3. Ellie
CHAPTER THREE
ellie
“DON’T.”
It was impulsive, reflexive. The only word that came to mind. I couldn’t…do this. See him. Be this close to him without being close to him. I couldn’t hear his voice when I spent so much time trying not to think about it.
“Don’t what?” He cocked his head to the side. “Say your name?”
“You know…” I swallowed hard, and he finished my sentence for me.
“That I’m the only one who calls you that?”
My nod was slow.
“I didn’t, actually.” The tone of his voice was flat, telling me everything I needed to know about what he thought of me. Of seeing me, of sharing this elevator with me, of being within two feet of me for the first time in years. “It is your name, and it’s been a long time. Maybe—”
“No,” I cut in.
The corner of Sully’s mouth twitched, in a satisfied way.
“Stop,” I demanded.
I didn’t need him to be smug about that. I didn’t need him to acknowledge what it meant that I still didn’t let anyone else call me that.
“Mm,” he hummed. His hunched shoulders grew a little more relaxed as he sauntered a step or two toward me before seeming to think better of it. Pausing, he swallowed and then flopped back against the wall of the elevator. “Very bossy tonight, Eleanor.”
A shiver ran down my spine when he said my name. Again.
He noticed. Of course he did. “Sorry.” Sully cleared his throat, looking annoyed that he was apologizing. “I mean…very bossy tonight, Ellie.”
There was a tiny wrinkle of Sully’s nose when he said it, like it was unpleasant, maybe even revolting, to call me that. And honestly, I understood. It felt wrong, and I loathed it.
Releasing a breath, I tried harder not to be affected by his presence.
I’d hoped to avoid this—hoped to escape the night without getting close enough to Sully to know if he still wore the same cologne, the one I gave him for his nineteenth birthday.
But breathing was unfortunately hard to avoid, and when I inhaled, the scent of cedar and amber hit me like a freight train, drowning me in memories.
Lazy summer mornings between the sheets, late winter nights watching only the Christmas episodes of Glee, afternoons filled with textbooks and assignments and sneaky kisses in the library.
Words were hard to find. They hid behind the memories, but I managed to scrounge up four of them at his accusation that I was bossy. “Well, you know me.”
“I do.” His gaze raked over me, and I flushed from head to toe.
Hot and, ugh, needy. My body immediately grew desperate for something I recognized so acutely.
He knew me. This man really knew me. He knew me in ways that unfortunately couldn’t be replicated.
His eyes jerked away, to the ground. “Or…I did.”
It was like a splash of cold water, his words. A gut punch I deserved.
“Not much has changed,” I argued.
It was a ridiculous thing to say. Because everything had changed.
Awkward silence fell over us, and Sully shifted on his feet, the rustle of his clothes far too loud in the quiet elevator.
“I, uh, would have thought you’d be staying at Natalie’s tonight,” Sully muttered, ignoring my comment. His gaze remained downcast.
“Work booked me here,” I answered. “I would have thought you’d be staying at one of your brothers’.”
“Noah booked me here,” he responded and shrugged. “I guess he didn’t want his brother crashing his first night as an engaged man.”
Noah.
Noah was the reason this was happening, wasn’t he?
Because Noah had an entire penthouse in the city where Sully could have stayed, separate from his new house with Gemma.
I knew that because Noah had tried to get me to stay there.
Had texted me specifically to let me know it was an option while I was in town, to which I’d replied that I was staying… here.
The elevator dinged, and Sully lifted his head, eyes flaring.
We were on my floor. Or his. Had he even pressed a button on the display? He stared at the elevator wall like he wanted to punch it.
And then he did.
He slapped a hand over the elevator stop button, and the doors stayed shut, the machinery jolting to a firm halt.
Bewildered, I shifted my stare from my ex to the blinking button and then back again. “What are you doing?”
Sully relaxed back against the wall again, like what he’d done was totally normal. He shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
He sighed. “I heard the ding, and…well, I don’t know. I don’t think I’m done with this conversation.”
Surprising, considering how he was acting.
“It’s not much of a conversation.”
His gaze lifted to mine, more direct than I was ready for. “That’s why I’m not done with it.”
“Sawyer,” I deadpanned.
A muscle ticked in his jaw at the use of his middle name. A name only I called him.
