CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Ellery
Maybe you, of all people, can make Ford come to his senses instead of doing something he’s going to regret.
Ledger’s parting words as he strode out of the inn, clearly frustrated with Ford, are on repeat in my head.
What exactly did he mean?
And why would he think that I, of all people, could help?
When I talked to the three of them, things seemed fine. They asked questions, they murmured approvals about how they really think this Sharpe Signature idea could lead to something, and they engaged in conversation with me as if I belonged as part of the four of them.
To say I was a little envious of their sibling bond is an understatement. I’ve never had that. Only rivalry. Only disregard. Only competition.
So that’s why Ledger’s comment when he left took me by surprise.
Maybe I should ask Ford what his brother meant?
Then again, it’s none of my business. If he wanted to talk about it, he would.
Besides, asking him means getting involved in things outside of this little universe we’ve created here at the inn.
And I’m not one hundred percent sure how I feel about letting the outside in just yet.
“You were no help,” I say to the wooden stick in my hand, now devoid of the ice cream and chocolate that was on it moments ago.
Regardless, maybe there’s something going on and he needs . . . comfort? Space? Me?
Me.
Why would a man like him need me when clearly, he has a handle on everything himself?
Between S.I.N. business and the inn, the man works nonstop without complaint or fanfare. Some days he’ll take off in the chopper for the office in Manhattan at five in the morning, to return by noon, and then put in another eight or so hours here at the site.
He typically knows the answer to every question a contractor asks—even on issues or details I’m in control of—and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the man ask for help.
He’s a one-man show, and it’s incredible to watch him from the sidelines and learn from him by standing at his side.
So what is it that Ledger thinks Ford might regret? What is it that he isn’t telling me?
Clearly he has the business side handled, so whatever it is, it must pertain to his personal life. Family, then. Because it doesn’t seem like anything else exists for Ford outside of work and family . . . and me.
I sit on that thought for a bit and am more than reminded of all the kind things he has done for me.
Of course, there was Millie’s salon and the condo.
But there were also flowers left on the kitchen table after I mentioned how there was nothing alive in this inn.
A meal delivered when I was sick of eating the same food we have stored in our makeshift pantry at the inn.
A laundry service to come and take my dirty clothes.
A walk down the boardwalk when Roddy pissed me off to no end and he knew I needed to cool off.
Quiet nights when I read my book and he perused the Internet on his laptop where we found comfort in the silence.
Simple things that at the end of the day, make me smile. Make my day a little better.
It’s high time I do something nice for him. The question is what?
I jump at the sound at my back. So lost in my own thoughts over the man who made the sound, that I didn’t notice him.
“Sorry. I didn’t know you were in here. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says distractedly.
“You okay?”
“Yes. Yeah. Sure.” He opens the refrigerator then closes it. Does the same to the freezer before sitting and then standing back up and going to the window to look into the darkness outside.
“Can’t sleep?” I ask.
“Kind of. I don’t know. I . . . I just don’t know.”
Something’s wrong. Is it what Ledger was talking about? I wish I knew. Clearly Ford is distracted and unsettled.
Just like that first night we met.
It feels like a lifetime ago, but the expression on his face and the discord in his eyes are so much the same as back then.
I want to help him, but I’m not sure how to.
That doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.
“Ford?”
“Hmm?” He keeps staring straight ahead as I rise from the seat, all thoughts of having a second ice cream gone. Without thinking, I move through the darkened room to him, slide my arms through his, and wrap them around his waist.
The kiss I press to his shoulder blade is so unlike me and yet . . . strangely, it feels so right, like something he would do to help comfort me.
“Tough day?” I whisper against his back. He shrugs in return. “When I was little and had a tough day, my mom would let me sneak into her bed. She’d tell me there’s nothing a good cuddle can’t fix.”
The memory hits me out of nowhere. My mom’s huge bed.
My head on her chest with her steady heartbeat beneath my ear as she played with my hair.
