things on them—panda bears, I think. I dunno, I haven’t looked that close.
“Sorry,” she whispers, taking a quick step back. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s… fine.” I try to look a little less like I’m about to rip her head off. “Couldn’t sleep?”
She shakes her head, brown hair tumbling over her shoulders.
“Yeah,” I grunt. “Me neither.”
“I didn’t want to wake anybody else up.” She steps into the kitchen and pads over to take a seat at the marble-topped island while I open the fridge again.
“You want something to eat?” I toss her a look over my shoulder as I open the fridge again.
“Yeah. Thanks.” She nods eagerly, sitting sideways on the barstool and draping an arm over the back of it.
Elliot’s little sister is a good kid. Sweet. She looks a lot like Elliot—except her eyes are blue, not brown—but their personalities are wildly different. Maddy’s more of a rule follower. She’s polite, bubbly, and likes talking to people. She and Cam get along the best—no surprises there.
Elliot’s not a people person at all. She’s sarcastic. Grumpy. Stubborn as shit.
My kinda fuckin’ girl.
“Uh, what do you want?” I ask Maddy.
“Is there any ice cream left in the freezer?”
…well. Since she wants some too.
I pull out the Moose Tracks and grab two spoons. We eat it right out of the carton at the kitchen island. The room is dim again, illuminated only by the moonlight streaming through the windows, and I’m okay with just eating in silence in the dark. Nothing wrong with that.
But after a few minutes, Maddy speaks.
“Do you like Elliot?”
A dull ache throbs in my chest, but I just dig the spoon into the ice cream again, lifting my shoulders in an evasive shrug. “Yeah. Sure I do.”
She drops her chin, cocking a brow as she narrows her eyes at me.
Okay, I’ve seen that look on Elliot’s face dozens of times.
She looks so similar to her sister in this moment that I have to force myself to swallow down the bite of ice cream I just took. It barely makes it past the fucking lump in my throat, and I look away, rubbing the back of my neck with one hand.
“You know what I mean, Dmitri,” she insists.
“Do I?”
“It’s okay.” Her voice is soft, and when I glance her way, she smiles gently at me. Elliot’s all thorny edges, but Maddy’s softer. It makes me feel protective—like I need to watch out for her while her sister can’t. “If you do like her, it’s okay. I’ve seen how you look at her.”
“Yeah, well. Looks can be deceiving.”
“I know.” She rests her spoon in the ice cream tub, watching me closely. “But I don’t think I’m wrong about this. Am I?”
She seems so earnest, like she really cares. About her sister. About me. About us, together.
Damn it.
I clear my throat, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. “Look, would I be here? All summer? If I didn’t… care?”
That answer is about as vague as I can make it, but the hitch in my voice on the last word gives away more than I meant to.
Maddy’s eyes soften, and she looks at me for a long while before speaking. “I thought so. I’m glad. And it’s not such a bad thing, you know. Needing someone.” Her brows crease, and pain flashes in her eyes. “I know it can be scary. After we lost Mom, it was easy to think I shouldn’t ever care about anyone again, that it would just be too hard to risk losing anyone else. And I’m so scared for Elliot right now… I hate it. It’s awful. But we can’t just close ourselves off. That’s no way to live, even if it feels like it keeps us safe. And the joy that can come with caring about someone—I think it’s worth it. Don’t you?”
I look back down at the remains of the ice cream. Damn, Elliot’s little sister is pretty fucking insightful. Maybe she’s right. I…
Jesus, I don’t know.
Where’s that fucking whiskey?
She must be able to see the sudden tension in my shoulders, because Maddy lets it drop. She takes one more bite of ice cream and slips off the stool. Then she pats my arm a little awkwardly. “Thanks for talking. I hope you can get some sleep. Nights are the worst, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” I let out a breath. “They really fucking are. You too, kid. Get some rest if you can.”
She gives me a small smile and then heads out of the room, disappearing into