Page 142 of Safe With You

Tasha smiled without looking up.

“Go bother somebody else.”

I pushed away from the counter. “You’re irritating.”

“And yet you keep coming back.”

“Because unfortunately you are family.”

“Mhm.”

I was halfway out of the kitchen when she called my name.

“Ellis.”

I turned around.

Something in her expression had changed. Not enough to make the moment heavy, but enough that I knew whatever came next wouldn’t be another joke.

“You good?”

The question caught me off guard.

“Yeah.”

She watched me for another second. “You sure?”

I knew what she was asking.

Not about Luna specifically.

About me.

Three years was long enough for people to stop asking all the time. Long enough that grief wasn’t the first thing everybody saw when they looked at me anymore. Most days, that was a relief.

Tasha was different.

She’d been there for the parts nobody else saw. The nights after Elena died when Mila was asleep and I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with myself. The first birthday. The first anniversary. The first time Mila asked a question about her mother that I didn’t know how to answer without breaking apart in front of her.

Tasha knew the difference between me surviving and me being okay.

“I’m good,” I said again.

This time, I meant it.

Her eyes stayed on mine for another second before she nodded.

“All right.”

That was it.

By the time we ate, my nephew and Mila had turned Tasha’s living room into something that required half the couch cushions to be on the floor.

I didn’t ask.

Some things were better left alone.

I was sitting on the back patio with my plate balanced on one knee when Mila pushed through the screen door.