Page 78 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

Silence for amoment.

Then: "Fourth. Unit 4C."

I hang up. I get out of the car, and stride through the lobby and up the elevator in a haze of anticipation.

She opens the door before I knock. She's in an oversized sweatshirt, her hair down, her feet bare on the hardwood. She looks at my face and whatever she sees there makes her step back immediately to let me in. I walk into her apartment — warm, lived-in, bookshelves and photographs and the specific texture of a space that belongs to someone who actually inhabits it.

She closes the door. She turns to face me.

"Caleb came to see me tonight," I say.

Something moves across her face.

"I know," she says.

"I saw him."

I look at her. "When?"

"Tuesday." She meets my eyes steadily.

"We had coffee."

"You didn't say anything."

"No." She doesn't flinch from it.

"I didn't know what to tell you. I didn't know what I was going to do with the conversation yet." She pauses.

"I was still working through it."

I hold her gaze.

"What did he say?"

"Things." Her voice is careful.

"Some of it genuine. Some of it designed to land somewhere specific." She crosses her arms — not defensively, just holding herself.

"He said you'd keep me in a box. That it's what youdo. That you'd let me get close enough to matter and then restructure everything so I fit somewhere manageable."

The words sit between us.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"What happened tonight? What did he say to you?"

"He was angry," I say.

"He had a right to be. We said things that have needed to be said for a long time." I take a breath.

"And I told him something. Something I should have told you first."

She waits. Her eyes are on mine and she doesn't rush me and she doesn't look away.

"I told him I love you," I say.

The apartment goes very quiet. Sutton looks at me. Something is moving through her expression that she's not containing — not trying to. It moves openly, honestly, and what I see in it is more complicated than I expected.