Hold on, hold on. The sun shines for you, too.

Shadow, the Baron of Wishbone

GABRIEL

After that morning, it became a ritual. She joined me on the patio, limping to the same chair, her coffee cup in hand as the sun welcomed a brand-new day. I watched her surreptitiously as her eyes focused on the small sliver of golden light growing larger and larger on the horizon. I loved the expression on her face—cautious awe—as if she wasn’t sure she should allow herself to fall in love with anything beautiful, even the sunrise.

Sometimes it hurt me to watch her, hurt me to see that she was so lonely inside, so sure that the whole world was a dangerous place for her. I longed to show her that it didn’t have to be, but for now, I offered her the sunrise and a safe place to watch it. I prayed that someday soon she would trust that she deserved this beauty.

It scared me a little that I enjoyed our mornings together so much, because I knew they were destined to end. She was healing every day, and soon she’d leave here.

For a week, she’d been completely dependent on me for her every need. So sick, she allowed me to feed her and keep her hydrated. So weak, she couldn’t protest when I held her as the food came back up. So soft, I felt I had imagined the hard, resilient woman who needed no one or nothing. And strangely, being needed felt almost cathartic.

For twelve years, I’d been treated with kid gloves. No one had needed me. But Ellie had, and it had felt … right. Good. Despite her steely façade, her soul was tender, kind. Although I figured she’d probably hate it if she knew how vulnerable she’d truly been, if she remembered what she’d allowed me to see while she was delirious with medication and fever.

And then the morning I’d been changing the dressings on her ribs and she’d reached out and traced my hands, my fingers. I’d felt a disjointed sense of distress, but the longer she’d touched me, the more a yearning rose in my soul, so strong it took my breath. It was the first time I’d enjoyed another person’s touch since I was a little boy. And though I was still slightly scared, I also undeniably longed for more. I wanted to feel her touch again. I wanted her to stay. When she left, I wanted her to want to come back. To me. If only to see the sunrises …

Don’t lie to yourself, Gabriel. You’re falling in love with her. Maybe you’ve already fallen.

Was I? Was this what it felt like to fall in love? A sort of agonizing joy? Or was it just that Eloise was going to make it harder than most, and I knew that and still didn’t care?

Eloise.

God, I’d felt like I might fall over when she told me her name. What were the odds?

And what was the strange pull that made me feel like we belonged together? Was I a fool? And if the answer was yes, did I care enough to do anything about it? No. Somehow being a fool for Ellie felt like it’d be worth it. Even this tearing inside reminded me that I was alive. Not only that, I was living. I was taking chances, following my heart, willing to risk being hurt for a broken girl too scared to stake a claim to anything at all, most especially me.

She is going to hurt you, Gabriel. You know that, right?

Yes. Yes, I suppose I did know that. And yet I was still all in.

A few days after George had stopped by, I found one of my mother’s favorite decorations in the attic and hung it in Ellie’s room in the evening, knowing she kept the shade open so that the first light of dawn would wake her. The next morning, just as a slip of sun began to show above the horizon, instead of going straight to the patio, I went to her room and knocked softly on the door.

“Come in.”

I found her standing in the middle of the room, leaning on her crutches, a look of joyful wonder on her face as she looked around at the rainbows scattered on the walls. Her gaze found mine. “How did you do it?” Her voice was breathy and soft.

I smiled, pointing to the crystal hanging from the window. “It’s a prism. My mom used to have it hung in our kitchen.” I leaned against the doorframe, crossing my arms loosely, completely captivated by her obvious delight. “When you were feverish, you kept mentioning rainbows. I thought … I thought you might like it.”

She tilted her head. “What makes them?”

I smiled, slightly surprised that she’d never seen a prism before. I almost said something about refracted light, but decided the uncomplicated answer held more magic. “Just sunlight.”

She looked over at me as if she knew I was simplifying the explanation but smiled anyway. “Sunlight,” she repeated, a note of wistfulness in her tone. She stared at me for a moment and then looked around again, limping over to the wall, where she leaned her crutches against the bed and used both hands to cup one of the rainbows in her palms. She looked back over her shoulder at me and smiled, bigger and brighter than the rainbow she held in her hands.

Ah, sweet Christ. Ellie’s smile. I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath.

Her smile faded, but her eyes remained soft as she turned and picked up her crutches again. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

We took our usual spots out on the patio after pouring our coffee, and she let out a comfortable sigh and stretched her casted leg slightly where it rested on another chair. I took that as a good sign that it was healing well and wasn’t paining her as much. Her expression looked more peaceful than it had the previous mornings. Her facial injuries were looking better every day, her beauty now more obvious than the abuse she’d received. There was only a yellowish bruise on her right cheekbone and a scab along her jaw where a cut was still healing. And, God, I loved her face without makeup, loved the clean prettiness of it, the delicate grace, the way I could see what was really her and not some phony product meant to exaggerate and enhance a face that needed no such thing. Eloise was beautiful in a way that told me she’d always be at her loveliest first thing in the morning, bathed in dawn’s soft glow, her eyes vulnerable and still full of dreams. My blood heated at the vision. But I turned my mind from those thoughts…they’d come to no good, not now, not for me and not for her.

