Page 1 of Falling With You

Chapter One

Sometimes life knocks you down. Getting back up seems like something just for the movies.

-Sienna, age 14.

Sienna

I had a headache,and I didn’t think having another drink was going to help. Was it going to stop me, though? No. Was the fact that I needed to drive home going to stop me?

Totally.

I’d only had one glass of wine, but that would have to be enough for me. Because although I loved drinking at my friends’ bar, I wasn’t going to be an idiot about it.

Oh, I could be an idiot about many things, but not when it came to the amount of wine I had before I got into my car.

But none of these precautions actually helped my headache.

I looked over at my sister, Violet, and held back a cringe. I didn’t really have any room to comment on headaches, considering that Violet got migraines almost constantly, and they sometimes came out of nowhere and left her in debilitating pain.

I didn’t have that kind of pain. I just had a stress headache from two long days at work and trying not to think about everything that I was thinking about.

But I was fine. Everything was fine. I would just go home and forget that I was stressed about my job, that I was still missing my best friend, and the fact that I had a crush on the guy currently sitting next to me.

A guy I really shouldn’t have a crush on.

Because I’d had that crush for a decade now.

A freakingdecade. And he hadn’t even been in my life for some of the years in the middle. Plus, he had been dating my friend at the beginning.

I had no right to have a crush on Aiden Connolly.

But it was really hard not to when he kept smirking, glowering, glaring, or sometimes even smiling.

Not that he smiled often, but I still had that crush even when he didn’t.

It was a no good, terrible, very bad crush.

No wonder I had a headache.

Because Aiden always gave me a headache.

No,thinkingabout him gave me the headache.

And despite how hard I tried not to do it, I tended to think about Aiden more than I should. That meant a lot of stress, a lot of headaches, and a lot of just feeling like I was making one wrong decision after another.

“What’s wrong?” Harmony asked, leaning into me on my other side.

We were sitting at one of the round tables in the corner at the Connolly Brewery. Our friends from back in our school days—now our friends again—owned the place. It used to be owned by Jack and Rose Connolly before they passed away, and then had been passed down to their three kids.

Cameron, Brendon, and Aiden were foster brothers, although Aiden and Cameron were actually twins who had then been adopted into the family. There was a fourth brother now, the half-brother to Cameron and Aiden, but they were all still Connollys, if not by blood or name then by choice.

The place had almost gone bankrupt a few months ago, but the three brothers had come together to find a way to make it work, and now it thrived.

That meant it was very busy in the place, and even though it was their night off, all three men were constantly getting up to help. Even Violet and Harmony pitched in, and considering that Violet was dating Cameron, and Harmony was dating Brendon, it made sense that they wanted to help their men.

I wasn’t dating any of the Connollys. No, not even Aiden. Or even their younger—veryyounger—brother, Dillon.

So, since I was not dating any of them, that meant if I tried to help, they all just gave me weird looks.