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Neil had definitely been one of the reading guys, but he’d started sitting next to Adam in their Greek class, asking him questions about America or what his thoughts were on the historicity of the Iliad. Before Adam quite knew what was happening, Neil had absorbed him into a friendship like some kind of osmosis.

He still wasn’t sure why Neil had picked him, of all people. Adam certainly hadn’t asked for it, but he’d been grateful all the same. Neil—whose mind was practically exploding with things he’d read in books—had never once made Adam feel like an idiot or a failure. He’d just start rambling at Adam about the reliability of Roman accounts of early Celtic culture, and before Adam knew it, he’d be theorizing about ancient British kinship structures right alongside him.

He liked to think he’d given something back to Neil as well. Fairfax definitely wasn’t the kind of kid who jumped at the chance for an adventure, but Adam was pretty sure Neil had enjoyed that prank with the stuffed emu and the incident with the soda canister and the Dean’s miniature schnauzer more than he’d let on.

To Adam’s even greater surprise, he and Neil had actually stayed close even after Adam blew off his final exams and ran away to Central America. Neil had asked for Adam’s address, but Adam hadn’t actually expected to hear from him. He’d figured the whole ‘quitting university out of spite’ thing would’ve made star-student Neil realize how little they really had in common—but then the letters had started coming, and they’d come like clockwork every two weeks for seven years. Hell, there were probably three of them waiting for him back in Belize Town even now, full of ramblings about Middle Egyptian grammar and how Neil missed plum tarts—and had Adam seen the latest excavation report from Teotihuacan?

Adam hadn’t, but it wouldn’t matter. Just like Adam never made Neil feel bad for being bookish, Neil had never made Adam feel lousy for using books as paperweights—even when he really didintendto try to read them.

Maybe that was the real secret to why they’d stuck together. They’d never made each other feel less for being who they were.

It was pretty lousy for Adam to repay all that by ruining the guy’s sister.

Not that he’dmeantto… but even after he’d found out that Ellie was Neil’s Peanut, he’d kept making bad decisions.

Hot, passionate bad decisions with his hands and his lips and his… well.

Friends didn’t do that, and Neil would have every right to cut Adam out of his life over it. But Adam couldn’t let that happen, because Neil was Ellie’s brother. He was always going to be a part of her world, and if Adam had any hope of sticking with her—whatever the hell that might end up looking like—he owed it to her to try to make things right, no matter what he had to do to earn that.

He figured the effort would at least involve getting verbally torn up, down, and sideways. Maybe even taking a solid punch to the face… not that Neil could hit all that hard.

So that was the plan. Face the music, get what he deserved, and hope that on the other side of it there were still enough fragments of their friendship left to come to some sort of peace.

He found Neil on the path by the canal. The narrow waterway lay maybe a dozen yards from the house, but it was far enough to be out of earshot and past any fall of light through the meshrabiyeh screens over Sayyid’s windows.

Tall, slender palms rose around them. Beyond the narrow, gleaming water at Neil’s feet, the landscape turned from shaded garden to sprawling, starlit fields.

It wasn’t the smartest spot to hang around in the dark. In fact, it looked to Adam like exactly the sort of place where you might expect to find a lurking crocodile.

Adam wondered if maybe Neil didn’t know about crocodiles—though you’d think a guy who had been in Egypt for two years now might’ve learned at least the raw basics of survival.

Then again, Neil had never had a particularly strong instinct for self-preservation.

Adam would’ve felt a little better about walking into a potential encounter with a croc if he’d had his machete in his hand instead of two bowls of dinner. Thankfully, he had a solution for that problem.

“Take this, would you?” Adam pushed one of the bowls at Neil.

“What?!” Neil exclaimed, whirling in surprise and nearly stumbling into the canal.

Adam wondered if he’d have to drop a bowl in order to catch him, but Neil managed to right himself, arms wheeling.

“Why did you sneak up on me like that?” Neil demanded.

“Pretty sure I was making plenty of noise,” Adam offered back. “It’s a hell of a lot better to scare a crocodile off than come up on it unawares.”

“Crocodile? What crocodile?” Neil looked around wildly.

“You’re standing in a swamp.” Adam glanced over the edge of the canal. “Looks all right for the moment. Still, wanna take one of these?”

Neil awkwardly accepted his dinner, which freed up Adam’s hand. The bowl he still held was stuffed with rice and lentils topped with chunks of ripe tomato, salty olives, briny cheese, and a big folded hunk of flatbread to scoop it up with. Adam would’ve normally dived into that kind of meal with relish—but his appetite was lacking.

With a sigh, he set the bowl into the crook of a tree branch.

Neil’s own supper remained forgotten in his hand as he continued to stare morosely out at the fields.

Adam wondered how to broach the subject that had brought him out there.

So about your sister…