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CHAPTER ELEVEN

AMELIA

H ow old were you when you lost your parents?

Elliot’s question reverberates around the small room.

If it were anyone else, I would just answer the question directly and move on, but something about this moment—the way Elliot is looking at me with the soft, understanding expression on his face and the way my hand feels engulfed in his—makes me want to say more.

To give him pieces of myself I’ve never given anyone.

I could take a minute to consider how opening up to him will just draw us closer when I should be keeping my distance, especially after we were very nearly caught kissing on the dean’s back patio, but fuck, in this moment the last thing I want from him is distance.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I open my mouth to give him some of my truths. “Twelve. They died in a helicopter crash on vacation at the Grand Canyon.” I pause, taking another deep breath. “Sorry, I don’t talk about this, like, ever.”

Elliot squeezes my hand again and then puts his other hand on top of mine.

I like the way his hands look. Big and masculine.

Sexy and strong. “You don’t have to tell me anything.

We can just sit here if you want. Or forget this conversation and I can show you the very romantic postcards a mystery guy sent to my great-grandmother more than a hundred years ago.

I’m just happy to be here with you. Wherever you are is where I want to be, Mystery Girl. ”

Oh, you sweet, sweet man .

Elliot strokes his thumb over the back of my hand, and my stomach swoops at the gesture.

I very nearly untangle my hand from his to press it to my chest to make sure my heart is still present and accounted for.

There’s a very real possibility my heart and I do not survive Elliot Wyles, and this is the moment I surrender to the fact that one way or another, somehow, someday, this man is going to be mine.

I just hope I can avoid blowing up my life in the process.

“Twelve is a really weird age to lose your parents,” I start.

“It’s old enough that I didn’t need the kind of parenting that my younger sister Liv did—she was eight.

Gabe spent most of his time helping her through it.

He sat with her while she cried herself to sleep for months and helped her with her homework, and he was there while she navigated third grade mean girls and long division.

It was also old enough that I could see the strain Gabe was under, trying to keep us together as a family while he got his company off the ground and navigated his own grief and also losing the love of his life after my parents’ deaths broke them apart.

Looking back, I can see that I was too young to be able to really understand and process my own grief.

Instead, I channeled it into trying to need as little as possible so Gabe could focus on my sister and himself.

I was always fine, even when I wasn’t. I tried so hard not to need anything from anyone.

To be a good sister and a good student and to never be too much or too loud and to always take care of myself. ”

Elliot brings my hand to his lips and presses a kiss across my knuckles, his eyes never leaving mine, and it gives me the courage to keep talking.

“I’m old enough now to understand that it wasn’t exactly a healthy way to cope.

The three of us are all close, but Gabe and Liv have this special relationship, and I’ve always felt a little like the odd one out.

Then Gabe and Molly got back together and became this unshakable unit.

Soulmates in every sense of the word. I guess I sometimes have a hard time figuring out where I fit into my own family.

And when I saw you and your grandmother—how you are together, the ease between you—it made me miss my parents all over again.

My parents were both only children, so we didn’t have anyone else.

I’ve always kind of wished for a big, loud family like yours.

” I shake my head, laughing a little. “It’s ridiculous, I know. ”

“It’s not.” Elliot pauses, waiting until I’m looking at him again before he keeps talking, his eyes serious and locked on mine.

“Nothing about this is ridiculous. This is as real as it gets. You were just a kid when your parents died, Amelia. Too young to have to experience that kind of grief. You coped in the best way you knew how at the time, but it’s okay to have some unresolved feelings about it.

To miss your parents today just as much as you missed them then.

I think…” Elliot breaks off, emotion clouding his eyes.

“I’ve never lost anyone like you have, but I watched my brother after his fiancée died, and even now, and I think grief never fully goes away.

We get better at handling it, and its sharper edges dull over time, but it never disappears. ”

“That’s the truth,” I say, blowing out a breath, my brain suddenly a video montage of all the milestones I’ve experienced without my parents there with me. The resurgence of grief swells with every damn one of them.

“I’m going to ask you something, and if you want to tell me to fuck right off you totally can, okay?”

