“Yeah.” August nodded. “I met him halfway. I was already on the road when Fox called.”
“Did you come up with a plan?” asked Emersyn.
Fox and August shared a glance. Something shifted between them as the silence lengthened.
It was Fox who spoke next. “Well,” he said slowly. “Since you don’t want to stay at our parents’ place…that really only leaves us one option.”
I didn’t like his tone. “What option is that?”
“Someone is going to have to stay with you. Here.”
My gaze snapped toward Emersyn.
“Not her.” August wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side. “Sorry, but she’s mine. Where Emy sleeps, I sleep.”
Emersyn rolled her eyes, but didn’t argue.
I wrinkled my nose. There wasn’t room here for both of them to stay.
Fox cleared his throat.
I glanced at him. He was avoiding looking directly at me, his stare focused on the table.
“I’ll stay with you.” His voice was flat, almost emotionless.
Shock jolted through me. He couldn’t. The cabin was too small. Too personal.
Too full of land mines for the two people who had so much history buried between them.
“That’s—so unnecessary.”
Fox put up a hand. “It’s not negotiable.”
I stared at him. “Not negotiable?” I parroted, taken aback. “What are you going to do if I say no?”
Something flickered in his expression. Hurt. It was gone the moment I identified it, but it brought something into perspective.
Fox was trying here. He was probably even more uncomfortable with the situation than I was. The look on his face when we’d first run into each other at the coffee shop flashed through my memory. That look he had given me bordered on hate.
He was probably working hard to even be in the same room with me, and I was making things worse.
“You do want your computer fixed, correct?” He tilted his head to the side. “You want me to recover those lost files?”
I perked up. “Can yourecover them?”
“I’m not sure.” He shrugged casually. “But if you agree to our plan, I would be less distracted worrying about you, and possibly more motivated to work on that.”
My instinct was to fight. To get my way. But I didn’t have the energy or the will.
I deserved whatever discomfort was coming my way.
“Fine.” I relented but my heartbeat quickened at what I was agreeing to. “You can stay here.”
Fox didn’t give me much but a curt nod. But if I looked hard enough, I thought there was a slight flush creeping up his neck. My brain could barely comprehend what he might be thinking, what it was going to mean to actually stay with him.
I swallowed hard, coming to terms with the fact that I was going to be spending the rest of my time in Ember Hollow living with the only man I had ever loved.
And the first heart I had ever broken.
