“You don’t know?”
He sighed. “I heard the ding, and…well, I don’t know. I don’t think I’m done with this conversation.”
Surprising, considering how he was acting.
“It’s not much of a conversation.”
His gaze lifted to mine, more direct than I was ready for. “That’s why I’m not done with it.”
“Sawyer,” I deadpanned.
A muscle ticked in his jaw at the use of his middle name. A name only I called him.
Two could play whatever game was happening here.
He didn’t comment on it, though. Not verbally. His eyes, however, were a different story. They glittered in a way that I only partly recognized. Usually, mirth lingered there, the kind of amusement that came with an inside joke. But this was something different. A hint of danger sparked through his gaze.
Being alone with him was dangerous. The last five years of distance quickly unraveled until I could barely remember it. It was exactly as I’d expected. Admittedly, a part of me had desperately wanted to know if it would be like this. And now that Ididknow, I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or devastated.
“You had a conversation with every other member of my family tonight,” he said after a long beat of tension-filled silence. I couldn’t decipher the tone of his voice, and it bothered me. “Feels pretty rude that you don’t want to talk to me, too.”
Air slotted through my teeth as I sighed. The thing about Sully was that it was so very hard to figure out if he was serious half the time. I used to be better at it. Good, even. But now… Did he really not knowwhyI hadn’t talked to him?
“I don’t think I talked toeveryone of your family mem?—”
“You did.”
“Watching me, were you?”
“Yes.”
Sully shifted like he realized what he’d just confessed and then shrugged, as though resigned to the truth he couldn’t keep in.
It made me jittery, the knowledge that he had been watching me. Hot—with awareness.
Now, his eyes fell back to the floor, as thoughwaiting for permission to look at me again. Like he’d known he shouldn’t have been watching me before, and he was trying to make up for it.
“I don’t know if I feel like talking right now, Sawyer.”
It was hard—talking to him. Trying to figure out what to say and what not to. Trying not to fall into a familiar beat and banter that would be so easy. Trying not to gravitate closer to him, gripping the bar that ran the perimeter of the elevator for dear life—a futile attempt to resist the magnetic pull that was Sully London.
Each time I’d moved since leaving Minnesota, I’d run to the coasts, making sure to put half the country between us. Because I’d known anything less would have me crawling back to him.
He glanced up at me from beneath his lashes, not fully lifting his head.
“Okay, Eleanor.”
My breath hiccuped, and when he noticed, he tilted his chin higher, giving me a look like he dared me to call him out on the use of my full name. When I didn’t, having already decided I hated it when he called me Ellie more, Sully gestured to the button that would unstop the elevator and open the doors.
But I couldn’t get myself to move.
When he spoke again, his voice was lower. Coated in a layer ofsomethingI desperately wanted to pull back and expose. See for myself if it was still there, still existed. “You know I don’t want to push you, and I’ll always follow your lead. So by all means…”
He lifted his hands in surrender, as though giving me permission to leave.
But the thing was, maybe—just this once—I wanted to followhislead. I wanted to be able to blamehimfor the agony of whatever the aftermath of this would be.
So I stayed, elevator still suspended. Would the hotel staff notice? Would we get in trouble? Did I care?
