Ash peeled his eyes open to a dark room and reached for Helena. But there was no warm body next to his. He was still a little drunk, but he remembered her getting up to go to the bathroom or something. When he glanced over at the open bathroom door, however, there wasn’t a light.

There was some movement in the hallway and he sat up.

“Helena?” he whispered into the dark.

The bedroom door opened and light filtered in from the hallway. His heart lifted for just a second, but then he saw his sister’s blonde curtain of hair.

Not Helena.

Lisa jumped when she saw him. “Jeez. Ash. I thought you were asleep. Your girlfriend said you were.”

“My girlfriend?” He couldn’t help smiling around those words. “You met Helena?”

“Yeah. She said she was sorry she had to leave without saying goodbye. It sounded like there was somewhere she had to be.” Lisa dropped something on the hamper. “That’s her shirt, by the way…and her bra. I found it in the hallway by the freakin’ door. Please tell me you got her all the way in the house before you got her naked.”

Ash waved a hand at her, wanting nothing more than for his sister to go away and leave him alone. “Wait.” He sat up straight. “If she didn’t wear her shirt out…”

“She had one of yours on.” Lisa put a hand on her hip and stood in the door. She made a perfect judgmental mom face—at least, this was what Ash imagined a judgmental mom would look like. Ash was more of a parent to Lisa than their mom had ever been.

“Which one?”

“Hell if I remember.” Lisa shook her head. “I’m going to be late. Are you okay here by yourself?”

“I’m fine, Lis.”

“I left you some ribs from Pop’s Barbecue in the refrigerator.”

“I can take care of myself,” he snorted.

“Just stay in bed, Ash.”

“It’s a broken ankle. Not pneumonia.”

“Well, the doctor said you really shouldn’t be walking on it. And let’s be honest, you probably outdid yourself last night with all the sex aerobics. You could’ve taken it easy.”

He settled back down into the bed, hands under his head. “Worth it.”

Lisa snorted. “Yeah, she had puppy-love face, too. I figured it was kinda a big deal when you brought her back to the house. Hell, I found her shirt in the doorway to Mom’s room.”

Ash’s insides froze at the word. Dammit. All these years, and he still couldn’t get past it. This was part of why he never brought girls home. The fact that Helena had dropped her shirt in that doorway without him noticing probably said more about how much he trusted her than anything else he’d done or said. He wasn’t quite sure why he trusted her, but he had from moment one. Something had drawn him toward her like she was magnetized to his belt buckle.

And other parts of him.

“You talk to her much?”

“Nah, she said she had to go. You’re welcome for the coffee, Helena; yes, I’m sure you had very loud sex with my brother last night, Helena; yes, I’m so happy you’re wearing my brother’s shirt and no bra, Helena. That’s just the visual I needed before leaving on my way to work.” Her voice was teasing, though, and it was obvious she wasn’t genuinely mad. Lisa came into the room, just a step, but it was a big one. “Does this mean you’re staying now?”

Ash felt his insides wrench up at the question. As much as he hadn’t wanted to admit it, he’d been hoping he could still get the doctor’s clearance to at least go to Montana at some point in the next few weeks. Even if he couldn't teach classes, he could still hang out with the guys, enjoy the icy mountain air.

He and his friends had been doing their off-season stuff together for so many years, Ash had lost track. Lisa knew the routine. That’s what she expected of him. The same old Ash.

But something had changed for him when Helena walked into that bar. He was ready to at least have the conversation.

“I don’t know,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “Honestly, I wish I did, but all I know for sure is that I have to stay here for now so Doc Quinn can keep looking at my ankle.”

Lisa took a seat on the edge of his bed. There was something really different about this moment. Not their usual banter.

“You’re gonna be thirty in a year, Ash.”

“Year and a half,” he corrected fast.

“But still. You’re gonna be thirty. Your body seems to be telling you something.” She glanced down at the ankle, even though it was covered in an old blanket.

“You think so?”

“I think if you don’t stop treating your body like a Six Flags ride, you’re going to break something important.” His sister still didn’t meet his eyes, but he could hear it in her voice. She’d been holding this in awhile. “You’re lucky Tyson was there.”

Ash bit his lip. He didn’t like to think about that bad landing. It had scared the shit out of him to get dragged like that. He’d been parasailing most of his adult life, but the weather had sprung up out of nowhere. If Tyson hadn’t been on the beach trying to get in the pants of a couple of tourists, there was a good chance…

It wouldn’t have been pretty if Tyson hadn’t caught that rope.

As it stood, it wasn’t terribly pretty. His ankle wasn’t healing as quickly as he’d hoped. But the doctor kept telling him to stay off it. The man didn’t realize that was like telling a drug addict to only have a little cocaine.

Ash was movement.

“You can say your piece, Lisa.” He sat up against the headboard and scooted over so his sister could sit fully on the bed. “I won’t stop you.”

