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I laughed.
“Don’t laugh! I have a deadline to hit, and I’m already behind because it took me so long to get started. Now I’m trying to figure out how to work a duck in a darn speedo into my book.”
Still laughing, I reached my arm out. “Come here.”
Sighing, Ellie shuffled down the bench and tucked herself in next to me, resting her head on my shoulder. “I think aliens abducted you and swapped you for someone nicer.”
“Careful. Iwillthrow you in the lake.”
She shuddered. “There you are. Back to normal.”
I trailed my fingers up and down her arm, smiling. “I’m not always an arsehole.”
“Just most of the time.”
“Just most of the time,” I confirmed, looking out at the water as Grandma’s beloved duck swam into view with her babies.
“You’re not that bad,” she said softly. “You’re cuddling me right now. Arseholes don’t cuddle.”
“You looked like you needed one.”
“Arseholes don’t notice stuff like that, either.”
“Shh. Stop ripping apart my carefully crafted persona.”
She laughed, and her cheek rubbed against my shoulder when she shook her head. “I would never. Although you should know that the hero in my book who is absolutely nothing like you is currently going through a redemption arc where he realises that love was there all along.”
“How very noble of him,” I deadpanned.
Ellie laughed harder, throwing her head back. “Stop it!”
“I’m just saying.” I squeezed her arm, laughing myself. “Does that stuff happen in real life?”
“I don’t know. But it’s fun to write about. Especially with this hero where he was the one who had a broken heart and had to learn to overcome his trust issues.”
“You get right in there, don’t you?”
“What? It’s always the heroine who’s broken hearted and needs to learn to trust again. This time, it’s the hero, and it makes him falling for her even sweeter.”
I didn’t reply to that. It hit a little too close to home, even if I hadn’t had my heart broken by a woman. Learning to trust wasn’t something that had ever come easily for me, whether that be friends or romantically.
I’d never really opened to romantic trust. A casual teenage relationship that I knew would go nowhere didn’t count in my mind—love at eighteen, nineteen, even twenty, was vastly different to love at thirty.
Yet here she was.
Ellie.
Making me do it whether I wanted to or not.
“You can use the library, you know,” I said quietly.
“Huh?”
“To write. If your brother is under your feet, come up and use the library. Grandma is having lunch with the book club girls in town today, and I’ll make sure Fred doesn’t bother you.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes,” I said honestly. “It doesn’t get used enough as it is, and if it will help you get some writing done, you can use it. Whenever you’d like, actually. Whether you’re being bugged by someone or not.”
