Page 29 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

Then Ellery gave a snort of laughter. “Your face.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“S’okay. People dying sucks, but it’s normal. People fucking your underage brother, not so much.”

“I know. And I’m sorry about that too.”

That just got another shrug. But then, very quietly, “It was just like everything was being taken away from me. Dad. Then his best friend. Then Caspian.”

I wasn’t sure I ought to be allowed words anymore. So I made what I hoped was an understanding noise.

“I just”—she waved a dismissive hand, but what she was dismissing, I wasn’t sure—“really needed him to be my big brother right then. But I guess it turned out okay in the end.”

“Um. How?”

She flashed me a rather feral grin. “I figured out early that needing people is bullshit.”

“I’m notsupersure that’s the moral of the story here.”

“Well, it works for me.”

I really wanted to make a big speech about the power of love and how it didn’t have to be weakness to open yourself to others. But I’d believed all that stuff and now I was relationship roadkill. So probably I should have been listening to Ellery, not the other way round.

“Look,” I said instead, “for what it’s worth, I don’t think Caspian ever meant to make you feel like that.”

“But he did, so what does it matter?”

“I think it’s more that, after what happened with Lancaster, he’s sort of convinced himself he…doesn’t deserve to have a sister?” Like maybe he’d convinced himself he didn’t deserve to have me?

There was a long silence. Ellery’s face was turned away, her expression almost entirely concealed beneath the fall of her hair. When she finally spoke, it was in little more than a whisper. “You still don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“That it’s not”—her voice rose, then broke—“for him to decide.”

Before I could answer—though God knows what I would have said—she leapt off the sofa and grabbed her violin case from the table. “I’m going out. You coming?”

“Ellery, I—”

“Yes or no.”

“Of course I am.”

Her only response was an odd twist of a smile. Well, that and calling us a taxi. And ten minutes later we were off.

Chapter 9

Ellery was almost completely silent as we travelled and I knew better than to ask where we were going, so it was very much asit back and enjoy the ride–type deal. Anyway, it wasn’t as if I’d had major evening plans. Not unless you counted masturbating and crying over Caspian—activities, let me make it very clear, I intended to pursue sequentially, not concurrently. But I was at least seventy percent certain Ellery wouldn’t abandon me in some derelict corner of London. I mean, she hadn’t so far.

We followed the curve of the river, through which mellow evening light had woven ribbons of silver and gold, heading west, then south, with London getting leafier and the houses getting fancier the farther we went. When we finally disembarked, it was on one of those time-frozen streets, a wide green common to the left, a march of sprawling Victorian homes on the right, all red brick, ornate windows, and balustrades that looked like they’d been iced on.

Ellery strode off without a second glance, leading me a short way down the road and then abruptly off it, down a narrow footpath and onto the common. As we pushed our way through some bushes, I found myself wondering—as I often did on my Ellery-related adventures—if I was going to be murdered or arrested or both. Concerns that were not entirely relieved when I suddenly found myself in a graveyard.

A really profoundly derelict graveyard, a maze of shattered stonework, half-drowned in trees and bracken, and watched over by headless angels. So absolute was the desolation, it was hard to believe we were only a few steps away from tennis courts and picnic benches, dog walkers and families and technophobic queers trying to discreetly cruise each other.

“Where are we?” I asked, my voice sinking into the silence as my feet sank into the undergrowth.

“Barnes Old Cemetery.” She shot me a speculative look. “It’s meant to be haunted.”