By seven the next morning, Lucian had decided that apologies were for people with weaker imaginations.

He moved Sebastian's alarm forward three hours, hid his car keys in a cereal box, and poured chili powder into the coffee tin.

He was particularly proud of the coffee.

Sebastian entered the kitchen in a charcoal sweater, looked at the clock, and then at Lucian's suspiciously innocent smile.

“Morning,” Lucian sang.

“Why are you awake?”

“Personal growth.”

“Terrifying.”

Sebastian checked the clock on his phone. Without comment, he corrected the alarm. Then he opened the cereal box and retrieved his keys.

Lucian's smile slipped.

“How did you know?”

“You've hidden things in cereal boxes since you were nine.”

Sebastian opened the coffee tin, sniffed once, and emptied it into the trash.

Lucian folded his arms. “You could at least pretend to be surprised.”

“You could at least become less predictable.”

At breakfast, Sebastian placed a bowl of oatmeal in front of him. Lucian stared as though it contained a dead insect.

“Where are the pancakes?”

“Make some.”

“You're obsessed with making me work.”

“I'm obsessed with keeping this kitchen functional.”

Lucian sent a photograph of the oatmeal to his mother with the caption: HE'S STARVING ME.

Evelyn replied with three laughing emojis and a heart.

Betrayal, apparently, ran in the family.

After Sebastian left for a meeting, Lucian discovered his game console missing from the television cabinet. In its place lay a note: Return my keys to the proper hook. Then we'll talk.

Lucian crumpled the note.

He had never liked being told what to do. As a child, he'd insisted on choosing everyone's seats at family dinners. At fourteen, he'd once refused to attend a party because the decorations weren't blue.

Sebastian had been the only person who laughed at him rather than surrendering.

That evening, Lucian waited behind the living-room door with a pillow.

Sebastian stepped inside. The pillow hit him squarely in the chest.

“Ambush!” Lucian shouted.

Sebastian caught the second pillow. “Really?”

Lucian swung again. Sebastian blocked him, and suddenly the room became a battlefield of flying cushions and indignant accusations.

Lucian darted around the sofa, laughing despite himself. For a moment they were boys again, racing through Margaret's garden while their mothers called them in for supper.

Then Sebastian cornered him beside the armchair and caught both pillows.

“Yield.”

“Never!”

Sebastian dropped the pillows and gently but decisively pinned Lucian's flailing wrists against the sofa cushion.

Lucian tried to wriggle free. “Cheater!”

“You started it.”

“You're stronger. That's cheating.”

“An unusual definition.”

Lucian's eyes burned with frustrated tears. He hated how easily they came, especially around Sebastian.

Sebastian noticed and released him at once.

“Don't cry over a pillow fight.”

“I'm not crying.”

“Of course not.”

Lucian wiped his cheeks angrily. “You always do this.”

“Do what?”

“Act like you know everything about me.”

Sebastian went quiet. “I know a few things.”

“Like what?”

“You hate thunderstorms. You sleep with a light on when you're upset. And you pretend you don't like strawberry ice cream because your friends think it's childish.”

Lucian stared at him. “That's creepy.”

“It's called having a memory.”

At school the next day, Lucian met Nolan outside the art building. His friend took one look at him and burst out laughing.

“You look like you fought a furniture store.”

“Sebastian is ruining my life.”

“You've been saying that since freshman year.”

“Because it's been true since kindergarten.”

Nolan handed him an iced latte. “Your mother could pay for a hotel.”

“She thinks living with him will make me responsible.”

“Will it?”

“Don't be disgusting.”

Lucian spent studio class sketching a caricature of Sebastian as a medieval prison guard. He added a sword, a scowl, and a tiny sign reading NO FUN ALLOWED.

His professor stopped beside the easel. “Strong line work. Who's the subject?”

“My personal nightmare.”

“Interesting. You've given him unusually kind eyes.”

Lucian stared at the drawing. The professor was right. He erased the eyes and redrew them sharper.

It didn't help.

At lunch, Margaret called to ask whether he was settling in. Lucian almost launched into his prepared list of complaints, then heard the warmth in her voice.

“Sebastian can be difficult,” she admitted. “He gets that from his father.”

“He's unbearable.”

“He was unbearable at eleven, too. Remember when he spent three days repairing your little airplane?”

Lucian blinked. “That was his airplane.”

“Exactly. And he still wanted you to have it.”

After the call, Lucian searched his childhood photographs. There it was: a model plane with one crooked wing, sitting on his old bedroom shelf.

He remembered insisting the repaired airplane belonged to him. Sebastian had rolled his eyes and let him keep it.

Lucian put the phone away before his expression could soften.

That night, when Sebastian passed him in the hallway, Lucian nearly said thank you for the ice cream. Instead, he said, “Your haircut looks stupid.”

Sebastian touched his perfectly ordinary hair. “Goodnight, Lucian.”

“That's all?”

“Would you like a written response?”

Lucian slammed his bedroom door, then leaned against it, smiling before he could stop himself.

He hated how easy it was to have fun fighting with Sebastian. He hated even more that Sebastian seemed to know it.

The words pulled Lucian backward sixteen years, into a summer afternoon scented with cut grass.

Eight-year-old Lucian had stolen Sebastian's prized model airplane from a garden table. He wanted Sebastian to chase him. Sebastian did, until Lucian tripped and snapped one delicate wing.

Lucian had burst into tears before Sebastian could speak.

Margaret came running. Lucian immediately declared that Sebastian had been mean to him.

Sebastian, eleven then, looked at the broken airplane and said nothing.

Later, Lucian found a bowl of strawberry ice cream outside his bedroom. A tiny note rested beneath it: Stop crying. I'll fix the wing.

He had kept that note for months.

Back in the present, Sebastian handed him the game console's controller.

“I'm returning this,” he said. “But don't touch my work equipment again.”

Lucian accepted it reluctantly. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

Their ceasefire lasted exactly forty minutes.

Lucian found a photo album while searching for batteries. In it, a teenage Sebastian stood beside a much smaller Lucian at the lake house. Lucian was grinning, missing a front tooth. Sebastian looked as stern as ever.

Yet his hand rested protectively on Lucian's shoulder.

Lucian closed the album too quickly.

He refused to examine the strange warmth gathering beneath his ribs.

That night he opened the freezer and discovered a new carton of strawberry ice cream.

His favorite brand. The expensive one sold at only two stores in Boston.

Sebastian was upstairs, supposedly working.

Lucian carried the carton to the kitchen island and ate three spoonfuls straight from the tub.

Then he remembered the humiliating afternoon, the ruined steak, and Sebastian's unbearable calm.

He needed a victory. A real one.

His friend Nolan had left a small bottle of herbal sleep drops after a discussion about insomnia. Lucian found it in his toiletries bag and turned it over in his hands.

The label was full of cautions he barely read.

“If he sleeps through his morning presentation,” Lucian murmured, “maybe he'll finally learn.”

He looked toward the stairs.

For the first time, his revenge involved something Sebastian couldn't simply catch or confiscate.

He should have been frightened by that thought.

Instead, he put the bottle in his pocket.