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“Why’s that?”

Her head shook in contemplation. “I guess it’s all those adult things catching up to me. Wondering if my business is really going to make it. If I have what it takes to make it successful. If I’m going to be able to pay my bills and pay my brother back.”

The sound I made was a cross between a scoff and a laugh. “I don’t think your brother is going to be too spun up if you don’t pay him back in the three months you promised.”

“We did sign a contract,” she said.

“You think he’s gonna hold you to it?”

She pushed up higher, one hand propping herself up on the bed and her pretty head tilting to the side. “I plan on holding myself to it. It’s important to me.”

My nod was soft. “Yeah, I get that. But I think the most important thing is getting the store up on its feet before you start worrying about the rest.”

“I’m worried about everything.”

“You always were a worrier.”

That gaze meandered down my chest. Thankfully, I had the forethought to pull on a tee and sweatpants when normally I would have gone nude.

But she still seemed to be able to see right through me.

“I had a lot to worry about.”

Memories swarmed, and I leaned against the jamb. “I remember the first time I saw you. Sitting out on your grandmother’s porch watching the road.”

I’d been twelve, and she’d been this little thing out there chewing her nails to the quick.

Elena rocked with old grief. “I thought he would show up and force us to move back in with him.”

After their piece-of-shit, abusive father had manipulated Silas when he was just a kid, the three of them and their mom had moved in with their grandmother.

I lived directly across the street.

I’d taken up a bit of that watching, too.

Thinking I was taking on a protector role, when in reality, I was the one who’d found sanctuary in them.

Found the family that I’d never had.

“I remember you used to sit beside me. That was when you and Silas weren’t trying to ditch me.” Her eyebrow arched, a tease in the middle of the heaviness.

“That was all Silas.” I winked.

Fuck, couldn’t help myself when it came to her.

The softness that came oozing out beneath all the hard.

Silas and I had become that way together.

Hard.

Our lives had mirrored each other’s in so many ways.

“You always looked over me. Protected me,” she whispered. That statement was loaded.

Packed with the secret that we shared.

One we never spoke about.