“What?” Hunter blurted, sitting ramrod straight in his chair, and Eli exhaled in shock so deep, his hands started to shake. Given Marley’s spitting-mad attitude and the accusations that had accompanied it at the front door—not to mention how deeply his father had still been grieving at the time and how much a new wife and baby would have impacted their family—it was the last thing Eli had expected him to say.
He asked, “Then how did she end up leaving Millhaven?”
“Lorraine knew I didn’t love her. That I could never love her the way she wanted. The way she deserved. So she decided to leave town.”
Owen’s brows rose along with the color on his cheeks. “Just like that? She was pregnant with your baby,” he said, but their father shook his head.
“Not everything is cut-and-dried, Owen. I reckon her decision was far from easy, just like it was hard for me to let her go. It was her choice, though, and in the end, I respected that. We spoke from time to time, and I sent her money for Marley every month, from the day the girl was born until she turned eighteen. But on one thing, Lorraine was clear. She didn’t want Marley to know about me, so she gave me a made-up name and told Marley I’d died just before she was born.”
“And what about us?” Hunter asked, his arms knotting over his chest and his features hardening in a rare show of anger. “You weren’t ever going to tell us we have a sister?”
“I wanted to. I did.” Although his father’s voice was barely more than a whisper, emotion wrapped over every word. “At first, you were too young. And then as you got older . . . so much time had passed. Marley didn’t know, and Lorraine had made a life for them, so I just kept the secret.”
Eli closed his eyes and let the irony swamp him. He knew what it was like to keep secrets—big ones—from his family. But for Chrissake, he couldn’t even remember his own mother. He’d lived with the guilt of it his entire life.
Now he had not only a sister he didn’t know, but a family he didn’t recognize.
Owen shook his head, as if he’d been processing everything on a delay and it was just now sinking in. “It’s been twenty-four years, Pop. I get not telling us when we were younger, but we’re a family. You raised us as a family. We deserved to know we have a sister before she showed up on our doorstep as an adult.”
“Speaking of which,” Hunter said. “She did show up. What made Lorraine finally decide to tell her about you after all this time?”
A shadow flickered through the emotions already churning in their old man’s stare at the same time Eli’s gut dropped toward the kitchen tiles. “Lorraine passed a few months ago. I didn’t know until today, but it seems she told Marley the truth just before she died. Lorraine had Marley make the same promise your momma asked of her all those years ago.”
“To come find you so she wouldn’t be alone,” Eli said, a chill rushing down his spine.
“I’d guess that was the gist of it. Marley is . . . angry, though. I have a feeling this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better.”
“You can’t really blame her for being upset,” Hunter allowed. “I’m freaking upset, and I’m not gonna lie, Pop. I’m pretty angry, too. Owen’s right. We’re a family. We deserved to know about Marley.”
Their father pushed back from the table, just slightly. “You did, and for that I owe all three of you an apology. I never meant to keep secrets from you. I wanted to honor Lorraine’s wishes, but I was wrong not to tell you the truth.”
His voice broke over the last word, startling the hell out of Eli. Tears formed in his old man’s eyes, their presence slicing to the bone.
In his twenty-eight years, Eli had never, ever seen the man cry.
“Having a sister is a lot to process, Pop. For all of us,” Owen said quietly, and Eli had to admit, it wasn’t inaccurate. Marley’s existence was a familial triple-whammy. “It’s just gonna take some time to adjust and figure this out.”
“I understand.”
“But we’ll do it,” Hunter added, nodding across the table at their father. “Things might be pear-shaped right now, but we are a family. Mad or not, upset or not, we’ll get through. Somehow.”
Owen looked at the hallway, his doubt scrawled over his face. “In the meantime, Marley’s upstairs. What are you going to say to her when she comes down?”
The dread in Eli’s gut reached critical mass as their father shook his head in defeat, his work-hardened face wet with tears.
“I don’t know, son. I really don’t know.”
