Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 515(@200wpm)___ 412(@250wpm)___ 343(@300wpm)
“Told who what?” I asked, sounding exasperated in the hopes that it would stop this line of questioning. I felt squirrely enough on my own about not coming clean to Sylvie. I didn’t need to hear it from my team.
Wren shook her head. “It’s going to bite you in the ass. You know that, right?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.
Maddox cleared his throat, sounding more like he was choking off a laugh, and rolled his eyes. He crossed his beefy arms over his chest and pinned me with a dark look. “Please. You’re not fooling anybody.”
“I’m not trying to,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets, going for innocent when I knew I was anything but.
“Right,” Wren said. “Are you going to pretend you guys are using both bedrooms in that safe house?”
“What makes you think we’re not?” I asked, casting my thoughts back. We hadn’t done anything overt. She’d put her head on my shoulder yesterday, but so had Wren in the past, and I wasn’t fucking her. I cringed inside at the thought. Wren was like my sister. Sylvie was very much not.
“Dude, we know you,” Wren said. “I can tell by the way you look at her. You like her,” she said in a sing-songy voice that had my teeth grinding together.
“Shut up, Wren. We’re not thirteen.”
“No, we’re not,” she said with a smug grin. “Which is why you should be honest instead of keeping very important things from the smart, interesting woman you seem to be involved with.”
“I don’t remember asking you,” I said, fighting the urge to roll my eyes. I looked at Maddox, hoping he’d back me up, give me some solidarity against Wren’s little-sister energy.
But he just shook his head. “She’s smart, Eli. Which I’m guessing is part of why you like her.”
I had nothing to say to that since it was true on both counts.
“And she’s going through a shit time,” he added. “The last thing she needs is you lying to her.”
“I’m not lying to her,” I said, keeping my voice low, unable to resist a hurried look to the hall where Emmett and Sylvie had disappeared. “I’m just not telling her everything.”
Wren laughed. “You know that’s the same thing.”
“It’s not,” I said. “Close, maybe, but not the same thing. And the fact that she’s going through a shit time,” I said, slicing a look at Maddox, “is why I’m not saying anything. Jesus. How much has happened to her in the last week? Too much. This isn’t a big deal. It doesn’t have anything to do with her, except that it’s the reason we’re helping her figure out what happened. Or it was the reason. It’s not important.”
“I don’t know,” Wren said. “I bet she’ll think it is, and there’s no reason not to just—”
“Come clean,” Maddox finished. “You want to keep her, don’t you?”
Like she was a stray who’d followed me home. She was so much more than that, and I didn’t like how quickly Maddox and Wren had latched onto what I’d realized earlier. That I was probably fucking up by keeping Sylvie in the dark.
“She’s not a puppy,” Wren muttered.
“No,” Maddox said slowly. “But the principle stands. He wants to keep her, and I can see why. But you realize,” he pinned me with his dark eyes, “if you’re not planning on walking away when this is done, you’ll have to tell her the truth about Silas eventually. And when you finally do, she’ll know how long you kept it from her.”
The only reason this was such a big deal—if it really was a big deal—was because I didn’t want this thing with Sylvie to be temporary. The fact that I cared was the reason it mattered. Silas was the closest thing I had to a father, and he’d disappeared. I’d told Sylvie next to nothing about him. I was dreaming about shared closets and picket fences, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the man who’d given me the only family I had left. The longer I kept Silas from her, the worse it would be.
Fuck.
“I’ll tell her,” I muttered. “Just not right now. Let’s see if she can get some good news before I piss her off.”
“You just don’t want to cut off access to the nookie,” Wren said with a smirk.
“Ugh. Seriously, what are you, my grandmother? Who calls it nookie?” I said.
“Anything more graphic and I have to imagine you doing it with Sylvie.” Wren’s face twisted with distaste. “Gross.”
“Trust me, it’s anything but gross,” I said.
“I’ll take your word for it. And it’s not the Sylvie part of it,” she said with a grin. “Sylvie’s hot. It’s you.”
“Ow. My ego,” I said.
“Your ego is healthy enough.” Wren laughed, shoving her shoulder into mine. “They’re probably going to be a while. Emmett wanted her to call both banks and her credit card companies. Come help me cross-reference the printouts from that other drive. I pulled anything that had numbers that might match the clue. So far, nothing.”