She took a deep breath, gripping her blue-jeaned legs with long fingers. “Somewhere is your home. I get that it hasn’t been easy, being my stand-in dad, but it seems…well, ever since I graduated, you’ve just been—” Lisa sniffed and wiped at her cheek, “—anywhere but here. It’s like you can’t stand being around me.

“Hey.” He reached for her and she scooted into his arms. Ash rubbed his hands up and down her back. “You know that’s not it. I love you, Lisa. You’re my only family.”

“But I’m not enough to keep you here,” she whispered.

Those words stabbed into him like little needles. He couldn’t argue with her. He didn’t like being in Somewhere. But it had nothing to do with his sister. He’d tried to get her to leave with him. So many times.

“I’m sorry if you think that. I never meant to make you think that.” He pushed a long breath through his lips and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “You know it’s hard to be in this house, with everything…still…the way it is.” He almost couldn’t get the words out.

“It’s not hard for me to be here, Ash. This is my home. I love it.”

The pain inside amplified and he had to lean back again, like he was giving it some room to escape. He felt like he was always giving that pain a chance to leave him alone, and it just wouldn’t.

“Maybe if you would stay. Give things a chance… Maybe they could be better. Maybe you wouldn’t feel so…” She trailed off, but he knew the words she was about to say.

They were the same words he avoided thinking whenever he walked by that room.

Trapped.

Scared.

Alone.

That was how he felt, when he thought about his mother. About her leaving. He felt like that eighteen-year-old kid who’d come home from a basketball game to find his mother’s note. She’d said she needed a fresh start. That he was an adult now, and she’d left him the deed to the house. It was on him to make sure Lisa didn’t go into foster care.

He had that fuckin’ letter memorized.

“I don’t think that more time in this house is going to give me closure.” He squeezed her tight and then released her. “If you would move somewhere else…”

“But we own this house.”

Ash shook his head, the tension building in his chest again. There was just no way Lisa could understand how he felt about the house. The trapped feeling that descended on him every time he walked through the front door. The cloying, festering guilt. By the time their mother left, Ash had already been the man of the house for years, but he still hadn’t managed to get it right. He had been neither responsible enough nor reliable enough to keep their family together. And now he couldn’t overcome the urge to escape whenever he returned to this house—to go far, far away from this place where they’d failed to be a family.

“Don’t you have to get to work?” he asked, picking up his phone and touching the button to bring up the time. It was after 2:30 a.m. She had to be at work by three and the bakery was fifteen minutes away.

“I need to know if you’re staying, Ash.” Lisa stood, clapping her hands on her legs like she was shaking the dust off. “Because if you’re not, there’s a girl at work who might need a place to live, and I’m going to offer her your room.”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He didn’t have an answer yet. He wanted to stay, to see more of Helena, to be the man his sister needed him to be. But he didn’t know how long that would last.

“I’ll be here for at least a few weeks,” he said, shrugging. “So I don’t know what to tell you about the room. I’d like to say I’m going to stay, if only because of…”

“Helena.” Lisa crossed her arms and took a step toward the door. “Right. You’ll stay for sex. But you won’t stay for me. Got it.”

Ash swung his legs out of bed, ready to go after her, but he couldn’t find his stupid boot anywhere, and it was going to hurt a damn sight if he stepped out of the bed without it on. Might even do some real damage.

“Don’t worry about it, Ash.” She put up her hand, standing at the door with her shoulders slumped like a wounded bird.

“Lisa, that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“You’ll stay for Helena.”

“I’ve always come back for you.” He said, gritting his teeth and continuing to look for the damn boot. “If you knew how much I hated this house, you’d understand—”

“Oh, trust me. I get it.” She slammed his door and Ash climbed around the bed to continue the search, but he couldn’t find the damn boot. Before he could even reach for his phone, the front door slammed, and his sister was gone.

Dammit.

He threw one of his pillows across the room and grabbed his stupid phone, texting Lisa like mad. I didn’t mean to say it like that. You know you’re my only family. Please don’t be mad at me.

He’d lost track of how many times he’d tried to convince his sister to leave this place and come away with him. Every single time he left, he offered to take her. Sell the house, get out from under their mother’s ghost, get away from Somewhere. Even just get her a new apartment in town if she wanted to stay so bad.

But Ash didn’t want to stay at all. Even the promise of seeing Helena regularly paled in comparison to the prospect of walking past his mom’s room every day. Of course, Helena wasn’t even from Somewhere.

Staying had never been on the table. Not really. And yet…he couldn’t stand the look on Lisa’s face whenever she talked about his trips.

He lay back down in bed, waiting for his sister to stop being mad and text him back. His battery was almost out, so he plugged it into the charger. It would beep at him if Lisa texted back. Or Helena.

Ash realized with a start that he didn’t have her number. But for some reason the thought didn’t panic him. She’d come back. The connection between them had been…well…a bond. Something told him their story was just beginning.