Page 45 of Between the Lines

“Glad I could be of service,” I told her, my eyes going wide as she yawned.

Big.

“Damn, I’m boring?” I teased, and she quickly shook her head.

“No,” she insisted. “You just…took a weight off my mind, so now my sleepiness can come through.”

“Tell me anything.”

“Seriously.” She laughed. “Like…for real, for real. I appreciate you.”

I frowned at the screen. “That really had you stressed?”

“Unfortunately,” she admitted. “But I’m good now—for real. Thank you.”

“Anything for you, Ellie,” I said, before I could stop myself from such a loaded statement.

She definitely caught it.

And blushed over it, looking away from the camera to take a second to cover her smile.

“Uh…I should probably get to sleep,” she said, when her gaze came back to the camera. Her eyes were definitely low, but she didn’t want to get off the call.

She wasn’t wrong though.

“Yeah, I probably should too. See you tomorrow?”

She grinned. “Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

Chapter Eleven

ELODIE

“You suck, you know that, right?”

Pierre looked up from his sandwich, the wild expression on his face making it clear he was—frustratingly—confused by my declaration.

“You gonna tell me what I did?”

I huffed, crossing my arms as I finally took a seat on the low loveseat across from his desk. “It’s not what you did—it’s what you’renotdoing.”

His expression shifted then, from baffled to amused. “El, I’ve already explained to you—I can’t tell you what you should do. That shit is up to you—and Shaw.That’swho you should be talking to.”

“I’m trying to figure outifI should talk to him about it,” I explained—for what felt like the tenth time. “Are you even listening?”

“Well, I was trying to have a working lunch, and then you stormed in here demanding my attention. So…barely?”

“Ughhh!” I groaned, standing again, to slide the wax paper holding his sandwich away from him. “I’m trying to be serious, here.”

“Me too,” he countered, pulling it back. “And I’mseriouslynot getting involved between you two. Especially after you didn’t listen to me before, and look where that landed you—broken up with.”

My mouth dropped open. “Wow.Wow.That’s cold.”

“Ain’t nothing cold about it,” he defended, talking around a mouthful of food. “I told you, Shaw wasn’t that type of dude. He didn’t have those kinds of red flags to be dogging you. I even put eyes on it so it wouldn’t just be a hunch—never any kind of proof, never any hints that he was on that. But you wouldn’t let it go—you decided you were right, and we were all wrong.”

“Yeah, and then I went to therapy,” I reminded him.

He wasn’t wrong, not at all.

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