to her room. With Papa’s permission, he’d come to her room. He’d promised he’d be back, and he was there.
He’d held her while she cried. He’d made quiet love to her when she needed to feel something good, and he’d held her again when guilt for that good feeling had broken it apart.
He’d held her while they slept. When they’d woken, he stayed with her, doing what he could for her and her family through the rest of Christmas Day and into the next night, leaving only to go to his mother for an hour or so in the afternoon and come back with fresh clothes.
He’d stayed the night again, holding her while she cried again, because the grief was bigger in the night, when there was nothing to do but feel it.
And now she’d woken for a second time into a world where her sister was dead.
It was a strange thing, this grief she felt. There had never been a time in her life when she wouldn’t have said she loved Elisa—not even when she would also have said she hated her—but for a long time, most of the time, that love had been a passive thing. More an obligation than a true sentiment. Elisa was her sister, ergo she loved her.
Mostly, though, they’d been irritants to each other. Lia had been resentful of the attention Elisa got, and Elisa had been so wrapped up in her own internal dramas that she hadn’t had much attention for Lia, either. For two sisters so close in age, who’d spent so much time together, they’d mostly only tolerated each other.
Lia and Elisa had texted a few times since Elisa had transferred to Stanford—shallow questions about things like should they go in together on a present for their parents’ anniversary, or had Lia swiped Elisa’s cashmere poncho. But they had not had one real ‘sister talk’ in all those months. Not a single phone call or FaceTime.
Honestly, they hadn’t had a really real ‘sister talk’ since middle school.
Now Elisa was dead, and the honest love Lia had always had for her sister, even when she was numb to it, reared up and roared. A gaping chasm had opened in her chest, filling with cascading regrets for all the time lost being petty and pouty. Sniping at each other. Slamming the doors that connected their rooms to their shared bathroom.
If they’d had time, maybe they would have become close again after the competitions of childhood were behind them. But they hadn’t had time.
Lia sighed again, but this wasn’t a swell of calm. She ached with freshly brewing tears.
In his sleep, Alex tightened his hold of her, and she sank even more deeply into the solace his body offered.
She loved him.
She’d been tripping happily down that path anyway, but during this horror, Alex had swept her up and carried her the rest of the way. He’d been there for her, devoted to taking care of her. Keeping her from being alone. Protecting her from her own heartbreak.
Taking in her fingers the pendant he’d given her only an hour or so before disaster struck, Lia lifted it to her lips and kissed it. She thought he might love her, too.
“You awake, babe?” Alex asked drowsily.
“Yeah.”
His head came up, and he kissed her shoulder before leaning over it to see her face. “How you doin’?”
“Not great.”
“No, I know.” Keeping his gaze connected to hers, he kissed her shoulder again. “I’m gonna to have to go home again today, at least for a while. My mom’s kinda losin’ it a little. But I won’t go right away, or stay away longer than I have to—unless you want me to go. Or your dad does.”
Lia couldn’t imagine ever wanting him to go again, but of course he would have to. Papa’s approval was a boon she’d never expected, but she hardly thought it meant Alex could move in. Life would have to begin again eventually; patterns and habits and responsibilities would resume. The thing people meant when they talked about the ‘new normal.’
In the meantime, however, she wanted Alex close. As close as she could get him, as close as he wanted to be.
Lia looked into his warm brown eyes. She saw love there, she did. Please let it be love she saw.
“Alex?” His name quavered as she realized what she intended to say.
“Yeah?”
She swallowed hard to clear the way. “I love you.”
The seconds ticked painfully past while their gaze held and Alex said nothing. But she saw