Page 21 of Not in Love

We regarded each other in silence. When I couldn’t bear it any longer, I nodded once, silent, and turned around so that—

His hand closed around my wrist, and I hated, hated the scorch of electricity that traveled up my nerve endings at the contact. Even more, I hated how he instantly let go, as if he, too, had been burned.

What I felt was bad enough. The thought of Eli experiencing the same was a recipe for disaster.

“Rue. We should talk,” he said earnestly, any pretense or hostility dropped. His fingers returned to my wrist. “Not here.”

“Talk about what?”

“About what happened last night.”

“We didn’t even hold hands. Not much to discuss.”

“Come on, Rue, you know that we—”

“Eli?”

We both turned. Conor Harkness was leaning in, palms against the doorframe, watching us with the air of a shark who could smell blood from miles away. His gaze focused on our closeness, on the way Eli’s eyes seemed unable to let go of me, on his hand, still circling my wrist.

“A moment,” Eli said.

“I need you in the—”

“A moment,” he repeated, impatient, and after another raised eyebrow and infinitesimal hesitation, Conor Harkness was gone, and I remembered myself.

I stepped back from Eli, taking in the strong set of his brow, his beautiful blue eyes, the tension in his jaw. Someone had to put an end to this. Me—I had to put an end to this, because he clearly would not. “Goodbye, Eli.”

“Rue, wait. Can we—”

“My number.” At the door, I spun on my heels. “Do you still have it?”

He nodded. Eagerly. Hopeful.

“It might be better if you got rid of it.”

Eli dipped his head and let out a silent exhaled laugh. I left the room, not quite sure where his disappointment ended and mine began.

6

A SHORTCUT HIS BRAIN DID NOT NEED

ELI

After the scene Hark had witnessed earlier today, it was no surprise that the first thing he asked when Eli let himself inside Hark’s Old Enfield home was: “What the fuck is up with the girl?”

“Woman,” Minami corrected him distractedly. She was on Hark’s couch, feet in Sul’s lap, frantically pressing buttons on the PlayStation controller. Eli checked the screen, wondering whom she was shooting dead.

Bafflingly, the game appeared to be about cake decorating.

“Right. Sure.” Hark rolled his eyes. “What the fuck is up with the woman?”

Eli ducked into the kitchen, which was spotless in a way only never-been-used steel surfaces could manage. He helped himself to a bottle of Hark’s imported beer and returned to the living room. “Just checking: If my answer were to be ‘What woman?’ then . . .”

“I would lose all my respect for you.”

“I think I can handle that.” He sat next to Hark with a grin. This was their routine when they all happened to be in Austin—increasingly less common as Harkness expanded. Minami and Sul on one half of the sectional, being disgustingly in love, and Eli and Hark on the other, being . . . Disgustingly in love in your own manly, grunting way, Minami had once said. She was probably right.

“Her name is Dr. Rue Siebert,” Sul volunteered.

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