The soft melody of her voice as she told me silly stories about me as a baby.
About her childhood. About my dad. The muted laughter we’d share.
The calm I felt as I drifted off to sleep to the quiet lilt of her voice.
He slides his hands over mine where they encircle his waist. I’m jolted back to the here, to the now, but my mom’s warmth is still wrapped around me, still cocooning me when I haven’t felt it in so very long.
“Wanna come cuddle with me?”
Ford’s body tenses momentarily. Almost as if he knows how much that question just cost me.
As much as I’ve enjoyed—and, oh, how I’ve enjoyed—the sex with Ford, I’ve yet to stay overnight in his bed with him.
Or let him stay in mine. Because that just seems too .
. . intimate. That makes things too real.
So my offer even surprises myself. “You sure?”
“Mm-hmm.”
We make our way through the inn toward my room. We don’t speak. Not as we brush our teeth. Not as he strips down to his boxer briefs and me to my tank top and panties. Not as we slide into my bed. Not as he rests his head on my stomach, arm heavy on my thighs, and I toy absently with his hair.
This feels . . . dare I say, normal?
Even the silence that settles around us isn’t awkward. I’m not sure why I thought it would when we’ve lived day in, day out, with each other for the past two months, but it clearly doesn’t.
Ford’s breathing slowly evens out to the point that I think he’s fallen asleep.
“My brothers are pissed at me,” he says quietly, jolting me back from the beginning stages of sleep.
“I’m listening,” I say.
“The biography about our dad. They want me to support the book. To participate in the promo tour and press junket for it like they are. I don’t want to.”
“Is there a particular reason why you don’t want to?”
His sigh weighs down the room. This is what Ledger was talking about. Ford’s lack of participation and his possible regret.
What the hell do I know about giving advice about this?
“Truth be told, the biography is great,” he says.
“The author did an incredible job bringing my dad to life. He was often misconstrued by the public as is often the case when someone finds success like he did. Rumors and gossip and supposition. But the author was able to weave together everything he learned from his interviews with my dad to show him as the man that Callahan, Ledger, and I knew him to be.”
“What an incredible gift to have a piece of your dad alive in a sense.”
He mutters something incoherent, but I get the gist that he’s struggling with something more.
“There are things in the book I never knew about him. Stories about him and my mom that I’m so grateful to know. More about events we only knew bits and pieces of.”
“Then why are you so upset by it? Is it because you’ve lived with him in the public eye your whole life, that you wanted to keep those last, new things you’ve learned about him as private?”
“I never thought about it that way. But no. Our lives under the microscope and in the spotlight is all we’ve ever known.
Every success, every failure, has been documented on some society page somewhere.
Hell, there are pictures of us at our mom’s funeral out there.
It’s a big montage of the grieving triplets that some paparazzo sold for a ridiculous amount of money. Nothing seems to be off limits.”
“I’m sorry. That had to be rough trying to cope and grieve and be in the public eye at the same time.”
“It is what it is. What we didn’t get in privacy we had in privilege. We know that. We’ve come to terms with that.”
“So what is it, then, about the biography that’s upset you so much?”
“There’s a chapter dedicated to our dad talking about us. I’m not a fan of what is and isn’t said. Callahan and Ledger don’t understand why it upsets me. They think I’m being a pussy and should get over it.”
I want to ask so many more questions but don’t. Clearly he’s telling me an abbreviated version of what he wants me to know, of how it’s made him feel. If I were in his shoes, the last thing I’d want is to be given the inquisition over it.
“Your feelings are your feelings regardless of what others think. You don’t need to justify them to anyone. I know for me that when someone tells me I shouldn’t be one way, it only pushes me further the opposite way.”
“You buying this inn is case in point.”
“Very true.” I laugh into the silence as I twirl a piece of his hair with my finger.