“Time for work?” she asked.

I chuckled. “You mean time for you to watch me work?”

Her carefree expression slipped. “I’d be more useful around here if I could.”

“I know that, Ellie. I was only teasing you. I don’t expect you to do anything more than heal.”

She looked uncertain, and I regretted making her feel that way. In actuality, I liked that she kept me company while I worked. Sculpting could be a lonely job, and although it was easy for me to lose myself in my work, while I was doing the labor that didn’t require a lot of focus, I loved having her there to talk to. Although so far we’d mostly spent time discussing what I was doing and what tools did what, I hoped that the intimacy of that time would cause Ellie to open up to me a little bit—eventually.

I had brought a lounge chair into the garage, and that’s where she sat while I worked, a blanket draped over her legs. She was still weak, and I could tell that her ribs still caused her pain. Not that she complained. I tried to make her as comfortable as possible. Even so, she usually only lasted a couple of hours before she was ready to return to bed, where she slept the afternoon away, waking for dinner and maybe a TV show and then back to bed. To be able to sleep so much meant her body was healing.

As I helped her get settled in the lounge chair, I thought about all the things she’d said while she’d had a fever and was on a strong dose of pain medication. She’d called out for her mama a lot, and she’d also talked about someone named Mrs. Hollyfield, red Popsicles, and rainbows. I wondered what it all meant. Eloise. She was full of so many mysteries, full of so much pain. I heard it in her fear-filled voice as she cried in the night, calling out to people I imagined long gone. People she’d once loved, if the tears that rolled down her cheeks when she dreamed of them were any indication.

I smiled over at her as I began chipping away at the cherub. “I think he’s a boy,” I said, running my hands over the stone that had taken shape in the last few days.

She tilted her head, obviously knowing immediately whom I was talking about. “Yes, I think so, too. What should we name him?”

I chuckled. “I don’t usually name my pieces.”

“You don’t? Why?”

I shrugged, a tremor of unease running through me. What I’d told her wasn’t completely true. I’d named my work once … and never since. But that was different. “Just never thought of it. What would you name him?”

She sucked on her full bottom lip, and a shivery feeling ran down my spine, my muscles tightening. I cleared my throat, trying to lead myself away from dangerous places.

“William.”

I smiled. “William? Why William?”

She shrugged one shoulder, looking slightly embarrassed. “I don’t know. I just always liked that name.”

“William it is. What do you think of your name, Will?” I tilted my head, pretending to listen. “He likes it.”

She laughed softly, sending a spear of joy to my heart. “Good.”

We chatted easily for a little while as I shaped William’s chubby body, smoothing his fat little stomach. I glanced over at her, and she looked peaceful. One arm was propped behind her head, and her cast was peeking out from beneath the blanket; her face was in profile as she looked out the open garage door, the yellow bruise on her cheekbone highlighted by the sun. She looked like a broken goddess, and if I knew how to paint, I’d want to paint her, to capture all her shadows and light. “Did you ever think of modeling?” I asked. “You have the looks for it.”

She turned her head toward me and sighed. “I answered an ad once for models before I started stripping.” She was quiet for a moment, again looking off into the distance before continuing. “I went to this studio, and the guy told me I needed a portfolio if I was going to work. A few pictures were a thousand dollars, but if I didn’t have the cash, there were other ways I could pay for the photos he took.” She looked back at me, the meaning of “other ways” clear. I clenched my jaw. Disgusting asshole.

“You’d like to think I left, wouldn’t you?” Her gaze was direct, challenging. Oh, Ellie.

I kept working, my hands moving in a way they’d moved a thousand times, finding the flaws, smoothing them. The ache inside me went clear to my bones.

“I never did get the pictures, though. I demanded them and he told me to sue him.” She laughed, a sound mixed with both contempt and a helplessness I understood, though I wished I didn’t. “As if,” she murmured, wrapping her arms delicately around her cracked ribs. She opened her mouth to say something, almost as if she was about to offer an explanation about why she’d stayed, but then she closed it, her brows furrowing slightly as if she wasn’t sure where to go with that thought. She looked away once again.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I finally said. “There’s a special place in hell for people who knowingly take advantage of others more helpless than them.”

She sighed. “Yeah, well … I guess hell better be pretty big, then.”

“There are far more good people than bad.”

“You think so? You of all people?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

She stared at me, a number of emotions moving across her face: disbelief, anger, confusion, and the barest glimmer of … hope. I saw it a moment before she shut it down, her final expression, indifference, the one she decided to keep. She shrugged. “We’re all entitled to our opinions, I guess.”

My chest felt tight with hurt and frustration, but she was talking, and it was the most I’d gotten from her since I’d met her, so I decided to push my luck. Let me in, Ellie. Let all that pain inside you out. I won’t hurt you, I swear it. Only I couldn’t tell her that because she wouldn’t believe me anyway. The best I could do for Ellie was to show her. I’d give her rainbows every day if I could only see the smile she’d given me this morning, see that wonder glowing in her eyes for longer than a minute.

