Page 186 of The Holiday Clause

Fishing rods still hung in the corner like sentinels. Lures were framed in shadow boxes, and old tide charts were tacked beside a bulletin board full of yellowed concert tickets and scribbled notes.

Her fingers brushed the edge of the small desk he’d built by hand the summer after the accident. Watching her reverently trace the grain in the wood where he’d carved little fish symbols made him feel like she was caressing etchings along his soul.

“Grey...” She breathed his name, but it wasn’t a word so much as it was a feeling.

A lump formed in his throat as she turned to the bookcase and stilled.

She saw it. And he was going to own it.

“I couldn’t let them go,” he confessed.

Her eyes turned to him, then returned to the collection of treasures. Top shelf, back corner, hidden, but not really. The ribbon from the 4th of July sandcastle competition, which they won when they were young. A tiny photo strip from the boardwalk arcade when their moms took them to the Jersey Shore—her laughing, him pretending to look cool. A smooth heart-shaped stone she’d given him,just because. Her old senior photo—the corners curled upward with time.

She traced a gentle finger over the silver tray holding the dried lily petals from his mom’s funeral. “You kept all this?”

“I kept the parts I wanted to remember,” he said quietly.

She pressed her lips together, eyes shiny, then studied the wall above the bed. Posters still hung from thumbtacks—old rock bands and a boat schematic he’d drawn when he was fifteen, dreaming about starting his own line of high-performance skiffs.

A soft laugh passed her lips. “I remember this.” She read the signed photograph of a local fisherman he’d idolized.

Pinned in the middle of all of it, right between the Eddie Vedder poster and a map of the Atlantic currents, was Wren’s senior prom photo. Except the part where Logan stood behind her had been folded back.

She turned and looked at him questioningly.

“I was jealous,” he admitted before she could ask. “It didn’t matter that he was my kid brother. You were mine.”

She didn’t say anything, but she took it all in.

Lowering onto the old twin bed, her fingers curled into the worn patchwork quilt as the springs softly squeaked. A smile curled her lips as recognition dawned. “My mom made this.”

He nodded. Haven had given each of them a quilt for their tenth birthdays.

She looked back at the prom photo on the wall. “You know, I wanted to go with you.”

“I was twenty. You were still seventeen.”

“People would have understood.”

“I couldn’t.” He shook his head. “I thought about it—a lot—but I couldn’t do it.”

“Why?”

He stepped fully into the room and shut the door. “I didn’t have the words yet.”

“What words?”

“To tell you everything in here.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “I was angry. Grieving. Pissed off at the world. You didn’t need that when you were grieving too.”

“I needed you.”

He shook his head. “Even then, I knew I’d want things from you that weren’t fair of me to ask. You had your own stress.”

“You mean Bodhi?”

“Him. School. Other guys.”

“There were no other guys, Greyson. You made sure of that.”