Page 62 of Standing Still

Despite not wanting to hose the kid down, he ends up soaked, as do I. As cute as it is watching them, it doesn’t make me eager to create one myself, no matter how many times my mom asks whenwe’re going to have a baby. Elle hasn’t raised the issue either, so we’re on the same page, I think.

Once everyone is clean and dried off, we settle back in the living room.

“How bad?” I ask Elle. She’s made snacks for Jesse and has a handful of treats for Jedi. We watch as the kid hops on the sofa, picks up the remote and turns on the TV, shoving a carrot stick at his mouth. Jedi snaffles his treats then jumps up, licks Jesse’s face, tries to steal the carrot, which the kid relinquishes way too easily, then lays across him like he’s a dog bed.

At this point, I don’t care if he sits in front of the TV till his parents get back. He can’t cause any shit there.

“It’s water based, so it cleans right off,” she says.

“What time are Dawn and Tom coming back?”

“Dawn said they’ll be a couple more hours. He’s had all of his x-rays. They’re just fitting the cast.”

“How long has it been?”

Elle bites her lip to hide another smile. “Forty minutes.

“Sh…crap.”

“That isn’t much better,” Elle swats my ass.

“I’m sure he’s heard worse,” I mutter.

I go check out the dining room while Elle sits with Jesse and am happy to see it doesn’t look as if there is any damage. Elle has even put away all of Jesse’s paints and toys in the little bag Dawn all but threw at us, as she ran back to the car in a blind panic. Elle left the two pictures he drew on the table to dry. I peer at them. They’re about as easy to interpret as the art Elle has hanging on her walls in New York.

Despite what Elle told me, I text Tom anyway to find out how Logan is. I’ve been around enough kids with broken bones, growing up with four brothers, so know what it’s like. Terrifying initially, painful as all hell, but I’m sure Logan will be ecstatic when he comes home with a cast.

We hadn’t got the full story before they dumped Jesse on our doorstep because both of their parents were away. At least they took Imogen. A five-year-old I can manage. A baby? Not a chance.

I walk back into the living room to find Elle sitting with the two boys. She is alternately tickling Jesse, then Jedi and they’re all laughing.

Okay, fuck. That makes my chest ache. The more I look at her, the more I see it written all over her face and I breathe out as I lean my shoulder against the doorframe. Whether or not we’ve talked about it, I know she’s thought about it. She dotes on Imogen whenever we’re around Dawn and Tom, which is a lot.

Especially since the whole six months of the year in Mystic thing fell by the wayside pretty fast. Elle is mostly in Mystic these days. She heads back to New York when she needs to meet with her agent, or Kevin.

She does events in the city too and has even had a few awards ceremonies. She forces me to tag along to those, but I don’t mind, especially when she won one award. I’m so proud of her.

I converted one of the spare bedrooms into an office for her and she disappears in there all hours of the day and night, writing. Again, that doesn’t bother me, because when she’s writing a spicy scene, she always comes into the bedroom panting, soaked and ready to jump me. I’m yet to turn her down, even knowing I have to get up at the crack of dawn.

I still can’t believe I got her to come back to Mystic with me.

Of course, it didn’t happen overnight. She came back for Acer’s funeral. That was tough on all of us, but I was glad I could be there to support her. My family rallied around her, all of them knowing and loving her as much now as they did then. She’d made Jared sweat, though, which was hilarious.

Before he headed off to start his freshman year at NYU, Frankie became a big part of her life, too. The kid was pretty cool, and he really enjoyed spending time with Elle, hearing all about hisfather. Claudia did an amazing job of raising him and he is great with his little brother, despite their massive age difference.

We never set a timetable, or schedule, on when she’d be back home, here. We just played it by ear, but it didn’t slip my notice that more of her things were showing up here, and the New York place was becoming somewhere she only went to conduct author related business.

We ended up having dinner with Jesse before Dawn and Tom arrived with a tired, yet excited Logan. He ran through every detail of what happened when he fell and at the hospital, then got everyone to sign his cast with a sharpie Elle produced. Despite Dawn’s protests, it would look horrible with scrawl all over it.

“You should get Jesse to paint something on it,” I comment.

Dawn looks suspicious, but despite the trouble he got into, I’m not about to rat Jesse out. When they leave, I grab a beer for me and a glass of white wine for Elle, then head into the living room. She is curled up on the sofa with her Kindle in one hand and her phone pressed to her ear.

“The forecast is good. It’ll be cold as hell but great weather for fishing,” she says, setting her Kindle down and taking the wine with a grateful smile.

I love how she understands everything there is to know about the fishing business these days. She isn’t a silent partner. She takes great interest in everything that goes on there. It could have pissed me off, but I’ve found I like her input, and when she shows up to help.

I sit beside her and put my hand on her ankle, lightly stroking her bare skin as I flick on the TV. I keep it muted as I find a hockey match to watch. I have one ear on her conversation though, knowing she is talking about a booking. And I suspect it’s Jenna she is talking to.

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