

The moment I announced my intention to leave, there would be a Caldwell family pile-on, and Mom… God, I loved Mom, but she’d be the one leading the charge. Of course, someone would assume my depression had come back and Mom would hold court over an extraordinary family dinner, one finger poised over her Rolodex, ready to spin to whichever high-powered colleague still owed her a favor to get me an appointment with someone who could convince me to stay in Lakeshore.

Not in a bad way. She’d line me up a therapist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist. Anyone to fix the lasting issues she’d clearly failed to help me with before. And Mom would take that very personally. She and Dad had powered in to my life to help me when things first went south in high school, even getting me a transfer when I asked.

I’d thought that would solve all my problems.

But it hadn’t.

I was older now, though, and a fresh start in a different city where no one knew me or my family name would definitely make life easier.

Anywhere Shayne didn’t live would do that.

I lay back and crossed my legs, allowing my eyes to drift closed. Virtual apartment hunting was nearly as exhausting as the real deal.

I’d just started to relax when someone knocked on my front door. I heaved a sigh and sat up, debating whether it was worth even answering.

The person knocked again, more impatiently this time. Well, impatient wasn’t really the word. More like the FBI about to raid my place. I stood and walked over there to at least look through the peephole.

Blue eyes stared right back at me.

I sighed, but unfastened both locks before opening the door wide. “Hello, Adrian.”

“Dude!” His voice always contained laughter.

He stepped through the door, bringing with him the delicious smell of my very favorite steak and vegetable burrito.

He held up the bag, rustling it enticingly. “I stopped by Los Amigos on the way here.”

I shook my