Nina looked up, eyes puffy with tears, reminding Elle of the baby sister she used to be instead of the grown woman who’d stabbed her in the back.
“Are you happy?” Nina asked softly.
Happy. Elle’s chest compressed with some unfamiliar emotion and she rolled her lips inward, trying to keep her composure as she thought about the last two months with Lane. Was she happy? Could she even recognize what that felt like anymore?
But warmth moved through her as pictures filled her head, of last night, of the evenings she’d shared with Lane, of the way she felt when she was curled up in his arms or even just bantering with him.
She didn’t know what exactly that feeling was, if it could be called happiness, but she knew it made her stomach dip and her lips want to curve. “I could be. Maybe. I’m working on it.”
“With Lane?”
Elle clasped her now damp palms in her lap and nodded. “Yes. With Lane.”
She tilted her head. “Is he really your fiancé?”
“No,” she admitted. “We’re…dating.”
“And he’s a sex surrogate? Like, sleeps with strangers? I googled it last night.”
Elle adjusted the hem of her dress. “Yes. It’s an important position at The Grove. He helps people who have sexual problems. It’s not seedy like people think. It’s a legitimate form of therapy.”
“Wow.” Nina leaned back in her chair and shook her head, an awed look on her face. “You must have confidence of steel, Ellie. I’m not sure I could deal with knowing that the man I was with had that kind of job. He must be a really great guy to make that worth it.”
Elle smiled, though a hollow feeling pinged in her chest. “He’s an amazing guy.”
“And super hot,” Nina said with a smirk. “Like, had to pick my tongue up off the ground when he walked into your kitchen shirtless that day. Christ.”
“That doesn’t hurt.” Elle laughed, the sound drifting between them and into a foreign space. She didn’t laugh with her sister anymore.
Nina pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I’m glad he makes you happy. You deserve that more than any of us.”
Elle looked down.
“What we did, what I did, was unforgivable.” Her voice wavered. “I know I’ve said it before, but I mean every word of it. I’m sorry. I am so sorry, Ellie.”
Elle’s teeth pressed against each other, emotion bubbling up past her guards. Nina had said she was sorry before but this one hit home. The regret seemed genuine. But Elle didn’t know how to close the chasm between them. So much had been lost. “I just don’t understand why you did it. Or why you didn’t come to me when he first made a pass at you or you started having feelings for him. At least give me a way out with dignity instead of making me the fool. You could’ve given me that.”
“I know,” she said, quiet tears surfacing again. “I was a coward and selfish. I let Henry tell me that fate intervened and that we couldn’t help ourselves and that you pushed him away, that it was just bad timing. I wanted to have that romant
ic story, the we-were-meant-to-be thing. But I chose to believe those things to make myself feel better.” She let out a rattling breath. “Truth is, I was lonely and depressed. I’d been fired and didn’t know what to do with my life. I resented you having it all together. You had the good-looking husband, the big-time job, the brains. It always looked like everything came so easy to you. So when Henry came to me, telling me I could give him something you couldn’t, I wanted to believe it. It made me feel special.”
Elle closed her eyes, the memories from back then assaulting her. Her sister sleeping in the guest room, the lost look on her face, their parents calling daily to see if Nina had gotten a job yet. She’d let Nina stay with them because she wanted to help, to give her encouragement, but she hadn’t. She’d been too wrapped up in building her own career to pay attention.
“I’m sorry,” Nina said again. “I don’t know how I could ever fix it, but if it makes you feel any better, karma has paid me back. I’m left with less than I had before. In my thirties, canceling a wedding, and working a job that I hate. I’ve wasted all these years on a man who used me to hurt someone else and I lost my only sister. I’m alone, and I deserve every bit of the pain that goes along with that.”
Elle lifted her head, finding Nina’s face tear-streaked but her eyes sincere. Her heart squeezed in her chest. “It doesn’t make me feel better to see you hurting. You’re my sister. You’ve broken my heart but I never wanted bad things for you.”
Nina lowered her head to her knees, her shoulders jerking with a sob. “I’m so sorry.”
Something broke inside Elle as she stared at her sister, a long-fossilized relic crumbling. Memories filtered through the haze. Nina falling off her bike when she was seven and running to Elle to fix it like a doctor. Nina curling up in Elle’s bed on nights when the spring thunderstorms got too loud. Nina painting portraits of all the animals in the neighborhood and putting on an art show so they could earn money to buy a puppy—an idea her father had squashed even when they’d made enough.
They’d been each other’s best friend for so long, their childhoods inextricably intertwined because their parents had rarely been home. They’d sworn to always be there for each other. They’d both broken that promise. Nina in a more dramatic way and Elle in a subtle abandonment, once she’d started her own career. She’d followed her mother’s example, and Nina had been left behind. It didn’t excuse what her sister had done, but it at least explained where her head had been. She hadn’t done it out of vindictiveness. She’d done it out of loneliness, and Henry had smoothly offered her an enticing solution.
Elle stood and walked over to her sister. She put her hand on her shoulder, the contact feeling foreign. “I believe that you’re sorry.”
Nina lifted her head, a glimmer of hope on her face. “Really?”
Elle sighed and stepped back, putting her hand out. “Come here.”