From ten-year-old Brynn’s summer camp journal:
Dear Moms,
OMG, this camp does like only one veggie a year or something. This year it’s canned green beans. I’m going to die and I’m NOT KIDDING. Don’t they know they can drive to the grocery store and buy fresh stuff?
Also, my glasses are missing. I think Kinsey hid them, because when I stubbed my toe, she laughed.
She’s still mean.
Eli said he’d help me find the glasses, but he’s good friends with Kinsey so I don’t trust him.
I’m not going to tell you any of this in my real letter to you, you’d be upset for me.
Love you,
Brynn
KINSEY WOKE UP the next morning wrapped around a huge, tattooed, badass body made of pure muscle, sinew, alluring heat, and strength. She lifted her head and found melting dark-chocolate eyes on her, making her breath catch. Funny that such a tough guy had a soft side. Even funnier that she was his soft side.
“Deck,” she murmured, closing her eyes again. “We talked about this. You can’t just break in and climb into my bed. You have to wait to be invited.”
He lifted a big hand and pushed her hair back from her eyes. “Am I unwanted?”
She realized he was flat on his back on one side of the bed, and that she’d curled herself up against him, a leg and arm thrown over his body, her head smooshed into the meat of his shoulder. Her body felt sated and boneless, and memories of the things he’d done to her in the middle of the night had her going damp for him again.
He was waiting for an answer, his eyes still warm, a slight smile curving his lips. She shook her head at him. “You know just how not unwanted you are. I proved that a time or two last night, I think.”
“Four. Four times.”
She snorted and pushed him.
He didn’t budge. One of the things she loved about him. He was as badass as they came, but he was also laid-back and easygoing. And best of all . . . he didn’t fuss over her like everyone else tended to, even though he was a head nurse at the dialysis center. He was pragmatic and never shied from reality. But he was also the best distraction from the hell of her life there ever was. “I’ve gotta get up,” she said. “I’ve got”—she squinted at the clock—“only thirty minutes to get ready.”
“Good thing, then, that you only need twenty.” Rolling her flat onto her back, he pressed her into the mattress, holding her there with his deliciously warm body.
“Yes, but that leaves you only ten minutes to do your thing,” she managed, already breathless. “And we both know you like to take your time.”
“I can make do with ten.”
God, his gravelly voice. It never failed to make her forget all her problems. He was the best “friends with benefits minus the friends part” that she’d ever had, and he knew it too. “What if I need more than ten?” she asked.
“You won’t.”
And then he went on to prove it.
Hours later, she was at her desk at the local school district office playing catch-up. She was a school psychologist for each of the schools in the district. Her job was what they called a three-quarter position, meaning she worked thirty flex hours a week but was allowed to pay in for benefits, like her insurance and a 401(k) plan.
It was a whole lot less generous than it sounded, but the freedom of setting her own hours was vital, since she spent four hours three times a week in dialysis, and a whole lot more hours feeling like she had the flu, when what she really had was transplant rejection.
Today had been a long day. As the district counselor, she had a lot of ground to cover each week. Today she’d been at the high school dealing with a situation where several teachers had thought a female student was being taken advantage of by some male athletes. After talking to the girl, it’d come out that she wasn’t being taken advantage of at all. She’d been running a homework ring for cash. She was doing the homework of ten different athletes and charging them big bucks for it too. Kinsey hated to be the one to squash such entrepreneurial brilliance in one so young; maybe it was the fact that her own job paid like shit, but she felt pride that the girl had figured a way around a cash shortage. If only Kinsey could find such a way, she’d be less stressed.
In any case, the day had been full and long even without the homework scandal. She’d seen her doctor to check on her immunosuppressive therapy, had gone to a district-wide board meeting that had lasted an hour and a half when it could’ve been a single email, and though she had a stack of files on her desk, all she wanted to do was go home and be alone. When she heard her phone buzzing with an incoming text, she dug it out of her purse.
ELI: How are you?
KINSEY: I feel like my body’s “check engine” light’s on but I’m still driving it anyway.
