Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
Elliana
“Are you sure about this? I’m serious.”
Carter barely stops short of rolling his eyes before he unbuckles his seatbelt and angles his body until he’s facing me. There are dark circles under his eyes after we talked for hours, but he looks sharp and focused. I’m glad. One of us needs to be. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I’ve told you, what, seven times this morning? At least?”
“But who’s counting,” I mutter.
“I have never been more sure of anything.” Lifting my hand, he presses his lips to my knuckles. “There’s no going back, so you’re stuck with me. I hate to break it to you.”
“I guess I’ll learn to live with it.”
He has a way of breaking through my fear and making me believe everything is going to be all right.
But this is huge, what we’re about to do. We talked it over until I almost lost my voice and finally had to go to sleep to get at least a little rest before going home together today. I still don’t feel exactly confident, but I have Carter next to me as we walk up to the front door, hand in hand.
The weather is a lot nicer today, but I still have a hot, sort of sick feeling inside. It’s nerves, knowing I’m going to have to face Mom. If there was a question in my mind of exactly how she feels about me, she answered it yesterday when she basically kicked me out of the car. It’s going to take a lot for me to keep myself in check. I’ll do it, if only for Paul’s sake. I know if I make things harder for her, that will just make it harder for him. And he’s been good to me. Better than she ever has.
“We’ve got this.” Carter sounds a lot more confident than I feel as we walk into the house.
It’s quiet, almost eerie. The shopping bags we left in the living room are still there. It’s amazing to think it was barely twenty-four hours ago that we went shopping. Everything was different then.
The sound of something hitting a plate in the kitchen makes me freeze solid. It’s like roots grow from my feet and drive down deep into the floor to hold me in place.
“I’m scared,” I whisper. Probably nothing I actually needed to say out loud, but I need to let it out.
“I know,” Carter whispers back, before tugging my hand. “But remember what we keep saying about that. You’re stronger than you think you are.”
Now is not the time I need to have that thrown in my face, no matter how nice he’s trying to be.
“Are you coming in, or what?” Paul asks from the kitchen. I can’t tell from the sound of his voice how he’s feeling, but I can’t imagine it’s much better than how he was feeling yesterday.
“Let’s get it over with.” He pulls me along with him down the hall, into the sun-drenched kitchen, where I’m sorry to see Mom sitting across from Paul in the breakfast nook. She doesn’t bother trying to hide her anger as we walk into the room, staring holes through both of us.
Paul, on the other hand, looks tired more than anything else. Concerned, maybe, but I don’t see the same bitterness. Maybe that’s a good sign? “Have you eaten?” he asks us.
“Is that what we need to talk about right now?” Mom rolls her eyes at him.
“I’m not hungry,” I whisper. Can she pretend to be decent for once?
Her sharp gaze hits me before she looks down at our joined hands. Carter’s grip tightens like he’s trying to tell me he won’t let go, that I’m safe with him. My spine straightens.
“This is all very nice,” she murmurs, staring at our joined hands, “and it’s very nice that you’re able to move past what happened, but you cannot be together. Not this way.”
“We’ve done a lot of talking,” Paul explains in a much quieter voice. “The writing’s on the wall. And we understand you might have feelings for each other, but you are stepsiblings. You can’t ignore that.”
Still, he doesn’t sound as cold or dismissive as Mom. Almost like he understands or is trying to. At the end of the day, that’s all we can ask.
“So this ends,” Mom concludes.
How am I supposed to forget how I feel? Am I supposed to see Carter every day and pretend? Do I go the rest of my life acting like there’s never been anything more between us? I can’t. I can’t live in this house with him, right across the hall, so close, but so far away. It’ll be torture. I can barely breathe when I think of it.
“So what you’re saying is…” Carter squeezes my hand again, glancing at me, and I wish those blue eyes didn’t make my heart swell like they do. “We can’t be together. We can live here together, but we can’t be together as anything more than stepsiblings.”
“Yes,” Mom says with a sigh, rolling her eyes again. “That’s the idea. I can’t believe you would even consider anything else. So this is what happened when we went away? You decided to twist Elliana up?”
“Irene,” Paul whispers.
There is something extremely gratifying about the disappointment in his voice. Granted, I can’t understand how he would expect anything more from her. But then, I guess he must have turned a blind eye to a lot of things if he figured it was a good idea for them to get married in the first place. He ignored all of her red flags—and there are many.