Scarlett bolted upright on the couch cushions at the turn and click of Eli’s front doorknob. A handful of scrawled research notes fluttered to the floor, and dammit, she must have fallen asleep somewhere between Salvador and Recife.
“Hey.” Her grogginess did an instant disappearing act as she took in Eli’s rumpled flannel, dead-serious expression, and bloodshot eyes, and good Lord, he looked like hell. “What’s the matter? Is everything okay with your father?”
“No.”
Rather than following up, the tread of his boots called out a path to the tiny kitchen connected to his living space. A soft glass-on-glass clink said he was pouring a nice, stiff drink, and the healthy slosh of liquid that followed told Scarlett said drink was big enough to do the backstroke in.
“Okay.” She stood, her heart thudding beneath her sleep-creased T-shirt. She needed to tell him about Rafael’s news, but at the same time . . . “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I’ve just spent all night talking, so not really. No.” Eli took a long swallow of what turned out to be Jim Beam, wincing. “I apologize,” he said, replacing the half-empty glass on the Formica. “That was shitty. It’s just . . . do you remember when the doorbell rang, earlier at the main house?”
Scarlett nodded. “Of course.”
“That was my sister.”
She replayed the words in her head, once. Twice. But yeah, those four words couldn’t possibly go together. “I’m sorry. Did you say—”
“My sister,” Eli repeated, throwing back the last of the bourbon in his glass. “So yeah. It’s been a helluva night.”
He spent the next fifteen minutes filling her in on the events of the evening, from Marley’s arrival at the front door to the back-and-forth between her and his father to the heart-wrenching conversation that had followed between Tobias and his sons. Scarlett tried to keep her questions to a minimum, she really did. But given the holy-shit factor of so much hidden truth coming to light, the task was pretty much a monster, especially when he got to the part where Marley had finally come out of the upstairs bedroom to join them for dinner.
“So what did she say?” Scarlett asked, her shoulders still high and tight from the shock of it all.
“Not a damn thing.”
Scarlett’s lips parted, although for a second, no sound followed. “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing with more than a syllable,” Eli amended. “She came down for supper right at five and muttered a hello to me and Owen and Hunter when we introduced ourselves, but she refused to even look at my old man, much less speak to him.”
“Wow.” A defensive ripple moved up Scarlett’s spine. “That’s a little cold, don’t you think?”
Eli laughed without humor as he turned to pace over the linoleum. “Of course I do, but I’m his son. Marley only knows one side of things, and she won’t even think about listening to anything he has to say. She’s pissed and she’s hurting and the one thing she doesn’t want is the only thing she’s got left. I don’t think she’s letting go of that any time soon. The whole meal was just intense.”
“So how did you leave everything?”
“I wasn’t kidding about my old man bein’ the only thing she’s got left,” Eli said, lifting one dark-blond brow. “If I had to wager, I’d say every last thing that girl owns is in her car—which by the look of it is one head gasket away from the scrap heap in the sky. Hunter got her to agree to stay at Cross Creek for the time being, but I can assure you she did it
out of necessity.”
Scarlett’s heart ached at the look on Eli’s face. She closed the space between them, stopping him midpace to slip her arms around him and pull him in close. “I’m so sorry things are tough for your family right now, Eli. I don’t know what else to say.”
He let out a breath, his body going lax against hers. “It’s just as well. I can talk about it till I’m purple, but that won’t change anything. At least, not tonight. Look, I’m exhausted, so—”
“Rafael called me tonight.”
Ah, shit. She’d totally jumped the gun. As usual. “I’m sorry,” she added, biting her lip as she pulled back to look at him. “But he called with some great news.”
Eli blinked. “Rafael. Crap, with everything that went on tonight, I totally forgot about Brazil.”
“Well, Brazil hasn’t forgotten about you,” Scarlett said over a small smile. “Rafael got a call from a man named Matteo Garza, who owns and operates one of the biggest travel publications in South America. They want us to cover the whole festival in a series of articles. All of it. Me and you.”
