Page 81 of Off Limits

CHAPTER FORTY

Simon

“Can you get that?” Cal calls from the kitchen when the doorbell rings.

Grumbling to myself, I stand and shuffle to the door, irritated that Cal will offer to order food, but apparently expects me to tip the delivery guy.

When I open the door, my face goes completely blank. Because it’s not a delivery guy at all. Unless Ellie’s started working for Uber Eats for extra cash. I mean, I guess that’s possible since I know she was worried her parents would cut her off if she didn’t major in what they wanted. Is that what happened?

But she doesn’t have any bags of food she’s looking to hand off. Her cheeks and nose are pink from the cold, just like they were earlier when I saw her, and her hands are shoved into the pockets of her puffy gray coat. Her mouth dropped open when I answered the door, and she closes it quickly, her forehead wrinkling in confusion as she looks me over in the sweats and T-shirt I changed into after I got home from the game.

“Simon? What are you doing here?”

“Uh …” I scratch my chest. Her eyes track the movement like she’s mesmerized. “I live here, so …”

She tears her gaze from my chest and huffs in exasperation. “No, I mean, Cal told me to come for dinner. I assumed you’d be … elsewhere.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Cal?” I yell over my shoulder, my eyes never leaving Ellie. “Your guest has arrived.”

The floor creaks with Cal’s footsteps as he comes to the front door. “Dude. What the fuck? Let her in. It’s freezing outside.” He pulls the door out of my hand and holds it wider.

Ellie eyes me warily as I step back and let her in the door, then turns her confused gaze on her brother. “Cal? What’s going on? You said you wanted to have dinner with me and apologize. What’s Simon still doing here?”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I stand in the entrance to the living room, also curious about Cal’s explanation. He didn’t say anything to me about Ellie coming over for dinner.

Cal holds up his hands in a calming gesture. “Okay, I can see you both have questions.”

“You think?” Ellie’s question is accompanied by a derisive snort, and my lips twitch in a smile. There’s the take-no-shit attitude I’m used to from her where Cal is concerned, though, now that I think about it, it’s only been safe subjects where she sticks up for herself like this. Dinner. What time they should leave to drive to their parents’. As far as I know, she’s never actually told him to stop staking out her dates or ever stood up to him when they were at the same party or … ever really stood her ground about anything of real consequence.

Suddenly everything she’s been trying to tell me since that one awful conversation in her room is making so much more sense. This whole time she’s been trying to tell me she misspoke, and I only heard her trying to explain it away. But she meant exactly what she said, just not at all the way I took it.

She thinks what she tells me isn’t important, not becauseI’mnot important, but because she feels likeshe’snot important. Like what she wants and what she cares about aren’t important. She doesn’t expect them to be important to me anymore than she expects them to be important to her brother or her parents, for the simple fact that they never have been.

So she stands her ground on unimportant things, because that’s the only place she can ever hope to win. It’s her only way of gaining any amount of control.

And suddenly I’m itching to be alone with Ellie. Not in a rip-her-clothes-off way, though if that followed the conversation, I wouldn’t be upset at all, but in an I-need-to-talk-to-her-right-this-minute kind of way.

I don’t know if my face is broadcasting flabbergasted realization, or if Cal’s simply paying attention to the unconscious but obvious change in my body language, but he stops mid-sentence and changes direction from whatever nonsense he was spewing before. He steps up to Ellie and grips her shoulders. “Ellie,” he says, his face grave, “you’re my baby sister. I’ve only ever wanted to keep you safe. And I’m sorry that I’ve gone about it in a way that makes you think I hate you.”

She starts to sputter something, but he shakes his head and cuts her off. “Don’t deny it. We both know I’ve been the actual worst as far as brothers go.”

“Well, I don’t know I’d go that far,” she hedges. “I’ve read some stories …”

One corner of his mouth quirks up. “Okay, fine, maybe not as bad as the guys who physically abuse their siblings. But still, I’ve been pretty damn shitty. And I’m sorry about that. I can’t promise to never fuck up, but I promise to work on it. And I promise that I won’t lose my shit if we end up at the same party again or something. And I won’t show up to intimidate your dates anymore, even though Dad will be bummed about that, I’m sure.” He ignores more of her sputtering. “Just promise that if you get in a bad spot, you’ll call me, okay? If you need backup, I’m there.”

She blinks up at him and sniffs before giving a jerky nod. “Okay,” she whispers, her voice a little watery.

“Aww,” Cal says in a patronizing voice as he wraps his arms around her. “I wasn’t trying to make you cry.”

“Shut up,” she says, her voice muffled against his sweatshirt. “It’s been a shitty week and Autumn made me a hot toddy.”

He pulls back and looks closely at her face. “You’re drunk? You walked here drunk in the cold?”

She rolls her eyes and lets out that same exasperated huff she gave me at the front door. “No, Cal, I’m not drunk. I had like half a shot, because I only drank about half of it since you called and ordered me over here.”

He pulls her into a hug again. “Good. Okay. And I apologize for being bossy, and I promise to try to be less bossy in the future. But I did it for a good cause this time.”

She wrestles her way out from under his arms and steps back, swiping hair out of her face. “Oh yeah? You think forcing me to come over so you can apologize is a good cause?”

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