Page 72 of The Risks of Reuniting

I set an alarm and then put my phone on silent, not waiting for their responses. My family has done the overnight flight thing from Lima enough that they will understand me crashing. And we all agree that a rested Holt is the best Holt.

I wake with a start, heart pounding, and pry my eyes open as I sit halfway up, a little unsure of where I am. It's familiar but not, and I blink a few times.

"Good, you're awake," a voice says from my side and my head swivels to take in a woman sitting on the floor in the center of the living room, facing me.

It's Allie. Her naturally brown hair has purple streaks added, and she's dressed in exercise clothes, but her hazel eyes are the same as I remember them being and they're slitted in my direction.

I sit up, working hard to calm my heart, and spin to put my feet on the floor. It feels like I'm crawling up from being buried alive. I was in deep, and wonder how long she's been watching me sleep.

"Hey, Al," I say as I blink a few more times to bring myself to coherence.

She points at me and I see that she's holding a butter knife in her hand. "That's Allison to you."

I frown. "Your name is Allison?"

She rolls her eyes. "No, but to you, yes."

I have to fight off a laugh. She's really not going to let me off easily, and I'm grateful for it. Chloe deserves a friend who won't allow her to be misused and hurt. So, I settle back into the couch cushions, prepared to take my beating.

"How many nights do you think she cried after you left?" she asks, getting straight to it.

I hate thinking about that, and don't really want to know the answer. "If she was anything like me, all of them," I say regretfully.

"More than that."

"More than all of them?"

"Yes."

Alright. I nod. She can definitely win this round.

"How many dates has she gone on since you left?" she asks, pointing her other hand at me.

She has a whisk in that hand, and I'm dying trying to take her seriously. I've never thought of a whisk as a utensil used to make a point.

"At least a dozen," I toss out a guess. "She's a catch."

She waves the whisk at me. "She is a catch, and everyone knows it."

"I agree."

"Yeah, well, joke's on you because she refused to date anyone. Zero dates."

I mean, I don't hate that answer because it was also zero dates for me, but I'm not sure how Allie is hoping I'll react to this. "Uh, zero for me too."

She scoffs and taps her butterknife against her knee. "Right. We're going to pretend that's true."

I frown. "It is true. I haven't dated anyone."

"Uh-huh. Guy like you. Friendly, going places, acceptable looking."

"You find me acceptable? That's so nice." I razz her a little.

The butter knife is pointing at me again. "Barely. Chloe is way too good for you and she wasted too much time grieving." I open my mouth to agree, but she presses on. "And do you know why it was truly wasted time? Huh, Holt, huh?" I bite my lips closed, pretty sure this is one ofthose times an answer is not appreciated. "It's because it didn't need to happen. Needless grief might be the worst kind."

Well, that stings. I rub a spot on my chest that aches at the truth. "We tried . . ."

"You did not," she interrupts, and she's back to whacking the whisk on the ground. "There were a million solutions to your imagined issue."

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