Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Love is a thing that we use to make relationships, we wouldn’t have Valentine’s Day without it.
From the group text of Ellie and her sisters:
BETSY : I hate Valentine’s Day.
AGGIE : Aw, come on. All the chocolate…
BETSY : I didn’t say I hated Valentine’s candy. That’s what February 15th is for. I love Discount Candy Day.
MILLIE : Caleb sent me roses.
BETSY : Of course he did.
MILLIE : We’re going to dinner tomorrow. He’s driving up from Dallas and he made reservations at a fancy restaurant and everything.
ELLIE : Why did I even bother to check what you all were talking about? Millie, read the room. No one wants to hear about your perfect boyfriend and your perfect relationship.
AGGIE : How are you really feeling there, El?
ELLIE : It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine.
Oliver threw himself down, making the entire bed shake. Two little hands pushed against my shoulder. “It’s Balentine’s Day, Mommy. Time to get up.”
I groaned and cracked one eye to find him grinning down at me. He’d lost four front teeth within weeks of each other and seeing that gap-toothed smile always brightened my day. Except when it was before my 4a.m. alarm.
“Sir. We have talked about waking Mommy up before the alarm goes off.”
He stuck out his bottom lip. “But it’s a holiday.”
“It’s not Christmas.” I pulled my phone from the nightstand. Three fifty-two. There was something wrong about waking up minutes before the alarm went off. Like I’d been robbed of the best eight minutes of sleep in my life. “There are no presents under a tree.”
“You neber know,” he said with a sly little smile. “There could be presents.”
Not for me, kiddo. I had one Valentine this year and he was the cutest one to have ever walked this earth.
Oliver put his hands on my cheeks. “Mommy, who’s your Balentine?”
“You are, of course. You’re so sweet, I could eat you up.” I sprang up and enveloped him in a monster-sized hug, lifting him clean off the bed and pretending to chomp at his neck. My heart squeezed at his giggles.
He flopped down on the bed next to me, all rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes. “Gotta get dressed and make sure all my Balentines are in my backpack.”
I saluted him. “Get to it. Be extra quiet so we don’t wake up Mr. Dalton though, okay?”
Gil moving into the house hadn’t been the big adjustment I was worried it might be. It had been two weeks and we rarely saw him. Oliver and I were up and out of the house before he woke up, and in bed early. Gil, for his part, spent the evenings in his room.
Grinning, Oliver hopped off the bed and scurried to the door but just before he made it, he turned. “Mommy, I love you.”
“I love you, too, Ollie-Bear. You’re my favorite.”
I dressed quickly in some leggings, a t-shirt, and a University of Texas hoodie, threw my hair up into a ponytail and slapped on some moisturizer with SPF.
I shook my head, thinking of me at sixteen with a vanity full of eye shadows and lip glosses.
And the hour it took me to get ready to go anywhere.
I liked that those days were gone. It was nice not to feel like I had to look perfect every second of the day.
Maybe that was the biggest blessing of moving to Two Harts.
No one knew me here, or my past, or the stupid decisions I’d made.
I could be a new Ellie, a better Ellie. Or at least one who’d grown up.
After checking on Oliver’s progress (and helping him fix the shirt he’d put on backwards), I made my way to the kitchen to pack lunch for the kid and check on the overnight oats.
The oats were not for me—I preferred food with flavor—but I’d been mulling Sunny’s advice.
Gil and I did need to work together to figure out our next steps.
Plus, perhaps Gil would see my effort, realize what a kind, generous person I was and listen to reason when it came to not selling the house.
Thus, an olive branch in the form of overnight oats.
Although to be honest, an olive branch might be tastier.
I’d offered muffins and donuts and cookies and brownies, but he wasn’t interested.
My love language was baking but it was clear Gil didn’t have much of a sweet tooth.
That felt a little personal.
I rounded the corner into the kitchen, feeling pretty good about this plan of mine, and caught the image of a shadowy figure sitting at the kitchen table. I screamed.
“Holy fork!” Fumbling around, I found the light and flipped it on.
Gil squinted at the sudden brightness. “Good morning to you, too.”
Breathing hard, I pressed a hand to my chest. “You scared me half to death.”
“I see that,” he said dryly.
“You can’t go sneaking up on people like that.”
“Technically, you snuck up on me.” He dropped his forehead into his hand.
Even in the pre-dawn of the day, he had a certain smug “I’m in charge here” quality in his voice which grated on me. “I didn’t expect a man to be sitting in the dark in the kitchen at four thirty in the morning. So, excuse me.”
He looked a little rough around the edges, his hair mussed from sleeping. A pillow line bisected one of his cheeks. More than that, his eyes looked red and irritated as though he’d been rubbing them. He looked horrible, if I were honest.
“You okay?” I asked.
Wincing, he held up a hand to block out the brightness. “Would you mind turning off the light?”
“Oh, um, sure.” I snapped it off. The bit of moonlight streamed in through the window in front of the table, surrounding him with an otherworldly glow. “What’s wrong?”
“Just a headache.” His voice was low and gravelly.
“Sounds like a bad one.”
“Migraine,” he muttered. “I took something for it. Just waiting for it to kick in.”
“Oh.” I shuffled over to the counter and pulled the bread from the top of the refrigerator. “Will the light above the stove bother you? I need to make Oliver’s lunch.”
“It’s fine.”
The silence overwhelmed me as I worked on Oliver’s PB I could feel him watching me.
For a moment, and for the first time in a long, long time, I didn’t feel so alone.