Page 49 of The Love Ambush (The Sullivans #1)

“It makes sense,” Sophie says through gritted teeth, her eyes glazed. “Gentry’s going to be looking for her own place, remember? We don’t need a house this big.”

“Nope,” Emily says. “No way. This is too much. I can’t do this, Sophie.”

Sophie turns to face Emily. “You agreed, Em. You’re going to college in like four years, what does it matter where we live?”

“What agreement?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Sophie says without looking at me. “Emily knows what I’m talking about.”

Emily’s face scrunches like it always does before she cries. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I can’t do it. I don’t want to move.”

“Seriously,” I say, wrapping an arm around Emily’s shoulders. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m sorry, Gentry,” Emily says. “I wanted to make it work. I’ve been doing whatever Trisha wants me to do and not complaining when she treats me like dirt because I want Dad to stay, but also because we want you to feel like it’s okay for you to go back to art school.”

“Oh my God, Emily,” Sophie says, her face red with anger. “You’re ruining everything.”

I glance at a neighbor who’s walking by with her dog, staring openly at us. Even if Dad has guardianship or will have it soon, we don’t need the neighbors gossiping about us. “Let’s take this to Sophie’s room,” I say. “You both are going to tell me exactly what’s happening here.”

Sophie huffs and stomps up the stairs and inside. The front door slamming for the second time today.

I walk Emily inside as she sobs.

Thankfully, Trisha and Dad are nowhere to be seen as I lead Emily upstairs and into Sophie’s room.

Sophie’s pacing, but she stops when she sees us. “It’s not too late, Gentry. Emily and I can handle this, okay? Emily’s upset now, but she’ll come around. You can go back to art school and live your life the way you should have been living it for the past three years.”

Emily sobs harder. “I don’t want to,” she wails.

My heart bangs hard against my ribcage. “Do you really want to get rid of me that badly?”

“Noooo,” Emily cries into her hands.

“We want you to be happy,” Sophie says. “We saw your painting in Yuletide. That’s what you should be doing. I never even realized you were only going to nursing school for us. I thought you wanted to be a nurse.”

“Me too,” Emily sobs.

I sink onto Sophie’s twin bed, bringing Emily to sit next to me. “That’s so sweet of you guys, but all I want is for you to be happy and healthy. That’s more important to me than my art or my career.”

“You’re so nice,” Emily sobs. “And I’m so mean.”

“Oh my God, Em,” Sophie says. “Stop blubbering. You’ve already ruined everything. Why are you still crying?”

“Can you two keep a secret?” I ask. It’s probably not the best idea to share a secret this huge with my sisters, but they need to know what’s really going on. They deserve to know.

Emily looks up, her eyes red and swollen, her cheeks puffy. Sophie sits on the bed next to Emily. “I didn’t tell Dad about Emily getting drunk before Brodie’s wedding. I know how to keep a secret.”

“You can’t even tell your friends,” I say.

“We won’t tell anyone,” Emily says. “Right, Sophie?”

Sophie rolls her eyes. “I already said I won’t tell anyone.”

I tell them about Levi and his family helping to put up roadblocks to the sale. “I’m not sure what difference it’ll make, since Dad seems determined to ignore Deacon’s suggestions, but it’s nice to know they tried. And I have a feeling they have more planned.”

Hope beams in Emily’s expression, her tears forgotten. “Really?”

“Really,” I say, already regretting my decision to tell them.

What if the Sullivans can’t stop the sale?

What if I’ve just gotten Emily’s hopes up for no reason?

“But even if the house does sell, I’m not going anywhere, okay?

I can take art classes here at Maple Ridge and, if you want me to keep living with you, I can make that happen, too.

You both deserve to have a relationship with Dad, and I’m not going to do anything to mess that up, but I still want to be a part of your lives.

” I pause, not sure how to phrase what I need to say next.

“Has Trisha done anything really mean to you?”

“No,” Sophie says. “She just acts like she’s better than us, and she asked us to call her mom.” Sophie shudders. “I want Dad to stay, too, but I’m never calling her Mom…”

“I don’t want to either,” Emily says. “But I will if she really wants me to. I don’t want Dad to get mad and leave again.”

