Page 37 of Rules to Love By

Eli shrugged. “Now I don’t need to prove anything. To myself or anyone else.” He set the last bottle in its pile and turned to face Marcus. “Why?”

“No reason.”

“Seems like a pretty specific and personal question to ask for no reason.”

“It was a conversation I had with Tris last night. That’s what I was thinking about, by the way.” He grinned, a flash of flirtatious twinkle, there and gone in the space of a blink. “Not the kiss. No second thoughts about that. So you know.” And how he could look so blatantly sexual and also dangerously vulnerable, Eli couldn’t figure out.

“Good to know.” He let him get away with the not-quite-truth. For now. “But what about Tris?”

“We were talking about the Egg Basket.”

“Your aunt’s diner.”

“Yeah.”

“What about it?” Eli settled cross-legged on the floor. “What did you guys talk about?”

“He wanted to know why I was still here. Why I hadn’t gone back to reopen it yet.”

Eli said nothing, watching Marcus trace the pattern of the floral couch cushion he sat on. He had the feeling Marcus was the type to say what he needed to say when he was ready to say it. All he required was a bit of space and attention.

He was right.

“I’ve been telling everyone—well, myself, really—it’s because Johnathan—he’s my father’s half-brother, I guess, and Aunt Iris’s nephew too. Actually, I’m her great-nephew. Her brother is my grandfather. Johnathan’s father.”

He fell silent, as though he’d lost his train of thought.

Eli waited.

Finally Marcus grimaced and looked up from the couch. “I’ve been working on convincing myself I haven’t gone back because he kicked me out. And since she gave him the title of manager, and not me, she obviously wanted him to take over.”

“But?”

Marcus sighed.

“You don’t believe your own arguments.”

“Because she was never stupid. She couldn’t have missed that he was lazy and mean. That he stole from the petty cash. That the waitresses kept quitting because of him. Even the guys didn’t like him, and he was beyond rude to my gay friends.”

“And now you can’t ask questions about her motives.”

Marcus picked up the laptop and angled the screen. “We should get back to counting bottles.”

Eli frowned. “Marcus. She gave him a job title. She gave you a home.”

“Fat lot of good it does me now, if his job title lets him lock me out of my home.”

“It doesn’t. Not unless he’s also the landlord. Is he?”

“I don’t—” Marcus scowled at his spreadsheet. “I think Aunt Iris owned the building.”

“Then unless she left it to him, he has no right to lock you out.”

“I don’t know what she did.”

“Then you have to find out.”

“I don’t know how to do that.” He bobbed his chin at the bottle in Eli’s hand. “How many of those?”

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