Page 51 of My Silver Fox Savior

“His girlfriends. His dating life.”

“Why?” Ethan asks.

“Why don’t you want to tell me?” Mom counters. “Is there something you’d like to hide?”

“No, but if you want me to start dishing out dirt on my friend, you’ll need one hell of a reason.”

“My daughter is in love with him?—”

“Mom.”

“I want to know he isn’t love-bombing her. He’s older than her, you might’ve noticed.”

“Mom, I’m an adult, sentient person who,you might have noticed, had to grow up fast,” I snap.

Ethan doesn’t say anything for a while. “Landon hasn’t dated in years,” he says after the tension has passed. “Even when he was on the dating scene, it would be a couple a year, and those were mostly double dates I’d drag him along to. Once, I asked him ifhe ever wanted to find a woman and settle down. Rich, coming from me …”

“What did he say?” I murmur, trying to hide how achingly bad I want to learn more about him.

“He said, sometimes when he was out in public, he’d look at married couples who were in love. The happy few, he called them. He said if he ever found a woman he could imagine experiencing that with, he’d snap her up in a second, but he didn’t sound optimistic.”

“Why?”

“There’s a demon in him, he said. Maybe because of the …”

“I know,” I whisper, so he doesn’t have to reference the apple tree job again.

“He said it made him cold when he needed it, but it’s why he’d never be able to find a woman. You know his brother died suddenly, too.”

“Charley,” I murmur. “I remember from when I was a kid. Do you, Mom? He talked about it.”

“A heart attack, the poor man,” Mom murmurs.

“After that, he was even colder than usual, even more logical. You can never fault Landon for being logical, but sometimes, that works against him. Sometimes, it’s like he’s built a prison for himself.”

I’m trying to help him to break out. That goes unspoken. I’d probably sound like a dork if I said it aloud. I wanted to call him and check if he was doing okay, but he refused to answer once he knew I was with Ethan.

“We’re almost there,” he says.

“Has he told you what he’s doing?”

“The right thing,” Ethan says. “It’s the only thing he knows how to do.”

I want to ask Ethan to be more specific, but I can’t push this too far. Instead, I sit back and rest my forehead against the window, thinking of Landon being alone for years, never knowing if he would find somebody. That’s the difference between him and me. As messed up as it is, I thought I’d found my knight in shining armor the first time I saw him.

Sure, it was a girlish crush. He was an inspiration. I couldn’t have known he would one day be the man for me. Yet silly and immature or not, I always had that fantasy to keep me going, at least. When I felt lonely or hopeless, I could think of him. Obviously, he wasn’t thinking of me. He had nobody. He was cold.

“Lily,” Mom whispers.

“I’m fine,” I say, angrily rubbing my hand over my cheek. “What am I going to do about work tomorrow?”

“You’ll have to call in sick,” Ethan says. “It’s Saturday the day after. Do you work Saturdays?”

“Not this week.”

“Then yeah, call in sick, take the weekend, and hopefully, this will be sorted by next week.”

“The mob …sorted, how?”

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