Letter Twenty-Seven
You know what else I miss? That slow, idle week between Christmas and New Year’s.
The tree’s gone by then, but the pinecone garland stays—the paperwhites and white poinsettias, too.
That year, our dried orange slices, along with your gingerbread cottage (far too beautiful and charming to throw away), made our little hideaway feel especially warm and cozy, even with the dreary gray weather pressing in from outside.
We bundled up in the mornings to get coffee, lazed around with Garland, drank cup after cup of tea to stay warm, and polished off your tin of biscuits. Like always, you saved the chocolate ones for me.
We went back to watching Gossip Girl—the season where Blair meets the prince—until I got another headache. You asked how much my head hurt on a scale of one to ten, looked unduly horrified when I said four, and switched off the TV.
“Don’t sulk,” you coaxed, slipping your cardigan down my shoulder slow enough to make my breath hitch. Despite how annoyed I was, you had the infuriating power to completely undo me with little more than the low rumble of your voice and the soft, teasing, maddening restraint of your touch.
“I’m starting to think you get off on this,” I said, crossing my arms, even though my traitorous pulse had quickened. Heat pooled in my stomach, turning my insides to mush.
“On what?” You pulled back with a chuckle, head propped on your hand, eyes sparkling.
“Making me sulk. Last night, for example—you get off on telling me no.”
You toyed with the spaghetti strap of my camisole, fingertips skimming my bare shoulder, sending shockwaves down my arm. Thanks to our new sleeping arrangement, every touch felt electric. Like live wire humming beneath my skin, waiting to catch fire.
“I definitely didn’t get off last night,” you said, holding my gaze as you lowered your lips to my shoulder.
The night before, when you’d pulled me to your chest and asked why I’d skipped dinner with you and Nic two nights in a row, I’d tried slipping my hand down the front of your pants—only to be redirected and denied. Again.
“But you could have,” I said, leaning away from those wicked, wicked lips of yours. “What’s wrong? You don’t think I’m up to the task?”
“I think,” you said, blue eyes gleaming so darkly, so hungrily, that my stomach fluttered—“you’re quite good at distracting me when you don’t want to answer a question.”
You had a point there. I rolled my eyes.
But distraction was never the main goal behind my wandering hands, Casey. I mainly just wanted to get into your pants.
“It’s just a bit weird, you know?” you said, wrinkling your nose. “Going at it while your dad sleeps two floors below us?”
“And yet on Halloween night, you had no problem going at it on the kitchen counter—on the very surface where he eats.”
“Valid point,” you said with a smirk. “But that was before.”
“Before what?”
“He looked me in the eye yesterday morning—from the kitchen island, strangely enough, as he ate his breakfast—and said, ‘Are you sleeping with my daughter?’”
I winced. “He asked you that?”
You nodded. “And I said, ‘Yes. But, for the time being, we’re only sleeping. Do you want me to stop?’ And he said, ‘If I say yes, will you?’ To which I replied, ‘Probably. But then we’d both have to deal with Elliot’s wrath.
Is that something you want right now?’ And he sighed and said, ‘Be careful with my daughter, Casey.’” You paused for a moment, gaze narrowed.
“Do you suppose he meant that as a threat?”
More like a word of caution, I thought. “Sounds like something any dad would say to the guy who’s crawling into bed with his daughter every night,” I said, reaching out to twist your bracelets.
“Listen,” you said, ducking to meet my gaze, “I’m suggesting we take a TV break because you’ve been quiet lately, and I actually do want to talk. Tell me what’s going on between you and your dad.”
“Actually, can we circle back to the getting off thing?”
“Elliot,” you said—in a deep, no-nonsense way that made my throat squeeze. “Tell me.”
So I sighed, deciding to give you the safest part of the truth. “He wants me to get back with Willoughby.”
You straightened. “You’re joking, right?”
“He thinks you won’t take it well, but I can handle you.”
You should’ve seen yourself, Casey: the firm jaw, the arctic gaze, your tattooed hand curling into a fist. “Yeah? Good luck handling me. Good luck ever getting that tosser through the door again. I dare you.”
“Wow,” I said, mouth going dry. “And I’m the one who’s supposed to have raging jealousy issues.”
“Why would Nic want you to get back with him?” you asked tightly.
“He doesn’t think it’s the right time for us.”
“Why?”
“Because you haven’t told the Harrises who you are yet.”
