Chapter 8 #2
I swallowed, looking away. I couldn’t cry, not now. If I did, I wouldn’t be able to contain my own grief; it would come spilling out, messy and raw, like a hurricane.
“I know what that’s like not having a lot of friends,” I said instead, looking away so he wouldn’t see the way I was blinking fast.
“Come on, I’ve seen you with friends?” He sounded skeptical. “Eli said…” He paused. “I just thought you were all about your friends.”
I swallowed down the last of the lump in my throat. It was a fair enough assumption, given my history. “You’d think. But did you know only one of them checked in with me while I was in the hospital?” I held my arms, rubbing them against the growing cold of the night.
It was embarrassing to admit that.
“It makes sense. Except for Mia, I never spent time with any of them on our own. We never talked about anything except where we were going out that night. Or which guy we wanted to take home.”
For whatever reason, I chose that moment to look in Seamus’s eyes, and the heat that hit me when I did rattled me.
He might have been someone I’d taken home.
The thought made me slightly ill now. Not because I wouldn’t want it—because God knew I’d noticed how he looked in that sweater—like he belonged on a moor in Ireland, the wind whipping at his hair.
God, Seamus wasn’t just attractive, he was gorgeous.
He held so much behind those brooding dark eyes.
Even now, knowing how bad it would be, I thought about how we were all alone up here.
What would he look like pulling that sweater over his head?
Undoing the button at the top of his shirt, and then the next?
He’d be soft skin and firm muscle under there, I knew it. All the way down.
God, I’d been staring at him.
I looked away fast.
“Real deep, right? Maybe I should have tried talking about more with them. Maybe it’s on me.”
Seamus seemed to consider that for a moment. “It’s not easy telling people stuff. You never know what they’re going to do with it.”
He was right. He was exactly right. Those women I hung out with, I’d seen them scrunch up their noses when Mia or I talked about work. Boring!
I laughed then, a little bitterly. “I’m pretty sure half of those women only talk to me because they’re interested in my brothers, or because they think I can comp them drinks at the hotel.”
“Could you?”
There went that curl of his lip again, and the responding butterflies in my stomach.
“Sure,” I laughed. “But I never did. Listen, I may have been a mess in my personal life, but I never mixed business with pleasure. Or non-pleasure, I guess. I was always good at my job.”
“I know. It’s why Eli always said he wasn’t as worried about you as he could have been.”
“He said that?”
“Yeah. I mean, he didn’t like what you were doing. He was clear about that, but he trusted that you knew what you were doing.”
I was warmed by that. Eli. Who’d have thought? “You really do talk about everything with Eli, huh?”
“He’s the only one who really knows me. And maybe my Dad.”
My heart ached. My mom was like that for me.
“You’re lucky to have each other,” I said.
“Yeah.” He looked out over the sparkling lights of downtown Quince Valley. “I am. But Chelsea, I don’t always tell him everything. I just want you to know that.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering what that meant.
I could see him waiting to see if I’d say more, but unlike most people, he didn’t ask me to.
More tension slipped from my neck like water rolling over it.
Seamus wouldn’t expect me to open up. He wouldn’t try to pry like my siblings, or joke like my so-called friends that I never told them anything.
I wouldn’t have to explain to him or myself that I didn’t open up with anyone, that it wasn’t personal. I could just… be.
A breeze picked up, and I realized how cool it was, and how late.
Seamus must have too because he said, “I guess it’s pretty late.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes, it is, but I’d love to eat.” That was the truth.
There was the smile again, bigger now, and a little lopsided. “Good,” he said. “I’m starving.” He pulled out his phone and flicked on the flashlight, aiming it in front of us toward the path.
I really shouldn’t have said yes. It was confusing seeing him in this new way, as something other than Eli’s friend. As his own person with thoughts and feelings. And pain. And kindness.
But I was starving too.
There was just enough room for both of us to walk up the path side by side, with him pointing the light in front of me.
Maybe, just maybe, Seamus Reilly and I could be friends—the kind that companionably ate meals together. Looked out over the valley and into the stars together. Just existed together without expecting anything more. All I had to do was ignore that feeling I got when he looked at me a certain way.
Or stood close to me. Or took my hand.
Or did something kind, like holding a light for me, without a thought for his own feet.
If I did that, maybe this could be the best thing to come out of this whole mess.