Jake Reed looked nothing like his brother.
That had always been the thing people said first—Ethan, tall and bright-eyed and built for rooms that were looking at him; Jake, quieter, broader, with the kind of face that didn't need to announce itself. He had their mother's eyes and their father's stubbornness and somewhere in the middle of those two things he had developed a conscience that neither of his parents had ever quite known what to do with.
He was sitting in a corner booth at a diner on East Cesar Chavez when Mia arrived, a cup of coffee in both hands and the expression of a man who had been rehearsing something difficult.
Mia slid into the booth across from him. She had not seen him in person since the anniversary dinner she'd hosted eight months ago—the last good one, before ev
