I bounded down the stairs, taking them two at a time. I threw the door open and froze. The woman waiting on the other side of the threshold should have been three thousand miles away, safely nestled inside her on-campus apartment. Instead, she was standing on my front porch with a suitcase in either hand.
Bella laughed at my slack-jawed expression. “Aren’t you going to invite me inside, Jare-bear?”
“What are you— How are you—”
“I’m finishing out my semester from home. Your home, actually, assuming you let me stay.” She set her bags down on the porch. “And to answer your second question, three flights, two buses, and one very expensive Uber ride. I charged it to your account, by the way.”
I bit back the urge to say the first thing that came to mind. It had barely been twenty-four hours since the last time I’d made the mistake of scolding a grown ass woman about her life choices. Nessa’s words flashed through my mind.
“You have to let her live her life. On her terms, not yours.”
As hard as it was for me to believe, my little sister wasn’t so little. She had every right to make choices and mistakes like the rest of us.
“I know you’re probably disappointed in me for just leaving school without talking to you about it first, but I needed to get away. I was feeling . . . suffocated there.”
My heart fractured into pieces when a tear rolled down her cheek.
“Aw, Belles. Come here.”
She dove face-first into my arms. I wasn’t used to seeing my baby sister like this. Even when we’d been kids, Bella had always kept her emotions under wraps. Not evenTitaniccould break her.
“It’s okay.” I dropped a kiss on the side of her head. I hadn’t seen her since before the season had started. Her wavy brown hair damn near reached her waist now. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”
“You’re not upset?”
“If anything, I’m upset with myself.”
She pulled away and wiped her eyes. “For what?”
“For giving you a reason to doubt me.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “All I ever wanted to do was protect you. You know, set you up with some success and stability because Mom—”
“Didn’t have that,” she finished.
"Yeah."
“Mom also didn’t have a big brother like you.”
Fuck, now I’m going to cry.
This should be a much longer conversation, one that required more than a few minutes on my front porch. Nessa would be here with breakfast any second—
“Am I interrupting something?”
Speak of my angel.
I choked back the tears threatening to escape and turned to find her coming up the drive. She must have parked around the side of the house.
“Hey, angel.”
She looked every bit the part, clad in a long off-white sweater dress and leather knee-high boots. The belt cinched around her middle did incredible things for her apple shape. Maybe if I was a good boy, she’d let me belt her wrists to my headboard when I got back next week.
“Angel?” Bella questioned.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Belles, this is Nessa. My, uh, girlfriend.” It was the first time I had introduced her as such and meant it, even though I had thought of her as mine for months.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Bella pointed between Nessa and me. “The bookstore owner you’ve been pining after all these months?”
Nessa snorted. “You told your sister about me?”
