Page 265 of Safe With You

“You’ll see.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.”

“It’s not.”

I laughed and slipped my bag from my shoulder.

I’d been here before, technically.

Once.

Long enough to pick him up before we went to breakfast last week because I’d insisted I could drive myself and he’d insisted that defeated the purpose of him taking me on a date. I’d made it as far as the front door before he came outside, so I wasn’t sure that counted.

This did.

There was something different about walking into somebody’s home when you knew you were staying awhile.

My eyes moved around before I could help it.

The living room looked exactly like I expected it to and somehow not at all. The couch was dark gray, wide enough that I could already picture Ellis stretched across most of it. A folded blanket was draped over one arm, and there were two books stacked on the coffee table beside a remote and a pink plastic bracelet I was almost certain didn’t belong to him.

A framed photograph sat on the table beside the couch.

Mila was younger in it, maybe three, sitting on Ellis’s shoulders with both hands planted on top of his head. He was looking up at her instead of the camera.

There were more pictures along the wall behind it.

Mila.

Tasha and Jacob.

Ellis standing beside an older couple I assumed were his parents.

And Elena.

I knew it was her before I had to wonder.

She was standing beside Ellis in one of the larger frames, her body turned slightly toward his while he looked at the camera. Mila was between them, small enough that Ellis was holding most of her weight even though Elena had one arm wrapped around her.

They looked happy.

Not posed or trying to be. Just happy.

I didn’t realize I’d stopped walking until Ellis came up beside me.

“That was her second birthday.”

I glanced at him. “Mila’s?”

“Yeah.”

I looked back at the picture. She was sitting in front of a cake almost as wide as she was, smiling at whoever was behind the camera.

“She looks so little.”

“She was.”

There was something in the way he said it that made me look at him again.