Page 42 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

"I noticed."

A beat. He turns to look at me fully.

"Is there something you want to say?"

"No," I say. "Goodnight."

I go inside and close the door. I sit on the edge of the bed and I press my hands against my knees and I breathe. I am being unreasonable. I know I'm being unreasonable. We have not defined this, which means I have no claim on anything, which means watching Sonia put her hand on his arm at a conference should register as neutral information and nothing more. It didn't register as neutral information.

Suddenly, there’s a knock at the adjoining door. I look at it. I don't move for a moment. Then I get up and open it. He's standing in the frame with his jacket off, his expression doing what it always does — giving me just enough to be dangerous. I step back automatically to let him in and then wish I hadn't because now he's inside my room and the door is open behind him and I don't know what to do with my hands.

"You noticed," he says.

"I said itwas nothing."

"You said goodnight in the tone you use when something is very much not nothing."

I cross my arms. "I don't have a tone."

"You have several." He looks at me steadily.

"Say what you mean, Sutton."

"I'm tired. It was a long day."

His hand comes up and stops the door before I can close it. Not forcefully — just there, palm flat against it, immovable.

"Don't," he says.

I look at his hand on the door. I look at him.

"Logan—"

“—Talk to me."

"There's nothing to talk about."

"Then why have you been somewhere else since we left that room?"

I cross my arms. It's a defensive move and we both know it.

"It doesn't matter,” I say, emphatically.

"It matters to me."

He says it simply. No performance behind it, no agenda I can identify. Just the words, sitting in the room between us, and I don't know what to do with them because that's exactly the problem. I never know what to do with the moments when he says something that doesn't fit neatly into what this is supposed to be.

"It was nothing," I say.

“What’s the issue?” he says in his dominant tone.

"I don't—" I stop. The thing with teeth is still in my chest and it's getting harder to keep my voice level.

"I just think it's interesting. That she always seems to find you. At every event. Every conference."

"She's in the industry."

"So are a lot of people," I quip, trying to hide my disdain.