I can still recall very vividly Gregory and Joshua’s reactions when I met them after signing the papers at the auction house. The disdain and disbelief that etched in the lines of their faces when they’d learned I’d unexpectedly partnered with Ford, a man they were clearly jealous of.
When I’d taken something for myself, with someone else, and their say would no longer matter. Not that it did anyway, but in their own heads it did.
“It’s laughable if you think that Fordham Sharpe and his egomaniac brothers will accept any of your ideas on that godforsaken inn. He won’t take you seriously, and where will that leave you? Broke and at his mercy? A fucking laughingstock of a failure?”
Being backed in a corner is all I’ve ever felt before I took on this project. Before I took this leap. I know what it feels like to have your back against the wall, knowing the only way to step forward, to be heard, is to come out swinging.
That was my life. Is my life.
And maybe knowing intimately how that feels will allow me to comfort Ford some.
“This disagreement isn’t the same reason you fought the night of the storm when we met, is it?” I ask.
“It is.”
“Then I’ll tell you now, what I told you then, but in simpler terms. Fuck ’em. You have a right to feel how you feel. To be what you want to be. End of story.”
“In theory your advice, your plan, is flawless. Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to work, though.” He chuckles, sleep audibly edging closer. “And why is it that we’re always talking about me, Celery Ellery? Why do you always get off the hook?”
“I’m far from off the hook.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m an open book. Just ask me. Too bad there’s nothing interesting on the pages to read.” I chuckle.
“That’s one of your many party tricks.”
“What is?”
“Deflect, dodge, and then change the subject when it veers toward you. Make a joke. Laugh it off. Why are you so afraid to let someone get too close? To know you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t do that.”
But I know I damn well do. He’s just the first person who’s called me on it in a very long time.
Possibly because he’s the only one I’ve let get this close since . . . since Josh.
“Whatever you say, Elle. But at some point, people stop trying to know you when you won’t let them.”
His words hit me almost as hard as the unexpected memory of my mother.
She was the one I had shared everything with.
And just like my dad, she left. That was all the proof I needed that it was better to keep myself distanced from people.
Because if you don’t love them, if you don’t allow yourself to love them, then there is no loss when they leave you.
“But at some point, people stop trying to know you when you won’t let them.”
Those words replay in my head as we talk about everything and nothing. Favorite sports teams. Bucket list items. Pet peeves. First loves.
We laugh. We grow quiet. We get to know each other on a level we haven’t before. And only when it’s two in the morning do we decide it’s time to get some sleep.
“Good night, Celery Ellery.”
“Good night, Fordham the University.”
It’s comforting having the heat of his body behind mine, and the weight of his arm over my waist.
And suddenly, despite the yawn on my lips, I can’t sleep.
All I can do is think. About Ford. About tonight. About everything he did and didn’t say. About how close I feel to him.
“Hey, Ford?”
“Hmm?”
“I know the why.”
“I’m glad you do.”
I love that he doesn’t ask me what it is. That he doesn’t press me when most would. I think that’s the only reason I decide to tell him.
That’s a lie.
I tell him because it’s important for him to know.
“I broke up with Chandler because I agreed to marry him for the wrong reasons. I never recognized it until the night I met you.” I take in a deep, steadying breath.
“I felt more in one night talking to you, listening to you, laughing with you, than I ever did with him, a man I was going to marry. I left him because I never knew that feeling existed, and the thought of possibly never feeling it again scared the hell out of me.”
The admission takes my breath away. For a woman determined not to let herself feel, I just committed a cardinal sin and admitted how much he made me feel.
How much I wanted to feel again.
And while I’m scared as hell over putting it out there in the universe that has been so very cruel to me, I might even feel a tad bit of relief over saying it too.
And in perfect Ford fashion, he responds in the way I need him to most. He picks up my hand and presses his lips to my palm.
“You deserve everything good, Ellery Sinclair. Laughter. Happiness. Love.”
If only I could truly believe that was true.