Thirteen Years Ago
ELLIE
I’d been tinkering with our old computer, trying to bring it back to life, when I heard a pounding at the front door.
I frowned. It was the middle of the day, and my mom was at the Pontoon Patio, where she’d recently been hired as their daytime manager. And even if she were home, she never invited people over. We weren’t the hosting type, and no one ever knocked on our door.
It was likely the mailman with another package of something she’d ordered online, which meant he’d surely leave it on the porch in the same spot he left all the others.
Shrugging, I was about to return my attention to the computer when the knock sounded again.
Huh.
Tentatively, I stood and moved to the front, peering out the window. Despite the smudges covering the glass, I could make out the figure of a boy.
I smiled, stretching muscles that hadn’t been used in a while, and opened the door.
Not too wide, though—just enough for me to slip outside.
I didn’t need the cute neighbor boy to see the boxes stacked high in the hallway.
I knew that I could excuse them by saying we’d just moved in, but I also knew they’d probably still be there in a month or two or three.
Things just seemed to accumulate at our house.
“Hi!” I greeted, and Sully thrust his hands in the pockets of what looked like swim trunks, bouncing a bit on his toes.
“Hey!” His grin turned my insides, but in a good way. “Sorry to show up out of nowhere, but I didn’t grab your phone number or anything the other day. We’re heading to the lake in a few minutes and were wondering if you wanted to join?”
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, and I followed it to see a rusty pickup truck being loaded with inner tubes.
I smiled, wondering how they’d stay in the truck bed without blowing out onto the road, but then a boy with sandy-brown hair jumped up into it, looped his arms around the inner tubes, and plopped straight down.
I guess that was how.
“My sister’s coming,” he added, just as a girl with honey-colored hair hopped into the truck bed, too. “I told her you stopped by the other day, and she told me to invite you. I don’t usually let her get away with her favorite hobby of bossing me around, but I made an exception for this.”
Warmth spread in my chest, an odd sort of hope that maybe living in Rosewood would be better than the last small town.
“I—” I glanced over my shoulder, toward the boxes that were behind the closed door. “I’d love to, but it might take me a bit to find my swimsuit and—”
“I’m sure you can borrow one from Natalie,” he cut in and then, before I could stop him, marched back to the sidewalk and began hollering across the road. “Nat!”
The girl’s head jerked up as she squinted in the direction of her brother and yelled back. “What?”
“Can Eleanor borrow a swimsuit?”
Her eyes flicked up, momentarily assessing me before smiling.
“Yeah, of course! I’ll go grab a few!”
She leapt back out of the truck before I could say anything, dashing up the steps of their charming front porch and into the house.
Sully turned back to face me. “There,” he said, looking pretty damn pleased with himself.
He raked a hand through unruly blond hair as he strode my way again.
“Problem solved. We also have towels—” He began ticking the items off on his fingers.
“Snacks, sunscreen, floaties. So…” His hand dropped, and his bright blue gaze found mine. “Just need you.”
Something about the way he said it made my stomach flip-flop.
“I’ll come,” I said before I let myself overthink it.
His face lit up. “Great. The truck’s all packed.
My brother, Blake, is driving. He’s nineteen and annoying, but he’s good for some things.
And Theo and Noah, my other brothers, they’re coming, too.
And…” He gestured to his sister, who was now crossing the road with swimsuits haphazardly in hand. “Natalie.”
“Wow, you really were lying to me when you tried to say you were an only child.”
He had the presence of mind to look sheepish. “Yeah, there’s a lot of us.”
“Hey!” Before I could respond to Sully, his sister bounded up the steps of my front porch.
“I found like four swimsuits that will probably fit you. You’re a bit smaller than me, and I’ve actually outgrown all of these, so if you wanted to keep any of them, that would totally be fine.
” Her words fell from her mouth in a breathless rush, and then she jerked upright with a bit of awareness, her green eyes growing wide. “Oh, sorry. I’m Natalie, by the way!”
I gratefully took the swimsuits from her and grinned. “I’m Ellie.”
I’d only just met the London family.
But I had a feeling they were about to be my favorite people in the whole world.