She cocked her head as she considered me. “Why do you think I hung on to this place after moving in at the lake, Sullivan?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s…home?”
“Well, yes.” Her head bobbed up and down. “It will always be home, in a way. But not so much for me anymore. I was ready to move, ready to be at the lake. But I felt like this house had some…unfinished business.”
“Mom.” I rubbed the space between my brows, feeling a headache come on. “Then why have you been telling me to get rid of all of my stuff if you held on to it for whatever your unfinished business is?”
“Myunfinished business?” She laughed, putting a hand to her chest like she was blown away that I’d dared to say that. When I continued to stare, blinking in confusion, she sighed. “Because the house wasn’t ready to change before, Sullivan. It clearly wasn’t ready to…move on.”
“But it is now?”
“You tell me, sweetheart. You tell me. Now—” She looked around, snatching her empty food bag off the counter. “Why don’t you put that hot dish into the oven while I go give my girl a hug before leaving. Do you want me to leave Honey here for a night or two? I could pick her up later this week.”
“Sure, Mom,” I said, draping my arm over her shoulders andtugging her into my side for an embrace. “I bet Ellie would love that. Thank you.”
She squeezed me back and then disappeared to the living room, where I heard her soft voice mixing with Ellie’s. As instructed, I put the hot dish in the oven, and then, after the front door creaked and shut, I walked back to find my girl, staring at the walls as I passed them, my mom’s words on a loop in my head.
Maybe letting go of the things that had happened in the past didn’t mean letting go of Eleanor.
Maybe moving on from the last decade or two of life in this house didn’t mean moving on from her, either.
Maybe, as much as Ellie liked to point out how much I hated it, change was actuallyexactlywhat I needed.
Imagine that.
six years ago
ELLIE
“You sure you don’t want another bite of this?” I asked, gesturing to the piece of chocolate cake I’d almost completely devoured.
Sully shook his head, watching me with a hooded gaze that made me feel all warm and tingly inside, replacing the alcohol I hadn’t been able to drink tonight.
“I’ll have my dessert when we get home,” he said lowly, and the butterflies in my stomach officially took flight.
I squirmed in my seat, pressing my thighs together to get a hold on the ache that had begun to blossom between them, and Sully lifted a brow as he watched me.
“You excited for that, birthday girl?”
I was, in fact, very excited for that. Sully was taking me home to Maple Street tonight, where an empty house awaited us since his mom was out of town and his dad was working his usual overnight shift. He told his parents that we planned to stay there because it was closer to the lakeside restaurant where we had reservations for my birthday, but in reality, it had more to do with privacy. We both had too many roommates in our off-campus apartments to get much of that these days.
“Maybe,” I muttered, smirking at Sully as I slipped the last bite of chocolate cake between my lips and slowly slid the fork out, licking the chocolate off it.
A guttural noise emanated from Sully’s chest, audible from across the small dining table. A tealight sat in the middle of it, and it flickered, illuminating the lines of his handsome face—the clench of his jaw and the curve of his lips as he watched me.
I’d enjoyed my birthday dinner immensely. We’d dined out of our tax bracket tonight, eating at this sensual, luxe spot on Lake Minnetonka, a place that was crowded with far more lakeside homeowners than college students. But Sully had insisted. He’d wanted to make my twenty-first special since I couldn’t do what most people did on their twenty-first.
Some people drank on blood thinners, but I didn’t do things like test my luck—not anymore. I’d already been given a dosage of luck…and what happened when it ran out?
I didn’t want to find out, so I stayed vigilant about what I consumed these days, wanting to make sure that my INR—the blood test that measured how long it took my blood to clot—stayed as consistent as possible. It needed to be thin enough to treat my embolism, but not so thin that other dangerous side effects could occur. And since alcohol thinned blood, I certainly couldn’t spend my twenty-first birthday binge drinking. I couldn’t do shots at the bars or get so wasted that someone would have to carry me home.
Instead, I’d picked out a singular cocktail to celebrate my first legal drink tonight, and honestly, I wasn’t upset about it. Sully couldn’t get into the bars yet anyway, and I couldn’t imagine celebrating without him—not after he’d been here for so many birthdays already. Not when he’d never wavered, not even in the last few months.
It was just the two of us, the way I liked it. I’d picked out a new dress—a flimsy, flirty red thing that I could tell drove Sully wild. His arms flexed in his crisp dress shirt as he crossed them over his chest, like he was trying to keep himself from reaching across the table and throwing me over his shoulder.
It made me feel alive again. Desirable. Happy. Things that had felt lost for a while.
My physical health had made a quick recovery, but something about my brain chemistry had changed that day in the hospital. Everyday, I woke up and rode this seemingly ongoing wave of anxiety I felt ashamed about because I wasfine. I was lucky.
