Page 39 of Rain Delay

Willa watched me for a second, then softened just slightly.

“It is…So,” she said, gentler now. “How are you really feeling about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wy…”

“I don’t know…Weird? I don’t have a word to describe it.”

She smiles small. “In what way?”

I lean forward, resting my elbows on the table. “Like nothing’s changed, but everything’s changed at the same time. I know she hates me for what I did.”

Willa nodded slowly. “You still care about her,” she says.

I give her a small nod.

“And you don’t think she feels the same way, right?”

I scoff. “I know she doesn’t. I don’t even have to ask.”

“Or are you just afraid to ask her?”

I drag a hand across my face. “No. It’s just complicated. Things have to stay strictly business. It can’t go back to anything to what it was before all of this.”

Willa still had a small smile on her lips. “That’s what’s stopping you? The whole work thing?”

I let out a humorless laugh. “That’s exactly what’s stopping me. I’m not making anything awkward between us.”

“And you acting like this isn’t making things awkward between you? What are you afraid of, Wy?”

A lot of things.

My jaw tightened and I stayed quiet for a minute, looking away from my sister while she kept her gaze on me.

The one thing my sister was really good at was reading me like a fucking book. She knew exactly how I was feeling. I could try and mask it, but she would figure out how to get through the cracks.

“I screwed it up last time,” I finally said.

“So don’t do that this time.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“I mean, I didn’t say it was impossible. You have to put that effort in.” I hate how right she was.

Then she leaned forward slightly. “You don’t get a lot of second chances like that, Wyatt.”

I swallowed, nodding. I knew there was some reason the universe decided to put Eliana and me together like this — I don’t think we’ll ever get a true answer for that reason.

“You know it’s really irritating how you know all this shit,” I tell her, chuckling. “It’s almost creepy.”

Willa laughs, leaning back in her seat. “Or it’s that your older sister knows best and wants nothing but happiness for her little brother.”

“Even if it includes interrogating him in a restaurant when he just wants to enjoy his lunch with his sister?”

“It wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t mess with you a little bit, now would it?”

I heave a sigh, nodding. “I guess so.” I take a sip of my drink, looking around at everything that wasn’t my sister, with the hope this conversation would end.