“If Dad leaves again,” I say, hoping with everything I am that he’s going to stick around for these two amazing girls, “it won’t be because of anything you’ve done or said, okay?”

They nod, but they don’t look convinced.

“Am I right, though, that you both want to keep living in this house?” I ask because they deserve to have a say.

“Yes,” Sophie says. “Trisha will probably want to move to some fancy house way up on the mountain. I’m not driving thirty minutes to school every day.”

“Dad said they want to downsize,” I say. “If I’m moving out and you’ll be going to college soon, they won’t need such a big house.”

“Downsize?” Emily says. “That definitely means they’ll want us to share a room. I’m not sharing a room with Sophie.”

Sophie rolls her eyes. “It would be for, like, two years. I think we’d survive.”

“I wouldn’t survive,” Emily says. “Our house isn’t that big, anyway. The only way I can get away from you all is to go to my room. We don’t even have a place to watch TV without the whole house knowing what we’re doing.”

Our first floor is an open floor plan, and none of us have TVs in our rooms.

“You watch everything on your tablet anyway,” Sophie says. She looks at me. “But I don’t want to move either. Especially because…”

She trails off. “Because what?” I ask.

She glances at Emily before looking back at me, mouth pressed in a firm line, and I get it. She’s just as worried as I am that Dad will leave again. I guess having parents who vanished out of our lives has made us both expect the worst.

“Okay,” I say. “So, I’ll tell Deacon to go full steam ahead with blocking the sale of our house.”

“What can we do?” Emily asks.

“Nothing,” I say, because they’re kids and they shouldn’t have to be involved with a plan to thwart their own father.

“We want to help,” Sophie says. “You need to stop trying to do everything on your own. If we’d known you never wanted to be a nurse, we would have told you to stop going to nursing school. You don’t have to be a martyr all the time.”

Wow, I guess Levi’s not the only one who thinks that about me. “I’m not-”

“You are,” Emily says. “You gave up everything you loved for us and never told us about it. If you had, we would have helped you have time to paint. We’re not little kids. We can help.”

I look at my two sisters, so smart and strong and kind. Maybe I have been babying them too much. Maybe in trying so hard to do right by them, I’ve been doing a whole heck of a lot wrong. Like doing to them exactly what I’m so mad about Levi doing to me. “Okay,” I say. “I have a few ideas.”

***

I’m sitting on the porch swing Sunday morning, enjoying the unseasonably warm September day and sketching in my notebook when Jamie Stinson parks in front of our house and gets out. He’s dressed in gray slacks and a polo shirt, his hair slicked back, his smile showing all of his teeth.

He strides up the sidewalk and stops at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh, crap,” he says, all mock-innocence. “I forgot to call y’all and let you know I have a client who wants to see the house right now.”

“You sure did,” I say, smiling. “It was kind of you to send Deacon over to inspect the house yesterday.”

Jamie’s smile widens. “He said the two of you reached an understanding?”

“We did.”

He nods. “So if you don’t mind not mentioning I’m here, that would be super helpful.”

“I’ll be glad to help however I can. In fact, I think I’ll go for a walk and get out of your way.”

“I appreciate that, Gentry.” He hops onto the first step as I start down the stairs. “I see you sometimes across the way at the clinic. Would you like to get dinner with me this week?”

If my heart didn’t already belong to Levi Sullivan, I might have said yes to Jamie Stinson. He’s very handsome, and Ellery, who keeps tabs on every single man in Catalpa Creek, says he’s a good guy and looking to settle down. “Unfortunately, I’m hung up on someone else,” I say.

He nods, his smile never slipping. “My loss. Enjoy your walk.”

I carry my sketchpad with me just in case I get the urge to stop and draw, and walk down the stairs past him. I’m at the end of our walk, about to step onto the street when a car pulls up and parks behind Jamie’s car.

I’m about to hurry past when a woman gets out and says my name.

I spin to see Hailey Holiday walking around the front of her car. She’s wearing a cute little sundress, and her hair is in a slicked-back French braid. She gives me a little wave.

I hurry over to her. “Thank you.” Hailey is thrilled with her apartment in the middle of downtown. If she’s here, it’s part of Levi’s plan to convince my dad not to sell.

