Page 7 of Take What Hurts

“I concur with Toby,” her dad, Grey, called, grinning broadly as he rounded the corner from the den.

“Hey, Dad,” she called, launching herself off the floor and into her dad’s outspread arms. Even at twenty-eight, she’d found there wasn’t a lot a hug from her dad couldn’t fix.

“Honey—still elbows deep here!” Nancy smiled indulgently at Elliott and Grey.

Grey let her go and jerked his head at the kitchen, rolling his eyes with a smile. Elliott’s mom and dad were the love story you read about in some sort of young adult fiction novel: high school sweethearts who’d gotten pregnant and married at nineteen (in that order) and raised kids through college. They and her younger brother, Harry, were all veterinarians who owned the local vet practice. Harry still lived in town with his wife, Jessica, and their twins—a boy, Luka, and a girl, Lyla.

“Right! Sorry, Mom.” Elliott pulled herself out of Grey’s arms and doused the sopping wet dough with flour. “Mom, can I ask why you’re making the dough? Doesn’t Dad usually do that?”

Her mother scowled at her. “Who the hell do you think taught your father that?”

“Hey! I heard that, and it’s a lie,” Grey called as he flopped down into his spot on the couch in the family room.

“Mom.” Elliott laughed in exasperation. “This is a disaster.”

Her mom huffed, her mouth pulling down at the edges, frown lines appearing in her cheeks. “You’re right, it is.” After a beat where she looked forlornly at the way-gone dough, she brightened. “Nothing that can’t be fixed with a bit of elbow grease and flour!” She nudged Elliott with her hip, and Elliott rolled her eyes. “So shut up and help me.”

The dough had been saved—thank goodness, crisis avoided. They had covered the pizzas in every topping imaginable, including pineapple, because people who didn’t like pineapple on their pizza were monsters, and placed them into the wood-fired pizza oven on the porch. Harry and his family had arrived in a maelstrom of tiny loud feet, screams of “Nanny” and “Pop,” snow jackets thrown on the floor, and Toby cowering under the grand piano in the den. When Elliott poked her head around the corner from where she was placing napkins on the dining table, Lyla and Luka homed in on her like heat-seeking missiles, and her heart broke a little seeing how much they’d grown since she’d last seen them.

It had been a while since she’d been home, she realized. It wasn’t that she didn’t like being home. She loved being home. But the problem was she loved it so much that coming home only made her ache for it when she was forced back to Seattle for the work week. She missed the evergreen trees that surrounded the house and that littered the small town. Missed the snowy fields and the ski resort not five miles away. The one-strip center of town, with the combined bakery and coffee shop where she’d grown up begging for brownies and cinnamon scrolls from Mrs. Mason, who still owned and ran the place; the smell of gently baking dough that left her feeling soft and warm. She couldn’t drive through town without the memories from her childhood wrapping around her brain and lodging themselves inside her chest, making it constrict with deep-seated longing that only intensified when she went back to loud, busy Seattle.

So she stayed away, not consciously, but still. More than she should. More than she wanted to. But she felt the only way she could continue to function in the life she was carving for herself—through increasing levels of resistance—was to distance herself from the place that was responsible for the resistance in the first place.

“Auntie Ellie!” Luka’s Mickey Mouse voice squealed with glee, and Lyla’s head snapped around in Grey’s arms and she broke free. In no time at all, each of Elliott’s legs had a toddler wrapped around it. Harry and Jessica finished hugging Nancy and Grey and wandered over.

“Long time, no see, Sis.” Harry smiled and pulled her into a hug once the toddlers had relinquished their grip on Elliott’s legs.

“Yeah, I didn’t realize how long. They’re enormous monster babies now.” Elliott smiled indulgently at the two hurricanes making their way back toward Grey, who braced for impact. Jessica choked out a laugh. “Yeah.” Her arm tightened around Elliott’s waist. “They grow like weeds. I’m not sure where our tiny babies went, but they are a handful.”

Jessica released Elliott from the hug and gazed at Harry, entirely enamored by him and by their family, and it made Elliott’s heart ache for something she wasn’t sure she’d ever have. Being someone’s. Building a life together. She wasn’t sure what the point of it all was if she was doing it alone.

Her phone vibrated against her leg. Harry and Jessica joined Grey on the couch, beers in hand, and Nancy was busy slicing the pizzas, so she pulled her phone out and checked the notification.

Unknown Number 6:28pm

Hi Elliott—got your number from your assistant. Anna has an offer and wanted it put forward tonight. It’s in your inbox.

Elliott’s heart leapt in her chest. Not at the offer—she was almost certain it was garbage and Matilda would never go for it—but at the fact she had a text message from Mackenzie. It was stupid, because if she’d learned anything new from their roundtable session, it was that Mackenzie was unequivocably, irrevocably out of Elliott’s league.

But there was no need for Mackenzie to have sent a text message, so it gave Elliott pause. The email enclosing the offer was right there in her inbox, her phone capable of notifying her, but she’d sent the message anyway. Not for the first time today, Elliott’s heart did that fluttering thing it tended to do when she was starting to feel an iota of hope about something. She tamped it down quickly. Even though Elliott had noticed Mackenzie’s gaze stray across the table to her repeatedly, followed by Mackenzie’s cheeks reddening when Elliott caught her, it wasn’t possible that Mackenzie—so put together she looked like she’d walked out of a glossy magazine—was interested in that way. And then there were the ethics of the situation. And the fact Elliott couldn’t afford to fuck this case up. Couldn’t afford to disappoint Mattias. Or herself. She didn’t know what she’d do if this case went south.

Swallowing hard, she pulled up her message thread with Hannah.

Elliott 6:31PM

why did you give Mackenzie Williams my phone number? She has the office number.

Not thirty seconds later, Hannah responded, like she’d been waiting all evening for Elliott to send that message.

Hannah 6:31PM

Because she called the office asking for it, and she (very unlawyerly like) was tripping over excuses as to why she needed it. Then I looked her up and she’s HOT And apparently on the partnership track. So she texted you huh?

Elliott tried to muster an ounce of irritation with Hannah, but she had trouble because, really, she was thrilled Hannah had taken it upon herself to give Mackenzie her number. She couldn’t tell Hannah that, though, because Hannah would see straight through it, and she didn’t need her best friend fixating on exactly why Elliott was so thrilled.

Elliott 6:33PM

Han. She’s the opposition.