“All of it,” he repeated, taking a full step back to pin her with a stare. “But the festival lasts for a month.”
She let her arms, now suddenly empty, drop. “I know it might sound like a long time, but—”
“A long time? It’s a fucking eternity. I can’t be gone for a month right now.”
The incredulous look on his face mixed with something darker, prompting a hard bubble of unease to rise in her chest. “We planned for this, Eli. Maybe not for this long right off the bat, but you can’t be serious about not taking this job.”
He froze into place on the two-by-two patch of linoleum between the kitchen and the living space. “Of course I’m serious! How could I possibly go to Brazil for an entire month right now when I need to be here, with my family?”
Scarlett paused, trying like hell to smooth the emotion from her voice. “I know a lot went on with your father tonight. But this trip isn’t forever, and it is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Taking this assignment could write your ticket. It could make your entire career start happening, right now.” God, how could he not see how huge this was?
“It’s not that easy,” Eli bit out, his tone icing over and turning desperate all at once. “This is my family. My father.”
“Your father who believes in you,” she reminded him. “Your father who told you just today to be who you are and to take this leap.” She gentled her voice despite the rock-solid seriousness in her words. “Please, Eli. This is everything you’ve wanted for the last ten years.”
“I . . .” Eli broke off. “I can’t leave, Scarlett. I can’t.”
She tried, only half-successfully, to drag a breath past the tangled knot in her throat. “But I told Rafael yes.”
Eli’s chin whipped up, his eyes going perfectly round before narrowing over her. “You . . . what?”
“I told him yes.”
“For both of us,” Eli confirmed, the expression lining his face suddenly unreadable. “You said yes for both of us.”
Scarlett nodded. “We’re a team, so yes. I didn’t know about Marley when he called,” she started, but Eli cut her off with a single lift of his hand.
“And if you had? Would that have made your answer any different?”
The question stopped Scarlett cold, turning her palms slick. She loved Eli. Loved the family for whom he so desperately cared. But she’d never in her life been anything other than balls-out honest, and what’s more, she owed him so much more than to lie.
“No. It wouldn’t. There isn’t going to be another opportunity like this one, ever. I’d have said yes either way.”
“Right. Of course you would’ve.”
The words, the cold, callous tone that clung to them, hit her point-blank, stunning her into momentary silence. Finally, she managed a choked, “I’m sorry?”
A sound crossed his lips in a bitter approximation of a snort. “The thing is, you’re really not, though. You’re never sorry for anything. You live your life out of a suitcase, one big adventure after the next. I mean, you’ve said it yourself. You belong everywhere. Things like family don’t matter to you. So really, why the hell wouldn’t you say yes when the next assignment comes calling? Your job is the only thing that’s important to you.”
Scarlett’s chest hitched at an unnatural pace, her lungs burning for air that wouldn’t come. “Is that what you think? That I have no idea how to make those deeper connections like you do? That after all this time together, I don’t care about you or your family or your farm at all?”
She paused, and for a brief, beautiful second, she saw the no flickering in his stare. Brash instinct moved her forward, and she reached out to take his hand.
“Please, Eli,” Scarlett whispered, tears pricking behind her mutinous eyelids. But just like she belonged behind her camera, he belonged writing stories. They were a team.
They belonged together.
Her fingers tightened over his. “Don’t lose this chance to be who you are. I know you feel indebted to your family, but we can figure—”
“No.” His expression slammed shut, and he pulled his hand from hers.
“Eli—”
“No,” he said, the word slicing to the bone despite being far from a yell. But no, this was far, far worse. “You don’t know the first thing about how I feel, Scarlett. In fact, you don’t know anything about me. Look, this writing thing was a fun idea in theory, but in practice, it’s not going to work out.”
Her heartbeat ricocheted off her ribs. “You mean you’re giving up on it.”
