“You said you didn’t know anyone but Theo to call.” His gaze bored into mine, making it hard to breathe. Making it hard not to reach out and touch him. “But you know me. You’ll always know me. Understood?”
I nodded, comprehending, but I couldn’t say anything. My throat had closed up, and there was a prickling sensation behind my eyes.
So I just nodded one more time and then forced myself to leave.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
sully
“HELLO, MOTHER,” I DRAWLED, staring up at the white ceiling of my apartment. I’d swung home for my lunch break, which I reserved for dealing with existential crises these days, and since it had been roughly sixteen hours since I’d unexpectedly seen Eleanor Summers, I was currently in one. “So nice of you to call.”
“Oh, don’t be like that, Sullivan,” she tsked. “I tried to call you yesterday, and you didn’t pick up.”
Yeah, because I’d been racing to Cream & Craft to help Ellie with her car, only to be rendered completely useless at the first sight of her.
Here.
In Minneapolis.
She was here, and I still had no ideawhy. It was infuriating and confusing.
“Hmm,” I murmured. “So what do you want to talk about, Mom? Maybe how many days you’ve been harboring my ex without telling me?”
Regardless of why Ellie was here, the fact still remained that she was here and staying with my mother, of all people. Who hadn’t said a peep to me about it at all.
Anne London made an exasperated noise. “Don’t call her that. She’s justEllie, and she’s our friend.”
JustEllie?
My brain couldn’t make sense of those two words being together. Ellie was everything, or she was nothing. There was no casual-in-between with us. There was nojust.
“And I know your history with her is complicated,” my mother went on, “but?—”
“Mom, I was going tomarryher.”
I still had the ring.
Still carried it around in my wallet like an absolute fool.
“Yeah, well…” She faltered, but only came back stronger with “Maybe you still can.”
Goddamnit.
Now I was picturing Ellie in a white dress. And I triedreallyhard not to picture Ellie in a white dress these days.
“Mom,” I groaned.
It was all I managed to say. I was too busy tossing a pillow in the air and punching at it.
“Don’t worry, that’s not why I called.” She sighed, like shewishedthe topic of who I was going to marry were up for discussion. “Not totally.”
“Oh, well, thank God for that,” I said and pushed myself into a sitting position. I’d been lying on my living room floor, because it seemed fitting for how fucking low I felt, and now my head was spinning from the change in altitude or something. Or from the knowledge of what my mom was about to say—why she’dactuallycalled.
“Yes, well, Ellie obviously needs a place to live that is not my basement, and so I called to let you know that I proposed she move into the Maple Street house.”
Yep, there it was.
I remained silent, still adjusting to the idea that my mom was spearheading this torture campaign against me.