ELI: Did you take your meds? Drink water?
KINSEY: Yes, Mom.
ELI: New roommate coming in tonight.
Resisting the urge to thunk her head on her desk repeatedly, she shoved her phone back into the bag rather than respond.
A new roommate. Just what she didn’t want: another person in her life to look at her like she was broken or needed to be felt sorry for.
When she’d been little, she’d actually dreamed of living alone in a mansion. She’d dreamed of being a billionaire CEO of some really great corporation, wearing fancy designer duds and to-die-for shoes, and driving fast cars. She’d dreamed of being able to travel on a whim, and having wild, fun adventures. She’d dreamed of having tons of good people in her life. She’d dreamed of being beloved.
Instead, she was up to her eyeballs in medical debt, unable to travel to exotic lands because of her weakened immune system, and drove a POS. She did have great shoes because . . . well, a girl needed one vice, didn’t she? But she lived in her best friend’s house, which was admittedly huge, but not hers, and had . . . sigh . . . roommates. She didn’t have a ton of people in her life, and she was definitely not widely beloved.
And yeah, that last part was her own doing, because she didn’t like people all that much, but, hey, she couldn’t help it. People sucked.
And now she was going to have to go home and meet a new roommate, which would require smiling and playing nice. Hell, who was she kidding? She didn’t play nice. She’d just give the canned greeting Eli had taught her long ago—“Nice to meet you”—and then head to her own room and go to bed. She loved her room. Loved the whole house, actually. It was big and old, and had lots of character and quirks. It didn’t hurt that it was directly across the street from the beach. Eli had bought it as a dump five years ago when he’d gotten hired out of grad school straight into his dream job as a marine biologist. He’d been slowly fixing the place up with help from his brother, Max.
“Slowly” being the key word. Because six months after Eli had signed the deed, his grandma, the woman who’d raised him from the age of ten, had gotten pancreatic cancer. It’d been a brutal five-year fight, and Eli had taken on the bulk of her medical costs. Months after her death, he was still paying them off and would be for a very long time.
So he filled the house with roommates to offset some of the house expenses. Kinsey had been there since the beginning because of her perpetual money problems. Same for Max. Max wasn’t sick like Kinsey. He just put surfing above all else, including a decent paying job.
It was a good thing Eli liked to gather the losers he loved ridiculously and keep them close.
There were two additional bedrooms that Eli rented out as well. One was a long-term lease to a guy who worked six months out of the year in Paris, and that’s where he was now. The other room was currently open. The last roommate had been Max’s lover. Until she’d wanted more and he hadn’t. Mostly because Max wasn’t capable of loving anything as much as his surfboard.
Kinsey had known it’d be only a matter of time before Eli filled the room. She didn’t bother to speculate on who it might be. Whoever it was, they wouldn’t last long. Max would seduce them, then eventually piss them off, and onward they’d move.
So really, she had nothing to worry about.
She got home before anyone else and breathed a sigh of relief at the empty driveway. Perfect. She opened the door and immediately heard paws scrabbling on the wood floor, bracing herself as Mini came barreling around the corner.
There was nothing mini about Mini. She was a one-year-old, eighty-five-pound yellow lab puppy. Emphasis on eighty-five pounds and puppy, which meant that even though Kinsey braced to greet her, she still ended up on her ass being loved on by a whole lot of exuberant dog.
“Dammit, woman, control yourself.”
But Mini had no self-control at all. She whined excitedly and “woo wooed” while giving a ridiculously adorable grin, beyond thrilled to have one of her humans on the floor with her. She went on like she’d been alone for decades instead of a few hours, her entire hind end wriggling while she licked Kinsey from chin to forehead.
“You’re the only one I let do this,” she murmured, knowing it was a big, fancy lie. Just last night Deck had taken his tongue on a tour of every inch of her body. “Well, one of the only ones I let do this,” she corrected.
Managing to get to her feet, she walked through the creaky old beach house, heading up the stairs and down the hallway to her bedroom with Mini shadowing her. Stripping out of her clothes, she let out a sigh because her pants had been cutting into her waist all day.