It feels really good to laugh. “Oh, you should count on it.”

He grins at me and reaches forward, tucking some loose hair behind my ear. “Have you ever talked to Gabe about how you feel?”

“Well, El, I’m currently enrolled in a PhD program Gabe doesn’t know anything about and praying no one figures out I’m that Amelia Sullivan.

He thinks I’m working at a job I actually quit more than six months ago, and I’ve never told him about the thing I’m working on right now that is my favorite thing in the world.

I am not exactly the picture of a well-adjusted younger sister who tells her brother things. ”

Elliot gives me a wry smile. “So, no is what you’re saying.”

“Yeah, that’s a big no.”

He looks at me consideringly. “Do you want to talk to him?

Elliot’s deceptively simple question has me a little gobsmacked because do I?

I’ve been so busy keeping all the balls in the air and hiding all the things that it’s never really occurred to me to consider whether I want to talk to him.

And the truth is, I just don’t know. “Maybe. Probably. Eventually. I guess I’ve just been trying to carve out a space for myself.

Figure out what I want my life to look like when I’m not Gabe Sullivan’s sister, or the sort of orphan girl, or any of those other labels people have given me.

I just want to be me, whatever that looks like. ”

Elliot leans forward into my space, pressing a kiss to my forehead, my hand still caught in his.

“For what it’s worth, I think who you are is spectacular.

I don’t have a younger sister, but I do have two younger brothers, and I know there is nothing either of them could ever tell me that would make me love them any less, and I would always want them to tell me the truth.

Whenever you’re ready to tell him—if you’re ever ready—I think Gabe would want to know everything about you, and I think he’ll tell you that you always have a place with him, no matter what. ”

Elliot’s words are so similar to what Gabe said to me at Christmas that I have to rub a hand over my aching heart again. “I know you’re right. I’m just not ready yet.”

Elliot runs his thumb lightly over my jaw and then sits back, taking my hand with him and resting it on his leg, our fingers still laced together.

“You don’t have to be. Now or ever. But in the meantime, you can always talk to me.

I want you to. I just love the sound of your voice.

” Elliot’s gaze snaps up to mine, and he shifts in his chair.

“Sorry, I know that veered pretty far into the more category we have to avoid right now.”

I let a beat of silence pass before I give him back just a little of what he has given me. “I wish we didn’t have to avoid it. I wish things could be different.”

He gives me a soft smile. “Me too, Mystery Girl. Definitely me too. Hey, what’s your favorite thing in the world that you’re working on right now?”

“What?” I ask, a little too fast.

“Earlier, you said you hadn’t told Gabe about your favorite thing in the world that you’re working on. What is that?”

The urge to tell him that the app he’s been playing around with—the one that’s been getting fifty thousand daily downloads in the Redwood Store and is currently in the overall top ten—was my creation is strong, but for some reason I hold back, not quite ready to divulge that piece of myself.

I shake my head. “It’s nothing, just a little hobby I’m working on in my spare time. ”

Elliot tilts his head, studying me, then nods. “Are you hungry?”

“Hungry?” I ask, a little whiplashed from the abrupt change of subject.

He nods, letting my hand go and standing up. Walking behind his desk, he grabs a takeout bag I hadn’t noticed. “It’s lunchtime, so I got lunch.”

“I came here to work.” My protest is half-hearted even to my ears, considering my hand has been laced through his for the last half an hour.

“You also told me you regularly forget to eat lunch, and that brilliant brain of yours needs fuel to keep being brilliant and to help me solve a mystery. I ordered Chinese.”

“Chinese?”

He nods, setting the bag on his desk and tearing it open. The smell immediately has my stomach growling. “You said you missed your Chinese takeout the other night because you had to go to the department reception. I thought I would make up for that.”

“How are you even real?” I mutter, trying super hard not to just melt into a puddle of swoon right here on this office floor.

Elliot smiles. “I think you’ve been taking care of yourself for a really long time. I know there are reasons we can’t be more than what we are, but I want to take care of you where I can, if you’ll let me.”