“I didn’t twist anybody up,” Carter murmurs.
I’m proud of his self-control. He is miles away from the Carter I first met—impatient, self-absorbed, arrogant. “And I know—we both do—that this is unusual. But it’s real. We have changed each other for the better, and I’m not going to pretend I regret a minute of us. I told Dad yesterday, I’m going to do everything I can to make up for the harm I caused.”
He takes a deep breath, rolls his shoulders back, and adds, “And if living here means having to treat Elliana as nothing more than my stepsister, I would rather live someplace else with her as my girlfriend.”
“You’re deluded,” Mom scoffs. Paul, I notice, doesn’t react. “How would you even start to do that? Where do you think you would go that anyone would accept the two of you together this way? Are you out of your mind?”
“Our parents got married,” I whisper, trembling.
This is it. This is when I grow up. It’s all been leading to this moment, because nothing has ever mattered more.
Rolling my shoulders back the way Carter did, I continue, “That doesn’t mean we can’t be together. We weren’t raised as brother and sister. We only met, what? Six weeks ago? Two months? And we fell in love.”
Wow. That wasn’t easy to say, but a wave of relief washes over me now that I’ve said it. Now that it’s out there.
Mom’s mouth falls open, eyes bulging. “I cannot believe you.”
“Do you know what? I can’t believe you.” Uh-oh. The floodgates have opened. There is no holding back what’s going to come out. And it feels good. It feels right. Pure energy rushes through me, making my heart pump and my nerves tingle. “You see this dress? You’ve been wanting me to dress this way forever, haven’t you? You’ve wanted me to be the kind of person you wish I was—confident, normal.” I make air quotes with my free hand.
Then I point to Carter. “He is the reason I’m able to wear this dress. He’s the reason I was able to get over my fear of water and get in the pool. He’s the reason I have friends at school. I know he’s done some pretty horrible things.” We can’t pretend it didn’t happen. “But I’m willing to move past it, because I am happier with him than without him. If you want me to be a real, whole person, this is how it’s going to happen. With Carter. Because when I’m with him, I feel like I can have a life of my own for the first time.”
She’s not capable of processing a word of it, because that would mean thinking of anybody besides herself. It’s a good thing I didn’t expect her to have this big, revelatory moment. I just needed to get it off my chest.
“Well, good for you.” She scoffs with a humorless laugh. “You found your voice, and all it took was sleeping with your stepbrother. Now the two of you want to run away together.”
This time when she laughs, it’s loud, high-pitched. “How do you think you’re going to live? How will you support yourselves? Because I know for damn sure Paul is not going to pay for it.”
“Yes, I will,” Paul says.
“What?” Mom snaps in horror. Her head swings his way so fast it has to hurt. “You’re not serious!”
“I am,” he says with a sigh. “I’ll help them if this is what they really want.”
I’m not sure if he’s saying it because he truly supports us, or because he feels bad for the way Mom is beating up on us.
“You can’t do that!” she almost screams, shaking.
He doesn’t match her energy. “I can, and I will, because it’s my money to do with as I wish.”
He glances at her, his jaw going tight. “So this is my decision.”
When all she can do is sputter, he waves an arm toward us. “Look at this. My son stood up to me yesterday and admitted what he did, but he also told me about everything he did to try to make it right. And come on!” He barks out a laugh. “I have heard Elliana string more words together right here in this kitchen this morning than I have the entire time she’s lived under this roof. It’s obvious they help each other become better versions of themselves. They shouldn’t be punished for the two of us finding each other and getting married.”
“I cannot believe this,” Mom whispers, folding her arms, crossing her legs, and swinging her foot in angry circles. “I must be dreaming this.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Paul tells her.
I really, really like him. He’s exactly the kind of husband she needs to keep her in line. He’ll give her plenty of freedom, let her take advantage if it makes her happy, but he knows when to rein her in, too.
“Unbelievable.” She throws her arms into the air and jumps up from the table, storming off. Paul wears a regretful little smile, exchanges a quick nod with Carter, then follows her.
“Did that just happen?” I whisper when we’re alone in the room. I’m afraid to move. Afraid to speak too loudly. Afraid I’ll wake up from the dream where everything went exactly the way I wanted it to.
“Yeah. It did.” And then his arms are around me, pulling me close, and I have everything I need. My knees are weak with relief, but it’s okay.
I’m not going to fall.
He will always keep me from falling.