Page 87 of Fall for Me

“He’s not in love with me, Eli. It’s just… we’re just…”

Eli frowned, then seemed to finally get that what he was saying was freaking me out. “You’re right. I don’t—it’s not like he’s said anything to me. It’s just… I’ve never seen you look calm like I have over the past few weeks, Chelsea. It’s a good thing.”

I swallowed, the tiniest wash of relief settling on me as I zipped up the pack maybe a little too hard.

“Hey, Chels, I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”

“How can I forget—” I swallowed hard. Calm. He said I seemed calm. I didn’t feel calm. I felt the opposite of calm. When I looked down, my hand was shaking. I shoved the kit on top of the fridge, then turned around, gripping the top of one of my chairs. “Eli, that crash… it told me I needed to change some things. And up until yesterday, I thought I had. I’ve barely talked to my friends from before.” I thought of Mia and Lola—God, Lola. I wished she was here so I could stroke her fur and hold her sweet, wiggly body. She’d been the next best thing to a hug with Mom. After Seamus, maybe.

I swallowed. Seamus had made me feel that safe.

“Last night was the first time I touched alcohol since the night of the crash,” I said, “and I tried—I vowed—I’d stay away from men. I have all these other plans too—I want a house. I want a dog. I want a…” I bit back on the my own business part seeing as Eli was the CFO of the Rolling Hills and would probably freak out if I told him I didn’t want to work there anymore. “I just want a lot of things and instead of going forward, I feel like I’ve taken a big step backward.”

Eli’s demeanor seemed to shift. Suddenly he was the caretaker. He pushed the chair out for me with a scrape over the linoleum, and I flopped down into it.

“Chelsea, I know you think you haven’t made any changes since the crash, but I think you need to go easy on yourself. I’ve been divorced for a year, separated for three, and I still haven’t changed my name or even gotten my shit out of storage. You’re what, a month out from a serious car crash and look—your place is cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. You seem well-rested and even happy. Like you said, you’re not going out every night of the week like you were. And Seamus even says you offered to help his dad with his party?”

I groaned. I’d forgotten all about Jamie Reilly—I’d thought he could be my first attempt at doing an event on my own, but here I was dropping the ball. I thought of the blazers I’d bought yesterday, hanging in my closet.

“How did you get so mature?” I asked.

“I was born this way.”

“Hell no you weren’t.”

He laughed. “Okay, fine, it was therapy.”

I lifted my brows. “Eli Kelly, going to therapy?”

“Dunham. But yeah.”

Eli had changed his name when he married his wife—given her name was Kelly. My heart suddenly hurt for my older brother. He’d been through a lot, too. A hopeless romantic with his heart smashed. A messy breakup, with the first woman he’d dated, who Cass had hired to run L’Aubergine, the resort’s flagship restaurant. I’d always rolled my eyes at Eli’s griping about that, but I could see his life had been rough since before Mom had died.

“Do you think about Mom?” I asked him, my voice quiet.

“All the time. She’s all over the resort—it was her baby.”

“So were we.”

He laughed, softly. “So were we. It’s really helped to talk about her in therapy, to be honest.”

“What are you, a therapy salesman?” I said, even as a tear fell down my cheek.

“Maybe.” My brother looked at me with a sad smile. “Cass said you went to an appointment last year.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Too much talking.”

It had been excruciating, that appointment. The guy kept trying to use slang, like he thought I was a teenager. Then he’d sit there, expecting me to respond. It had been mildly humiliating, and I’d had better things to do with my time. Cass had said we should try someone else, but I wasn’t interested. I still wasn’t.

“Listen,” I said, putting on a smile and blinking back the tears that hadn’t quite spilled—I wasn’t going to let them. “I’m going back to work in a couple of weeks. I’ve always been good at my job, and I’ll throw myself all in. I’ll get back into running, and now that I’m not going out like I used to, maybe I’ll even work on a hobby.”

“Like cooking?”

Like art.

No, I wouldn’t go back to that. But now that I’d said the words going back to work, that part didn’t feel so bad. A little sad to let the dream of running my own business go as quickly as I’d come up with it, but I knew what I was doing at the Rolling Hills. I could still wear the blazers there.

“Well, we can’t wait to have you back at the resort,” Eli said. “And hey, now that we’re giving the east wing job to Reilly and Sons, you’ll get to see Seamus all the time.”

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