Two could play whatever game was happening here.
He didn’t comment on it, though. Not verbally.
His eyes, however, were a different story.
They glittered in a way that I only partly recognized.
Usually, mirth lingered there, the kind of amusement that came with an inside joke.
But this was something different. A hint of danger sparked through his gaze.
Being alone with him was dangerous. The last five years of distance quickly unraveled until I could barely remember it.
It was exactly as I’d expected. Admittedly, a part of me had desperately wanted to know if it would be like this.
And now that I did know, I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or devastated.
“You had a conversation with every other member of my family tonight,” he said after a long beat of tension-filled silence. I couldn’t decipher the tone of his voice, and it bothered me. “Feels pretty rude that you don’t want to talk to me, too.”
Air slotted through my teeth as I sighed. The thing about Sully was that it was so very hard to figure out if he was serious half the time. I used to be better at it. Good, even. But now… Did he really not know why I hadn’t talked to him?
“I don’t think I talked to every one of your family mem—”
“You did.”
“Watching me, were you?”
“Yes.”
Sully shifted like he realized what he’d just confessed and then shrugged, as though resigned to the truth he couldn’t keep in.
It made me jittery, the knowledge that he had been watching me. Hot—with awareness.
Now, his eyes fell back to the floor, as though waiting for permission to look at me again. Like he’d known he shouldn’t have been watching me before, and he was trying to make up for it.
“I don’t know if I feel like talking right now, Sawyer.”
It was hard—talking to him. Trying to figure out what to say and what not to.
Trying not to fall into a familiar beat and banter that would be so easy.
Trying not to gravitate closer to him, gripping the bar that ran the perimeter of the elevator for dear life—a futile attempt to resist the magnetic pull that was Sully London.
Each time I’d moved since leaving Minnesota, I’d run to the coasts, making sure to put half the country between us. Because I’d known anything less would have me crawling back to him.
He glanced up at me from beneath his lashes, not fully lifting his head.
“Okay, Eleanor.”
My breath hiccuped, and when he noticed, he tilted his chin higher, giving me a look like he dared me to call him out on the use of my full name.
When I didn’t, having already decided I hated it when he called me Ellie more, Sully gestured to the button that would unstop the elevator and open the doors.
But I couldn’t get myself to move.
When he spoke again, his voice was lower. Coated in a layer of something I desperately wanted to pull back and expose. See for myself if it was still there, still existed. “You know I don’t want to push you, and I’ll always follow your lead. So by all means…”
He lifted his hands in surrender, as though giving me permission to leave.
But the thing was, maybe—just this once—I wanted to follow his lead. I wanted to be able to blame him for the agony of whatever the aftermath of this would be.
So I stayed, elevator still suspended. Would the hotel staff notice? Would we get in trouble? Did I care?
“What else do you want, Sawyer?” I asked.
His eyes sparked again. Dangerous, dangerous, dangerous.
A hazardous question for an already precarious situation.
“Eleanor, I—” He cut himself off, rubbing his jaw before continuing.
“I don’t know. I feel like I was pretty clear about what I want.
” The way his gaze roved over me made heat spark in my belly, something I hadn’t felt in so very long.
Not from a glance, certainly. “I feel like I’ve always been pretty clear about what I want. ”
My breath caught in my throat, likely snagging on my heart, which was lodged there. If I never found air again, I wanted the record to show that it would be this man’s fault. All I could do was shake my head and try to swallow past the pain.
This was a million times worse than anything I expected to happen when I agreed to come to Boston knowing that Sully would be here, too.
I thought, as long as I was on my best behavior, which I’d been really trying to be, we might be forced into a group conversation together, surrounded by his family members while avoiding eye contact.
But Sully’s stare was direct now.
I stared back, heart beating in my throat. Words still hard to produce. But as much as it was torture, it also felt good. To feel again, even if the emotions swirling inside me were a mix of agony, confusion, and awakened fervor. I deserved the pain, and I longed for the heat.
I’d spent years walking around with a hollowness in my heart.
It remained unmoved by anyone or anything, and suddenly, it filled.
For once, not with turmoil or anger at my own body but an awareness of it.
A burning licked my insides, spurring parts of me to life that had been dormant.
Just because I inhaled a whiff of cedar and amber.