But she also drifts closer, like there's some magnetic force between us. The same one I've been fighting since I spotted her on her knees at baggage claim.
Only now I'm supposed to play the role of dickhead brother's best friend, so I can't do one damn thing about it.
Can't reach for her.
Can't explain.
Can't fix this.
"Seriously though," Charlie continues, "are you having a stroke? Because your eye is doing that twitchy thing."
"My eye is not—" I catch my reflection in a nearby window.
Son of a bitch.
It’s twitching like an emergency broadcast of my inner chaos to the world.
"Don't worry about the parents." Eve's tone carries that scary confidence that usually means someone's about to get crushed to dust. "I've got just the thing to dial them down a notch."
"Dial them down?" Nick's eyebrows shoot up. "Should we be scared?"
"Probably." She grins, but there's steel underneath. "But plausible deniability and all that."
More shuffling in line. More fucking dripping. More of Holly refusing to meet my eyes, scouring the ground at our feet.
Probably looking for my balls.
Listen, I’ll take all the help I can get.
"The last time you 'handled' something," Charlie interjects, "Dad's golf cart ended up in the lake."
Eve shrugs, all false innocence. "Total accident. Could have happened to anyone."
"You took out the brake line," Charlie says with a hard roll of her eyes.
"Accidentally."
They rattle on about bullshit while I'm pinned between the wary stare of my best friend and the silent hurt of the woman who's starting to matter way too much.
Hurt I can’t even acknowledge. Because we have a deal, and I'm not adding breaking it to my growing list of failures.
I want to tell her how young and stupid I was, how that mistake is why I know firsthand about staying true to yourself no matter what our parents think—something I sure as shit didn't do.
So many words burn mercilessly in my throat, choking me.
How do I explain being such a coward, so fucking weak, that I married someone I didn't love just to impress my old man?
No, really. How do I—seven years older than Holly, but clearly no wiser—explain how out of the five of us, I’m the one who caved to the pressure? I’m the one who danced.
The only one.
Nick, Eve, Charlie… they blazed their paths. They didn’t make a big fuss about it. Just held onto the confidence knowing they deserved to find their own way on their own terms.
How do I make that make sense for a woman who’s spent her whole life on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, spending every moment railing against the very idea of falling in line?
Drip.
The lift creaks overhead as we get closer, the sound grating on my last nerve. Each metallic squeal sends another spike through my temples.
