“Did you want to kiss him?”
“No.”
I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth, watching her for a moment, wondering why she’d let him, thinking she might not even know. “I think maybe we should lay the responsibility mostly at Dominic’s doorstep and leave it there. What do you say?”
A slight smile, a small nod. “But I don’t want to come between you and your brother. It’s not right.”
I looked past her, staring off into the trees over her shoulder, the sun high in the sky, remembering the way my guts had twisted when I saw Dominic pressed against Ellie in the hallway, his face angled over hers.
I clenched my eyes closed briefly, attempting to shut out the image still seared on my brain. “What I told you before is the truth. Dominic and I have needed space for a while. We have a complicated relationship, Ellie, and it has nothing to do with you.” I had realized for some time, years probably, that in some ways, Dominic considered himself my caretaker. I’d felt … smothered, though I’d never acknowledged how much. He’d been in college locally when I bought the house, and I’d asked if he wanted to move in for a while. A while had turned into years, and we were long overdue for a change.
We needed this space in general. What had happened with Ellie was just the proverbial straw. A very large, exceedingly weighty straw, but a straw nonetheless. I’d kicked Dominic out of my house because of what he’d done to Ellie. But I should have asked him to leave long before that. It would have been better for both of us.
Ellie’s wary eyes moved over my face for a minute before she nodded her head. “George gave me a job at the quarry. I … I can go back home now. I can get around much better and my car is fixed …” She frowned slightly, looking away as if there was something troubling her despite her words.
“Stay here.” My words sounded so serious, even to my own ears, and her eyes moved back to mine. I shook my head quickly. “It’s minutes from the quarry, and I can drive you there and back. How can you drive an hour and a half every day while you’re wearing a cast on your right leg?”
She looked down at her leg. “I think I could but … I guess it wouldn’t be the safest thing to do.”
“No.”
We were both quiet for a minute as Ellie picked at her fingernails, a habit I’d noticed she did when she was nervous or unsettled. “Gabriel, Dominic told me why you came to the Platinum Pearl in the first place. About Chloe …”
Ah, God. I sat back, letting out a breath, even angrier now at my brother for his insatiable need to drive Ellie away. His insatiable need to control. I used my toe to push the swing very slightly. “What did he tell you?”
“He said you had dreams about her … that you came to the Platinum Pearl to find someone to help you get ready for her. That … that was my role. And now she’s here and …”
I made a small sound in the back of my throat that turned into a sigh. “There’s a bit of truth in that.” She flinched very slightly, and I looked down at my hands for a moment, gathering my thoughts. “When Chloe contacted me, I let my mind wander to … possibilities. But the whole truth, Ellie, is that Chloe made me realize I was ready to try to recover that last part of myself—the part that’s been holding me back from seeking relationships. She was the catalyst that sent me to the Platinum Pearl that night. The idea of her …” I paused, picturing Ellie as she’d looked that night sitting across from me in her gaudy makeup and too-high heels. “And that’s where I found you. I didn’t expect you, Eloise, but there you were. And it’s you I fell in love with.”
She looked up and blinked rapidly, and the guarded hope in her eyes almost undid me. But it was quickly replaced with uncertainty, maybe even a small measure of panic. “No, Gabriel.”
“No what?”
She shook her head. “You shouldn’t love me.”
I let out a breath. “It’s too late. I already do. I’m sorry but I can’t take it back.”
Her eyes moved over my face as if she was trying to find some untruth in my eyes, some deception in my expression. I caught that same small glimmer of hope before she blinked it away. Ellie.
I suspected she had feelings for me, too, though she might not be ready to admit it, even to herself. I’d first thought so the other night when she was looking at the sparrow on the mantel. I’d seen the same yearning in her eyes that I felt, saw the flush on her face when I touched her, the way she leaned into my hand instead of away. And then the night before at dinner, as she’d watched everyone from under her lashes, looking shy and happy and completely defenseless. I’d taken her hand under the table and noticed the goose bumps that formed on her bare arm.
She’d looked at me and smiled that same dazzling smile she’d given me when she held the rainbow in her hands, the one that filled her face and her eyes and seemed to make her shimmer in some indescribable way. I’d lost my breath again and I knew then I was in love with her. And it scared me and energized me and made me weak with want. It made me want to touch her, to know her in every way possible, to love her in every way possible, and it made me want to be touched and loved by her as well.
Loving her had begun to heal that last part of myself that still felt broken. So I’d wait. I’d wait for Ellie as long as she needed me to.
“I …” Whatever she was about to say after that faded away.
I smiled at her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything until you’re ready. But I got a lesson once about never missing the opportunity to tell the people I love how I feel about them. And it’s sort of a motto I live by now.” I smiled again and she tipped her head, a small smile appearing on her pretty lips. I glanced at her mouth, feeling overwhelmed with the desire to kiss her. But not today. Not the day after my brother had taken something from her.
She looked away from me, out toward the road for a minute before looking back. “I’m sorry for leaving without telling you. I just …” Her words faded away and she shook her head. “I’m good at running, I guess.”
I inclined my head, trying to catch her eye, to make her smile. “I don’t mind chasing you, Ellie. Just let me catch you once in a while.”
* * *
For the next week we fell back into the routine we’d had before. We watched the sunrise together, and Ellie chatted with me as I worked on William. With the admission of my feelings for her, there was a certain tension that hadn’t been there before, a sort of knowing swirling in the air that neither one of us were addressing. I had told her how I felt, and now I was waiting for her to do the same. Hoping. I saw her sitting alone on the patio in the afternoons, her arms propped on her knee, staring off into the trees, and I left her to think the thoughts she needed to think, hoping to God some of them were about me.
At night I lay in my bed and thought about her, unable to help the fantasies that ran rampant through my mind. Wondering how her skin might feel beneath my hands, what her mouth would taste like, how it would feel to join my body with hers. Thoughts of intimacy didn’t scare me as much anymore because when I pictured touching someone, I no longer pictured an unknown, nameless, faceless possibility. I was picturing someone specific now, someone I loved. I was picturing Ellie.