I stare at his lips. They look firm, but they’ll feel soft. Warm. They’ll feel like coming home. The invitation entices me enough that it takes me a second to understand his meaning. “What?”
“Fine. You can come.”
“I don’t understand. Is this a trick?”
That earns me a soft chuckle. “You don’t believe me.”
“Is this a thing where you tell me we’re going tomorrow, but then you secretly slip a sleeping draught in my wine and sneak out tonight for the meeting?”
“No, but that’s a great idea.”
“The imagination that helps me write books? A blessing. And a curse.”
He grins. “I knew you’d come with me, sweetheart. I knew it last night in the SUV when I was spanking that pretty heart-shaped ass. For one simple reason. You know what it is?”
“Because you trust me and know that I can handle this?”
“Because I’m not letting you out of my sight. I trust my brothers, but you slipped my hold once before. I’m keeping you near me so I can make sure you don’t bolt.”
Tension sweeps over my skin. “And if I did try to bolt?”
An inch, and then his lips nudge mine. It’s such a soft kiss, a gentle kiss. Completely at odds with the words that come out of his mouth. “I’d catch you.”
Surety radiates from his voice. He would catch me.
The same way he caught me this time.
Why does that bring me so much comfort?
Why don’t I want a normal relationship? Regular people go out on dates together. Maybe they buy a potted plant to see if they can keep it alive. Next, a puppy.
That’s the kind of partnership I should want.
Instead, I crave this man’s unholy possession of me.
He has no rights to my body, but he’s taking them. Even now he’s holding my hips, pressing me close to his, where I can feel his erection. It’s almost as if he can’t keep his hands off me, and the realization gives me a primal sort of power.
“Get a room,” comes the singsong voice of my sister.
I jerk back, guilty, as if I was caught making out as a teenager, but that only rams me into the wall. There’s nowhere to go from Elijah’s firm hold, and he lets me go with reluctance.
London stands there in a pink handkerchief dress with her hair in a messy knot. There are a thousand tutorials online about lighting and photography for influencers like her, about touchups and Photoshop. But the truth is she always looks like she stepped off the pages of some glossy magazine, the perfect picture of beautiful in a casual way.
She puts a hand on her hip. “Seriously, there are like a thousand rooms in this place.”
“Are you hungry?” I ask, feeling anxious already.
That earns me an eye roll. When she speaks, it’s to Elijah. “She’s always trying to feed me, as if I might be hungry for food instead of hurting for another hit of coke.”
“Okay, definitely time for breakfast,” I say brightly.
“I’ll show you to the kitchen,” Elijah says, his gold-green eyes bright with curiosity. It’s clear he’s planning to listen to whatever London has to say, and the thing is, she’s a talker. I cringe internally thinking about the embarrassing secrets she could spill—my strange fixation on Bill Nye the Science Guy in elementary school or my disaster of a prom night.
I’m expecting something utilitarian to match the room upstairs where the men had been meeting. Something with a table and chairs and the basic appliances.
What I find is a gorgeous Italian kitchen with hand-painted pottery and an older woman covered in flour. She calls to us in rapid Italian, gesturing with her slender arms.
I’ve picked up plenty while living here, but this is too fast for me to follow.
Without skipping a beat, Elijah answers her in Italian. He gestures to a rustic blue table. “She says to sit down. The bread’s fresh out of the oven.”
As we sit she starts bringing the food, and it’s an entire feast. Fresh bread with a thick crust with soft butter. A platter with sliced meats, cheeses, and grapes. A bowl of panzanella with fresh herbs. Glasses of sweet lemonade are poured for each of us.
“It started in third grade,” London says as she piles a thick slab of bread with olives, capers, and slices of salmon. “When I broke my leg.”
“London,” I say.
“Holland.” She uses my full name when I’m being overbearing.
She points her butter knife at Elijah and continues. “So, in third grade. Holl and I were riding our bikes home from school. She was two years older, and better than me at everything.”
“That’s not true,” I say, but of course she ignores me.
“She was biking along, speeding up down this incline, and I wanted to keep up with her. I shouted at her to wait, but she didn’t. I think that’s why she feels so guilty.”
“Guilt is a normal response to the situation.” I knew London was slower than me. I knew she was less sturdy on a bike, but I’d gone faster instead of slower.
“Keep going,” Elijah says, fixated on what London’s saying.
“So I fell off the bike. Broke my wrist and my leg. Our parents freaked out. Everything was tense in the house. And that would have been bad enough, but then—”
“You don’t need to do this,” I say, but I’m the one who needs her to stop. It’s her confession, but it hurts me to hear. It hurts me to hear how she’s still suffering.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Elijah
Holly is shrinking. That’s the only word for what’s happening to her. She’s still sitting there in front of a plate of food that she hasn’t touched, but she takes up less and less space with every word out of London’s mouth. Part of me wants to shout for London to stop, but I think I need to hear what’s going to happen next.
“But then,” London continues around a mouthful of olives and bread. “I started taking these pain meds. It hurt really bad, so they gave me the good stuff, which was probably a mistake. Because I took everything that they prescribed, and then I started raiding our parents’ medicine cabinet. I didn’t even care if it was for pain anymore. Xanax or citalopram. Anything that could change the way I felt, I took it.”
“Stop,” Holly says, but her sister doesn’t stop.
“I started using my allowance to buy shit from our friends’ parents’ medicine cabinets. And then I used Holly’s allowance. I think that’s probably how she found out.”
“This is old news. So old,” Holly says. “I don’t know why it matters anymore.”
“You know why it matters. That’s when you started covering for me. Eventually my parents found out and they got me therapy, and I got off the drugs. But it never really went away, that yearning. It comes back again and again, like a shadow that I can’t shake.”
A tear runs down Holly’s cheek. “Yes. Okay. Yes. It’s my fault.”
London glares at her. “And that’s the problem. It was never your fault. Not that I fell down, not that I got addicted. And definitely not that I developed a cocaine habit.”
Holly’s face crumples. “Yes, it is.”