Side effects of the meds she was on . . . bloating.
Her bra hit the floor next, and she sighed again. Bliss.
So was her bath, even if Mini sat there watching with her huge eyes, just waiting for an invite into the tub. “No,” Kinsey said firmly.
Mini huffed out a sigh and set her head on the edge of the tub. But Kinsey remained firm, because the last time she’d forgotten to set boundaries, Mini had jumped in with her. It’d taken all the towels in the house to clean up that disaster.
After her bath, she pulled on a soft T-shirt dress and her favorite, way-too-expensive new work sandals, before piling her hair on top of her head and heading down the stairs. She’d say hi to whoever was home, grab food, and vanish. Because that was all she had in her.
She was standing in the kitchen eating leftover Chinese out of the container when she heard the front door open. And then voices.
Eli and a woman. Her first thought was, Good for him, because it’d been a while. Her second thought brought a sigh—it was probably just the new roommate.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” the woman said. “Have you lived here long?”
“Bought it about five years ago,” Eli answered. “Couldn’t resist the location. We’re fixing it up slowly as we get the time.”
“We?”
“My brother and I. There’s one bedroom downstairs—which is rented out to the roommate who’s in Paris for four more months—and then four more bedrooms upstairs. Two with their own bath, which are mine and Max’s. The other two bedrooms have a bathroom between them, so you’ll have to share. That’s why the rent’s so cheap.”
“You had me at cheap,” the woman said, and Kinsey cocked her head.
Wait. Why did that voice sound familiar?
“The woodwork in this house is beautiful. Reminds me of the cabins we used to stay in at summer camp.”
Kinsey froze. Oh, hell no. No way Eli would do that to her. Except . . . shit, this was exactly something he’d do to her, because that’s what he did. Interfered in her life, doing whatever he thought best for her. She set the Chinese food down and cautiously peered out the kitchen doorway.
Eli was in his usual work uniform of faded jeans and a button-down, his sleeves shoved up to his elbows. The woman with him wore a cute strappy denim sundress that Kinsey could never wear because all the bruising around her biceps from the three days a week of dialysis made other people uncomfortable.
And, yeah, Kinsey knew her.
Dammit.
Pretty ballsy of Eli not to give her a head’s up—though, actually, it was undoubtedly the smartest way for him to have gone about this, because she’d have refused. She took one step into the living room and glared at Eli. “Can I talk to you a sec?” Moving back into the kitchen without looking at the new roommate, she then sent daggers at Eli as he entered, thankfully alone.
He looked at her.
She looked at him right back.
He leaned against the counter, casual as you please, and raised a brow.
Fine. She’d go first. “Why the hell is she standing in our front room?”
“Take a wild guess.”
Because Kinsey had been promising to get in touch with her half sister for years now. She’d also promised to tell said half sister that she was a half sister. “How did you even find her?”
“She was in the ER when you were in the OR, but the waiting area is the same for both. We ran into each other at the vending machine.”
She crossed her arms, feeling bitter and defensive. “Right.”
“It’s true,” came Brynn’s voice from the other room. “And hey, I’m totally okay, thanks for asking! Also, are you? Because I’ll need a yes to that question before I go back to not missing you in my life. P.S., you’ve got very thin walls.”
Eli gave Kinsey a long look, like Say something.
She’d say something approximately never.
“Fine,” Brynn called out from the other room. “I should’ve known this was too good to be true. Thanks anyway, Eli, and no offense, but you both still suck!”
Then the front door slammed.
Eli looked at Kinsey. “Go get her.”
Kinsey blew out a sigh. “Why?”
“You’ve talked about finding her. When I saw her at the hospital, it felt like more than a coincidence. It felt like fate.”
Kinsey scoffed through an aching heart, because she only wished it could be that easy. “You know I don’t believe in fate. And even if I did, fate’s a bitch.”
“Brynn would be the perfect roommate for you,” he said quietly.
“Except she hates me.”
“Who’s fault is that?”
