“How are you doing?” Blair asked. “Jackie told me the blind date didn’t go so well. Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have pushed.” She gave me a wry smile. “I know how annoying it is. I just got excited thinking that you might be ready to move on, at the idea that maybe you could find some happiness with someone else, that I pushed when I shouldn’t have. I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be. You were being a good sister.” I took a deep breath. “Listen, do you think you could come by the apartment after we go to lunch? Just you? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Sure.” Worry filled her eyes. “Is everything okay?”

I smiled. “Yeah. It is.”

I didn’t know why I was nervous about this, but I was.

I figured Blair would understand why I’d kept the truth from her, knew I could trust her to realize how important it was to keep the news about Matt a secret. And at the same time, he felt like something I needed to hold close to me and protect, a secret I would die to keep. But Blair had grown up with him almost like a big brother, and she’d loved him, too. She’d held me while I cried after I received the phone call telling me that he’d died, had stood next to me at the funeral, her arm around me, holding me up. I hadn’t been able to lean on my parents, and in those first few days, before I’d shut down completely, I’d leaned on her.

We sat down on the sofa in my living room, and I took a deep breath, steadying myself.

Here goes nothing.

“Matt’s alive. He didn’t die in Afghanistan.”

Blair stared at me, the color draining from her face, the look of shock on her face mirroring the emotion I’d felt that first night he showed up in my apartment.

“What?”

“He’s alive. I’ve seen him. His unit was ambushed in Afghanistan and they were all killed. Matt was shot, but he survived. They dumped the bodies in a pit, and when it was safe, he clawed himself out.”

It was still hard to talk about, incredibly painful to imagine him in that position. I didn’t know how he’d walked away from all he’d been through, couldn’t imagine how he managed the memories and lived with the dreams.

“Oh my god.” Blair sat frozen, her mouth open, shock etched all over her face. “Oh my god.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “How? How is that even possible? What happened? He’s really alive?”

I nodded, my throat clogged with tears rising to the surface. More than anyone, she knew what this meant for me. She’d been through my grief, had struggled to get through to me, to support me, even as I’d pushed her away.

“Kate. Oh my god, Kate.”

She wrapped her arms around me, engulfing me in a hug, and for the first time in years, I took down the wall I’d put around myself, and let her in.

Tears spilled down my cheeks, my body racked by sobs as she held me, as we cried together, some mixture of happy and sad tears mingling together until I didn’t know which was which. Everything felt so overwhelming, in an unimaginable, hopeful sort of way, that it peppered our tears.

I’d needed to be strong for Matt, had sensed that despite his bravado and the edge to him now, there were parts of him that were crumpling under the weight of everything he’d endured over the past few years. I didn’t want him carrying me, too. But now, for a moment, I relaxed into the embrace of my big sister, of the only other person who’d always had my back and who I knew had been waiting a long time for me to let her in.

Blair pulled away first, wiping at her face, her eyes wide with amazement. “You have to tell me everything. How did this happen? How long have you known? Can I see him?”

I nodded, figuring it was best to start at the beginning. I knew how worried she’d be, but I hoped that the fact that I had Matt on my side, protecting me, would give her peace.

“The night of my birthday, I woke up to the sound of someone breaking into my apartment …”

I went through everything that had happened leading up to last night, skimming over the sex, and the fact that things were sort of up in the air between me and Matt, and not going into too many details about our father. I still wasn’t ready to share everything, not until I had enough proof to know what I was sharing. I walked a fine line between needing to come clean with my sisters and wanting to keep them protected, far away from this mess.

When I’d finished, Blair had a dazed expression on her face.

“How are you doing?”

“Okay, I guess? I know that might sound weird, but the hard part was when I thought Matt was gone. Now that I know he’s safe, everything else seems manageable.”

“If by ‘manageable’ you mean completely and totally insane.”

“Basically.”

“How is Matt handling all of this?”

“That’s the tough part. It’s obvious that what happened to him in Afghanistan left a mark on him. I want to get him the help he needs, but it’s hard when he’s also trying to lie low so that no one realizes he’s still alive.”

I hesitated. We’d never really talked a lot about our relationships. Blair was pretty private, and Matt and I’d had the kind of relationship that didn’t really need a lot of analyzing. But now I needed my sister, needed someone to help put all of this in perspective. “Things are kind of weird between us, too,” I admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“I think he’s hesitant to get involved with me. Afraid that it’s dangerous for him to be around me. We’ve had sex, but things aren’t like they used to be between us. I feel like he’s closed off and I can’t break through if he doesn’t want to let me in. There are moments when it feels like I’m close, but at the same time, I know I’m not. Not really.”

Sympathy filled Blair’s gaze. “I know how hard that can be. And how frustrating. In the beginning, Gray tried to push me away. He was convinced that with his past and his position as my professor, our relationship would ruin my chances at a legal career.” She made a face. “Which it sort of did.”

I winced, hating myself for having contributed to their struggles. “I’m so sorry about that. If I could take it back, I would. I know that’s not a consolation, I know there’s nothing I can do now to make what I did then okay—”

She reached out and squeezed my hand. “No, I don’t mean it like that. In a weird way, it was a major blessing in disguise. We were both following paths that didn’t make us happy. It took our worlds getting shaken up a bit to make us reevaluate our priorities and what we wanted out of life.

“I love our life in Boston and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I needed to start over. Needed to get out of D.C. I needed to find something that I was passionate about doing, and for the first time in my life, I feel like there’s more to me than just being a Reynolds. That I’m actually doing good in the world and helping people. Considering where we come from, I like to think that hopefully, in some small way, I’m counteracting our family legacy.”

I figured that would have been a challenge for Mother Teresa given our father’s megalomaniacal worldview, but I got her point.

“Do you still love Matt?” Blair asked.

“Really?”

She grinned. “Right. I forgot how ride or die you are.”

I laughed. “Is Gray teaching you phrases like ‘ride or die’? Somehow I’m having a hard time connecting with your wild side.”

She smirked. “Very funny. I’ll have you know that I have a pretty impressive wild side.”

“I’ll bet,” I teased.

Gray wasn’t my type, but there was no denying that he was fine. Really fine. And by the look of things, he definitely had a wild side. If he was bringing that out in my sister, good for him and even better for her.

“Does he still love you?” Blair asked, her voice gentle, worry in her gaze.

I swallowed. “He has my initial tattooed on his chest. Over his heart. He says that he can’t do love, that he’s killed people, that—”