Page 61 of Rules to Love By

He waved and turned, dashing down the stairs, only to run face-first into Eli’s chest.

“Oof!” Eli caught him by both elbows.

“Ow!” Marcus’s shoes tumbled loudly down the stairs.

“You’re leaving.” Eli frowned at him.

“I was just…” He glanced past Eli to his shoes sprawled on the rug at the foot of the stairs.

“Sneaking down the stairs, hoping no one would hear or notice you,” Eli guessed.

Marcus bit his lip and glanced up, only to be ensnared in Eli’s frank, dark gaze. “Hard to deny,” he said eventually.

Eli stepped to one side, clearing his path down the stairs. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Marcus swallowed hard, trying not to let the worms overtake his stomach. “Oh. Okay.” He took one step down.

“Jesus, of course I’m going to stop you,” Eli said, gripping his arm just above the elbow. “If you want me to.”

“I thought you left,” Marcus confessed, staring at the open buttons of Eli’s polo shirt.

“I ordered us breakfast.” Eli let him go but tugged the front of Marcus’s T-shirt to straighten out the V of his collar. “I was just coming up to see if you were awake, and if you wanted to eat upstairs or down here. I would have left you a note, but there was nothing to write with. Or on.” He leaned over the stair railing to where they could see Lucky standing at the pass-through window. “Which I already complained about.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Lucky muttered up at him. “I’ll look into it.”

Eli sighed. “Not sure what else I expected from him, I guess.”

“Why?”

“He said something about notes not being fair play or something.”

“What does that even mean?”

“No idea.” Eli straightened his shoulders. “Anyway. Breakfast?”

“Right.” Marcus motioned down the stairs. “My shoes seem to have decided for me, I guess.”

Eli turned around, and Marcus trooped to the main floor after him, picking up the traitorous shoes as he passed. It only occurred to him once he’d done so that he was still barefoot.

Eli noticed too and winked. “You wanna go back up?”

But now that he was down here, among other people, Marcus cared less about his bare feet than he did about maybe avoiding the whole walk of shame thing, so he shook his head. But when they rounded the corner, a full dining room confronted them. Marcus recognized most of the people as Griffon’s Elbow natives. “Can this town get up any earlier?” he muttered.

Tiffany knocked his ankle with one crutch, and he glanced at her. “Take the window seat.” She motioned with the same crutch to a comfortable-looking banquet seat nestled under the front window and around the corner, under a loaded bookshelf.

“That’s your writing nook.” Because he’d been around long enough to know that was where she habitually took up residence during the day, notebooks and laptop spread out around her.

“Pffft.” She waved the crutch again, this time at a high wingback chair. “There’s fine for me. Just doing a first draft today, so I don’t need much more than my notebook, a footstool, and a cup of coffee.” She raised her voice slightly on the last item, aiming the “request” towards the kitchen window.

“Working on it, Tiff,” Lucky called, though they couldn’t actually see him.

“I’ll move that footstool over,” Marcus offered, shoving his awkward bundle of clothes at Eli to rush and move a large ottoman close to the armchair.

“I do love the service here,” Tiffany said as she followed him.

Marcus got the heavy stool in place and helped Tiffany get settled, then turned to look for Eli.

He’d already made himself comfortable at the window seat and was bundling Marcus’s clothing into a more discreet roll inside his jacket. The shoes he’d left on the floor, the clean sock roll Lucky had brought the night before stuck in one of them.

---