“I’m being realistic,” he corrected, his arms forming an impenetrable knot over his chest. “Thinking I could leave the farm, that I could be a travel journalist—it was all just a pipe dream. I don’t belong out there.” Eli looked out the window, where the sky and the stars sprawled endlessly, and oh God. He wasn’t just saying that. He meant it.
“I think you do,” Scarlett whispered, because the brazen truth was all she had left.
But it wasn’t enough. “No, you do. So go on and go to Brazil, Scarlett. I belong here. And you don’t.”
With that, he turned and walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
At four fifty-six the next morning, Eli turned off his alarm clock. Of course, he hadn’t slept, so the feat was actually rather easy.
The getting-out-of-bed-to-face-his-locomotive-wreck-of-a-life part? Yeah, not so fucking much.
Eli stared into the shadows, a heavy ache centered right in the middle of his chest. His family had been pulled in a thousand directions last night, his old man worst of all. But that family had stood by him, through screwups and brash, mouthy decisions and everything else Eli had ever lobbed at them. He owed it to them to stay here at Cross Creek. Not to leave and become something else. And definitely not to impulsively get on a plane to Brazil and spend a month writing his head off with Scarlett.
Scarlett, who’d believed in him, too.
The only difference was, she’d been wrong.
Cursing, Eli tossed the covers from his legs and plodded toward the bathroom. He was going to have to get back to normal sooner or later. Might as well rip off the Band-Aid now. Plus, maybe they’d make some headway with Marley today. Maybe today would be better.
He looked down to see Scarlett’s cherry-red toothbrush standing at attention right next to his plain blue one in the holder, and God dammit, today was going to suck worse than an industrial-grade Hoover.
Eli turned his back to the vanity for the duration of his tooth-brushing, then went to his room to get dressed. Yeah, he could’ve stood a shower, but he was only going to get dirty in his first fifteen minutes at the farm. Besides, no amount of soap and hot water was going to cover up the fact that he not only hadn’t slept but also looked like he hadn’t slept.
Of course, his brother was all too happy to point that out as soon as Eli stepped into the kitchen at Cross Creek’s main hou
se.
“Whoa, E. I know we all had a rough night, but you look like shit run over twice.” Owen’s brows rode up to the brim of his Cross Creek baseball cap, and Hunter opened the cupboard over the coffee maker to pull down an extra-large travel mug.
“Sorry to say so, man, but Owen’s right. What happened to you?”
Eli laughed, because really, it was that or beat the hell out of something. “Well, let’s see. This look here was actually caused by a combination of factors, but an overabundance of Jim Beam and a nasty breakup were probably the two biggest. Other than the obvious secret-baby-sister thing that’s rippin’ into our family, of course.”
Hunter dropped the half-full mug to the counter with a thunk. “Ho-ly . . .”
“Shit,” Owen finished.
“Yup. That about sums it up.” Eli stepped in to take the mug from Hunter, because some coffee was better than none and he really hadn’t been kidding about the bourbon. Smartly, his brothers let him take a pair of nice, long draws from the mug before saying anything else.
Not so smartly, Owen poked the sorest part of the wound right off the bat. “What the hell happened with you and Scarlett? You guys can’t break up. You’re going to Brazil, remember?”
“She’s going to Brazil,” he corrected, reaching for the coffee carafe to go all-in with his mug. “I’m staying here at Cross Creek. Where I belong.”
Hunter looked at him, his confusion plain. “But you told us yesterday that you want to be a writer.”
“That was before we had a sister who hates our old man. Speaking of which, where are they?”
Eli hoped the question would morph into a subject change, but Owen didn’t budge by so much as a millimeter. The ass. “Both still sleeping. How come you’re not going to Brazil?”
“Pop is still sleeping?” Surprise uncoiled in Eli’s belly, waking him up along with the coffee. “It’s five thirty on a Monday morning.”
Crossing the Line (The Cross Creek Series Book 2) Page 31