Sometimes, like now, I felt like we were on opposite sides of a tightrope, walking toward each other. One misstep and we’d both go tumbling down, down, down.

I glanced at her leg, not really knowing if what I was about to ask was safe ground or not but deciding to take a chance, deciding to risk the fall. “You told the doctor you’d broken bones before. When you were a kid?”

She narrowed her eyes slightly and then sighed, leaning back. “My dad liked to smack me around.” Another challenging stare. “When he remembered I was alive anyway. A couple of times, after he’d been drinking, he forgot his own strength.” She shrugged as if she’d just told me it was going to rain later.

Fuck.

Another fierce wave of anger hit me. This woman had experienced hell on earth. I had, too, but of a different sort. It suddenly struck me how very similar we were … and how very different.

I chipped away at the cherub, revealing a tiny upturned nose, chubby cheeks. Ellie remained quiet, watching me work, expressions moving over her face, obviously reliving memories inside her head. A bleak sort of despair settled in her eyes. “You can’t fix me, you know.”

She’d said something similar to me at the Platinum Pearl and I’d questioned my own motives. But looking at her now, I knew that had never been my intent. I wanted her to heal, and I hoped I could be a part of that. But no one could fix anyone else. We could only fix ourselves. “No, you’re right. I can’t fix you.” I can only love you. And I truly want to try.

She set her chin in that stubborn way of hers before a sort of worn-out resignation seemed to fall over her like a heavy, invisible net. She started to get up. “I’m tired today.”

I dropped my tools, pulling off my gloves before going over to help her up, grabbing her crutches so she could stand on her own. “Ellie, I’m sorry if my questions were invasive. I didn’t mean—”

She waved me away as if what we’d talked about had been of little consequence to her. “It’s nothing. I just …” She rubbed at her temple. “I have a headache.”

I stepped back. “Okay,” I said quietly. “I’ll check on you later.”

She nodded, limping away. I let out a groan, walking back to William and bracing my hands on the table. Fucking hell.

You’d like to think I left, wouldn’t you?

My dad liked to smack me around.

Ah, God.

I felt hollowed out as I put my gloves back on, picked my tools up again, and started to get back to work. When my cell rang, I huffed out a breath, pulling my gloves off and reaching in my pocket for my cell.

“Hello?”

“Gabriel? It’s Chloe.” Her voice was so light and chipper, I smiled.

“Hey, Chloe. How are you?”

“I’m great. Thanks. I just wanted to call and let you know that I’ll be arriving in town on Monday. I’m staying at the Maple Tree Inn. Everything’s all booked.”

God, the timing of this was not good. Still, I’d committed. She’d responded with such excitement and genuine appreciation to the e-mail I’d sent telling her I agreed to the interview, giving me approximate dates for her arrival. I’d told her I’d make myself available for whatever schedule worked for her. There was no way I could have predicted the situation with Ellie, but there was also no way I could back out on Chloe now. “Oh, okay, great. I’ve heard really good things about the Maple Tree. A bed-and-breakfast, right?”

“Yes. It looks so charming. I know this is a work trip, but I have to admit, I’m looking forward to the time away in Morlea—it really seems like a beautiful little town.”

I ran my fingers through my hair, walking to stand at the open garage door, staring out at the trees and the road. “It definitely is. The whole area is beautiful. I’m looking forward to meeting you.”

“Me too, Gabriel. Thanks again for making time for this. I’m so appreciative.”

“Of course. Is there anything you need me to prepare—”

“Nope. All I need is you.” She laughed softly. “You know what I mean.”

I smiled. “I should be able to manage that. Should we come up with a schedule?”

“Yeah, actually, that’s why I’m calling. My availability is wide open so if you can e-mail me the times that are best for you, that’d be great.”

“Okay, I can do that. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m sort of caring for a friend at my home, and it’s a little hard for her to get around right now. Would you be okay with meeting here at my house?”

“Oh, of course, that’s perfectly fine. Honestly, I’m okay with wherever you feel the most comfortable. And I’d … love to see your home.”

“Thanks, Chloe. Okay, I’ll e-mail you the times that work best for me starting Monday.”

“Awesome. I’ll see you then. Thanks again, Gabriel.”

We said our goodbyes and I hit the end button, continuing to stare out at the trees for a few more minutes, thinking about Chloe and how much things had changed since I’d agreed to be interviewed by her.

Chloe.

Ellie.

In a way, both of them were responsible for the changes beginning inside me. Chloe was the reason I’d allowed myself to dream of possibilities in the first place, of love, of a family like the one I’d had once. I’d had no idea if Chloe was a woman I’d fall in love with once I met her, or if she would be attracted to me. But I had wanted to show up for the situation with her as a whole man, not some scared rabbit that jumped every time someone got in my personal space. And so I’d ended up at the Platinum Pearl. I’d ended up in a room with … Ellie. I let out a sigh. Wasn’t there a saying about making plans being the surest way to make God laugh?

Maybe we were all about to find out.