Guilt ate away at Hadley’s gut, a constant gnawing that she felt all the way to her bones. Adalyn stood on the other side of Gabe’s office, every square inch of which was covered with printouts, random pieces of ranch equipment, and no less than five sweat-stained baseball hats bearing the Nebraska Cornhuskers logo.
This room was the one place where all the kids had come for advice or just to hang out while Gabe did the work most folks didn’t think about—the ordering, the accounting, the figuring out how to get through the lean years. It was the place where she and her siblings had all been given their horse nicknames when they first moved in and where they all informally took on the Martinez surname in a homemade ceremony devised by Adalyn right before Hadley had left for college. One family. One heart. One name, even if it wasn’t court official.
And right now, Hadley realized just how much her inability to admit failure had betrayed that pledge they’d all made to be a family, in it together, always.
“I’ve been lying,” she said.
Arms crossed, mascara smudged, Adalyn sniffed back her tears. “What are you talking about?”
Hadley took a deep breath, pushed back every ingrained instinct to cover up the ugly truth, and looked her sister dead in the eyes. “I’m a fraud.”
Adalyn snorted. “That is so not true.”
“It is.” It was time. Really, it was way past time. The need to make everything seem perfect had been part of her DNA since she and her mom had opened the garage door and found her dad in the front seat, overcome by fumes. Today, she was going to rewrite her code. She was going to take control—disastrous warts and all—of who she was, inside and out.
“My job? Nonexistent since I got fired the week before I flew out here.” She straightened her shoulders and let out a long breath. “My apartment? About the size of your walk-in closet, made to look bigger thanks to knowing the angles when I take pics. Plus, I share it, because there’s no way I could afford it on my own. My boyfriend?” She glanced back at the half-closed door that, knowing her family, would soon be opened to admit the others. “Actually, Will isn’t Web at all. He’s Web’s twin brother who pretty much hates my guts.” She crossed over to her sister. “My clothes are secondhand. My credit cards are maxed. My patience is frayed. And my grasp on anything ever working out is tenuous on a good day, and those are getting fewer and farther between.” She took her sister’s hand in hers, amazed at how they were the same size. Just as she wasn’t the girl she’d been at fourteen on that awful day, Adalyn wasn’t eight and in need of shielding anymore. She was a grown-ass woman, and it was beyond time for Hadley to recognize that as well. “I failed at absolutely everything I set out to do when I left here, and I’ve been too scared to admit it to anyone.”
“Too scared or too proud?”
Ow. That hit right in the feels. “Probably both.”
Adalyn sat down on the couch, pulling Hadley with her, and let her head fall back against the afghan blanket draped across the back. “And all this time, I thought I had to put on this big wedding no matter what my gut was telling me because I wanted you to finally see me as someone who’d grown up and was worthy of your Instagram-filtered status and attention.”
“Adalyn, you are so beyond worthy.” She pivoted to face her sister, needing her to understand more than she needed oxygen at that point. “I’m so sorry for keeping my mouth shut.”
“Why did you do it? Why didn’t you trust us enough to tell us—tell me—the truth?”
The hurt in her little sister’s voice grabbed Hadley and wouldn’t let go. And when her mom, Gabe, Knox, and Weston filtered in, she realized that all she’d accomplished by pretending her life in Harbor City was perfect was to push away the very people she most loved—the last thing she wanted to do. They were overbearing, a little too involved, and knew exactly how to push every one of her buttons, but they were her family. She loved them more than anyone else in the world, just like they loved her. It was about time she acted