“Of course.” She glances at the house. “You don’t think your father will remember me, do you?”

“I spent more time at your house than you did at mine. And you’re all grown up now. I think you’re safe.”

“Good,” she says, but she doesn’t look happy. “I know we aren’t as close as we once were, but I wish you would have called me and told me what’s going on.”

My heart sinks. Levi and my sisters are right. I have been acting like a martyr. “I’m beginning to understand that I’m not great at asking for help. I’m going to try to do better from now on.”

“Good,” she says.

But it doesn’t feel like enough. “I really want us to be as close as we used to be. I’m sorry if I made you think I didn’t.” I swallow hard and take what feels like a gigantic leap. “I guess I thought I wouldn’t be fun anymore, now that I’m pretty much a mom.”

Her smile reaches her eyes. “And I work too much. I’m not as much fun as I used to be either.”

“Maybe we could get together sometime and be boring together?”

“I’d like that.” She pushes her shoulders back and faces the house. “Now, I’ve got to get to work. I’m going to be the most appalled potential home buyer in the history of home buyers.”

I laugh and make myself scarce in case Dad or Trisha comes to the door.

The texts from Emily start before I’m a block from home.

Emily: Dad is really pissed that the real estate agent brought someone to see the house without any warning.

Emily: Trisha’s pissed because Sophie and I have been ‘forgetting’ to pick up our clutter.

Emily: Hailey just noticed the ‘water stain’ on the ceiling and is asking Dad if he’s planning to fix it. LOL.

I sit on the curb and laugh as I text her back, Don’t let Dad know we know Hailey.

Emily doesn’t text back right away, but I stay where I am and send another text, If you want out of the house, I’m just down the block.

I only have to wait five minutes before Sophie and Emily jog my way, both of them laughing.

“Oh, my God,” Sophie says, hands on her knees as she stops next to me, panting. “You should have seen the look on Trisha’s face. It was turning red, and her eyes were bulging out.”

“I pretended I was just now finding out about Dad selling the house,” Emily says. “I pretended to cry and ran out of the house like I was upset.”

“And I told Dad I’d never forgive him for selling our family home,” Sophie says. “Because I won’t.”

“Dad was so mad, he says he might have to look into finding a new real estate agent,” Emily says.

My heart sinks. “That’s not good.”

“It’s okay,” Sophie says. “Mr. Stinson told Dad this is the busiest season for agents, and he’s not going to find anyone who has time to sell our house, especially with the state it’s in.”

“That’s good,” I say, because they’re both so happy and I don’t want to ruin it. But I know my father. There’s no way he won’t look into getting another agent, and the Sullivans can’t possibly be friends with every real estate agent in town.

“Mr. Stinson says he has people coming to see the house all afternoon, so we should be out of the house for the rest of the day.”

“Wow,” I say. “He’s really wasting an entire day to not sell our house?” Maybe the Sullivans aren’t friends with him. Maybe they have some dirt on him.

“He’s a really good guy,” Sophie says in a wistful tone, staring into the distance.

I slap her shoulder. “He’s twice your age.”

“He’s twenty-six. That’s only ten years older than me.”

“Ew,” Emily says. “You like him? That’s so gross. He’s, like, old.”

“I agree,” I say. “He’s way too old for you.”

“Let’s go to the park,” Emily says. “It’s too pretty to be inside today, anyway.”

That does not sound like my little sister, but she just smiles up at the weird look I give her and starts off in the direction of the neighborhood park.

“Sounds like fun to me,” Sophie says as she hurries after Emily.

Of course, the park is packed on this gorgeous November Sunday, full of little kids and their parents.

Emily and Sophie aren’t bothered by the crowd.

They run around, playing tag and swinging on the monkey bars, waiting in line for the slide and helping any little kids who need it.

They’re way too old to be playing here, but none of the parents complain.

I watch my sisters because I have nowhere to go and nothing I should be doing.

For the first time in years, I don’t feel the same weight of responsibility where they’re concerned.

Partly because Dad is back, but more because we’re actually working as a team for the first time.

My sisters make pretty darn good teammates.

They are amazing and fun, and I’m so lucky they’re my sisters.