1
Seth Mays
Can you come home early?
Elliot Crane
Is something wrong?
It’s
Complicated
I’ll be there in two hours or less.
Elliot wasout installing a new custom bar—the bar itself, shelves, counters around the room—in Green Bay. He’d hired a couple people to help: Shira Walkingbear, who was the tallest and most jacked human woman I’d ever met, and Hank Redcreek-Watie, a barrel-chested man barely into his twenties who grunted more than he spoke. Both lived on the Menominee Reservation—Hank had come up from Oklahoma to live with his great aunt, Lonnie, and avoid some kind of addiction problem, but Shira had lived on the Reservation her whole life and worked with Elliot pretty often when he needed a crew.
Shira and Hank were the only reason I felt like I could ask Elliot to come home, because I knew Shira could handle an install. And Hank.
That’s actually not true. I just wasn’t going to feel like a horrible person because I knew Shira and Hank were there to help.
This wasn’t the sort of thing you want to deal with on your own.
Itreallywasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to deal with on my own.
In fact, I wasn’t even sure Icould.
I needed Elliot.
I didn’t even know where to start. I didn’t think Elliot would have any answers, but if he was here, then I could at least manage to focus long enough to figure out what to do next.
It was kind of alarming just how much I’d come to rely on him—how much Ineededhim to feel like I was in control of my life. Especially since I’d gone out of my way to be independent… before giving up a few months later and moving into his house.
Our house. He called it that more often than I did, but he was doing his best to make sure that I had input into any decisions—like the new carpet in the living room, the design of the brand new four-seasons patio that had replaced the broken patio door, and the redesign of the gardens and the herbalism workshop we’d just put in the foundation for.
Even if it still seemed likehishouse to me, I at least felt like I belonged. Like I was loved.
Almost as much as I loved him. Not because I thought he didn’t love me—I just couldn’t imagine that anyone could ever love anyone as much as I loved Elliot Crane.
Which is why I needed him with me now.
And, honestly, Elliot might be the only person I knew who might actually have real advice for me, given the circumstances.
I was still staring at my phone, lost in the fog of my own bitter thoughts, when I felt his familiar warm hand on the back of my neck. I looked up.
“Hey.” I didn’t know what else to say. How to start. How to explain.
Elliot moved around to crouch in front of me, putting his hands on my arms. He knew me too well to think I’d called him home for anything good. “What happened?”
I focused on the details of his knuckles, the copper skin of his fingers dark against the paler skin of my arms, dotted with freckles thanks to the amount of time I’d spent outside in the sun helping him work in the garden and on the new building.
“My parents are dead.”
It was weird to say it. Extra weird because I literally hadn’t seen them since I was fifteen, when Noah and I had left without looking back. It felt like I should feel something. Grief. Horror. Maybe relief.
Nothing. Not even the tiniest twinge.
Elliot’s hands tightened on my arms, his features creasing into concern.