At this, your shoulders slumped and you sank back into the sofa. A fire roared in the fireplace behind me, causing tiny flames to dance in your eyes as you worried at your bottom lip. Then you said, “I’m not sure I can tell them.”
My stomach dropped. “You can’t be serious.”
“I can’t do that to Michael right now.”
“Do what?”
“He didn’t want Libby to be mayor. He didn’t want that kind of spotlight on their family.
He told me so over the summer—said he’d dread the next four years of his life if she won.
And she did. And here I am, someone who can put his family in the spotlight for an entirely different reason.
One that will make his life substantially more difficult. ”
“That’s bullshit. Michael’s a big boy. He’ll be fine.”
“Sure. Maybe eventually. Maybe if that’s all there was to it—but then there’s you.”
“What about me?” Like I didn’t know. Like it didn’t always lead here. Right here. Every time. To me. The problem in any given situation.
“He had a go at me the other day because he thinks I’m trying to take you away from him, and he’s right. I am.”
“I don’t belong to him.”
You stared at me a moment. “In his bedroom at his parents’ place, he used to keep a picture of you two tucked into the corner of his mirror. Did you know that?”
As someone who’d explored every inch of Michael’s room, of course I knew that. “Yes. A picture of us at the beach a few years ago.”
“Right. Well, now he keeps that photo tucked inside a book on his nightstand. He took it with him when he moved out.”
Now, this, I hadn’t known, and my heart sank. Poor Michael.
Through my leggings, you traced an indistinguishable pattern on my knee, your eyes locked with mine.
“You see, I’ve always suspected he had feelings for you.
It’s why I wouldn’t crawl into bed with you that time, why I put a stop to our first kiss, why I tried to pretend the second kiss never happened, why I’ve forced myself to fight what I feel for so long.
I want to take something my brother wants—has maybe always wanted—and I feel terrible about it.
It’s one of the worst things I could possibly do to him, and that’s what I’ve been trying to sort out: how I can have what I want without completely upending Michael’s life. ”
Dread lanced through me. “What are you saying?”
“He got the dad. He got the perfect, storybook family. He got you, all to himself, for seventeen years. So maybe if I”—you searched my gaze, hesitating—“if I let him keep the dad, and the picture-perfect family, I can have this one thing. I can have you. And maybe eventually he’ll forgive me for it.
And maybe when that happens, I can finally tell John who I am. ”
My eyes burned at the unfairness of it all. At the stupid, reckless decisions I’d made throughout the years to make this already complicated thing more difficult for you. “How Michael feels about me isn’t an excuse for you to put off telling John who you are.”
You shook your head. “I can’t have everything. I can’t have you and a proper relationship with John, too. I can’t be that selfish.”
“You can’t just not tell John you’re his son. That isn’t an option.”
“It has to be.”
“My dad won’t stand for it.”
“He’ll have to.”
“Casey, I’m telling you right now—he won’t.” Voice hard, I added, “And neither will I.”
“Do you want me to walk away again?” you asked, gaze flashing.
“Because that’s what I’ll have to do if Nic forces me to tell John, and Michael doesn’t take it well, or the news somehow leaks, and it puts their family on blast in the media.
We’ll have to wait until everything settles—until Michael eventually falls for someone else. ”
“According to my dad, we should wait, anyway. And he’s probably right.”
“And then what? I watch the guys at school trip over themselves to be with you next year? I watch you go through boyfriend after boyfriend because you’re finally free to do what you want?”
“Maybe I’ll just focus on school.”
“Right. Until you’re at some party, a few whiskeys deep, and some fucking son of a senator or oil tycoon tells you how beautiful you are.”
“Why does he have to come from a certain kind of family? Maybe he’s on scholarship and his dad’s, like, a car salesman.”
You stared back at me, so sullen and miserable that a tender little lump caught in my throat.
“And, anyway, do you think I’m that easy? After everything I’ve told you about myself?”
“I think,” you said, voice shaking with emotion, “that you’ll like how easy it is to give yourself to another person when you’ve got liquid courage running through your veins.”
“So that’s why you’re in such a rush to nail me down before college.”
You made a face. “Nail you down? Of course you’d see it like that. It can’t possibly be because I—” You stopped abruptly, choking the rest of that sentence back, more than miserable now. Wrecked.
“Because you what?” I asked, heart spiking with fear.
Throat working hard, you quickly looked away.
Please don’t say it, I thought. Not because I didn’t want to hear it. Never because of that.