Kinsey looked away. “You can’t really believe that my long-lost sister, who doesn’t even know she’s my sister, is the perfect roommate for me. Did you hit your head on your surfboard again?”
“Hey, that happened one time. And I was fine.”
“You gave yourself a concussion.”
Eli waited until she turned back to him. “If you don’t want her in your life,” he said, “just say so.”
She closed her eyes, because she couldn’t say that. It’d be a lie.
“Just talk to her, Kins. You need to.”
He was right, of course. He almost always was. Not that that fact made it any easier to take. And she wanted to tell Brynn. She did. But it wouldn’t be easy. She tended to scare people away, and she’d rather have the possibility of a relationship in front of her than a failure behind her.
Eli’s irritated expression suddenly vanished, and he gave her a very small smile.
“What? What do you possibly have to be smiling about right now?” she demanded to know.
“You’re flushed. You’re biting your lower lip, which you do whenever you’re feeling hopeful but don’t want anyone to know it. I haven’t seen you this excited about anything in years.”
Damn. She didn’t like being so transparent. But maybe deep, deep, deep down she was a little excited. And also very scared. “That’s not true,” she said. “Max cooked homemade brownies last week. That was the most excited I’ve been in years.”
“Kinsey.” His voice was quiet. Serious. “Admit it. This feels right.”
Dammit. It did. And she hated that it did. “I don’t know her anymore—it’s been years.”
“Kids that you get to know when you’re young . . . no one will ever know you in that same way,” he said. “This relationship with her, good or bad, it’s got a built-in history to it that most don’t ever get to have. She knows you at a core level.”
Yeah, and that was what Kinsey was afraid of. It’s not like she’d ever shown Brynn her kind side. Not once. If she was Brynn, she’d hate her, and for good reason. “This is ridiculous. She’s already gone.”
“Who’s fault is that? Maybe she’ll come back. If she does, will you admit then that it was meant to be?”
“Sure,” Kinsey said, knowing hell would freeze over before Brynn would come back.
The front door opened.
Eli slid a triumphant look at Kinsey.
“Don’t get excited,” Brynn yelled. “I’m only back because I left my purse in the foyer.”
“Brynn,” Eli said, eyes on Kinsey. “Wait.”
“Are you kidding me? If you two argue this loud, I sure as hell don’t want to be living here and hear you have sex that loud.”
Kinsey rolled her eyes. “We’re not having sex! We’re platonic life partners!”
“And bad ones at that,” Eli muttered, as the front door slammed once again.
Kinsey pushed her glasses farther up on her nose. She hated wearing her glasses, but she’d run out of contacts.
Eli looked amused.
“What?”
“Your sister does that too. Pushes up her glasses when she’s uncertain. I saw her do it at the hospital and also today.”
“I’m not uncertain!”
“Go get her,” Eli repeated. “You promised me. Don’t lose out on having a sister because of your damn pride. Or worse, fear.”
She felt her heart squeeze. She knew that for the first ten years of Max’s life, Eli had resisted getting attached to his baby brother out of resentment and anger. He’d nearly lost his shot, but he’d turned things around. Now he and Max couldn’t be closer. She knew Eli wanted that for her, with Brynn. God, she really hated when he was right.
“Look,” he said. “If it helps, I get the feeling she needs you every bit as much as you need her.”
She shook her head. “I don’t even know what I’d say to her. I was such an asshole.”
“Keep it simple and honest and from the heart. Say that you’re sorry, but that you’re working on yourself, and you’d like the chance to make it up to her, to get to know her.”
“That’s good stuff,” she admitted, not really surprised, because Eli always knew what to say. He was a rock.
“Not my first time,” he said softly, and gently tugged a lock of her hair. “Now go make it true stuff.”
Rolling her eyes, Kinsey headed toward the front door, having zero idea what she was doing. Oh, wait, yes she did. She was about to ruin Brynn’s life. She wasn’t sure how, but she was sure it would happen. Because that’s how it went in her life—she always managed to mess everything up.
Every single time.