Page 88 of The Exit Strategy

I’ve been Nolan Mercer’s sister for twenty-four years. I know exactly what he’s doing.

“Just say it, Nolan.” My palms itch as I stare at him.

“Say what?” He leans back and spreads his arms along the back of my sofa as if he has all the time in the world.

“Whatever you’re skirting around. Whatever’s been on the tip of your tongue since you walked through that door.”

He smiles at me. Warm and full of love. “God help the man who wins your heart, Junebug. He’s going to need it.Whoeverhe may be.”

My lips turn in, and I gnaw the hell out of the bottom one.

“I think I’m going to be on an apology tour now that I’m home, so might as well start with you,” he says.

Of all the sentences I’ve prepared for, that wasn’t one of them. “What do you mean? What do you have to apologize for?”

“With you? Japan.” He leans forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. “For the timing of it. For leaving when you were?—”

“I’m your sister, Nolan, not your child. You did way more for me than you had to.”

“I knew you were still reeling from losing Mom, and…” His gaze catches mine, so many questions he wants to ask. “Cole. I was just so tired of fighting with Dad for a company that was never his and?—”

“You don’t owe me anything, Nolan. I was fine. I am fine.”

“I was angry, Junie. I should’ve handled it differently. I was never angry with you.”

“Nolan.” I say it quietly because he’s working himself up into the guilt spiral that’s a Mercer family design flaw in us both, just different configurations of the same kind of hurt. Mine twirls toward spite while his is self-recrimination. “I was fine.”

“Until you weren’t.” His gaze cuts me down with a truth that’s hard to acknowledge.

I nod. “But I know how to pick myself back up now, Noley. I’ll be fine again.”

“Is that what you want?” Something must happen with my face because he smiles. “To be fine?”

I glance around, confused. “Doesn’t everyone?”

The sadness he tries to hide lashes out at me now. “No, Junie. Most people do not aspire to befinebecause fine is not?—”

“A descriptor for your feelings.” If my eyes roll back any further, I’ll have permanent eye damage.

“You’re in a retirement community in South Carolina,” he says. I lift my brow as if to sayso what? “Hiding from a viral video, and the man you’ve been in love with since you were sixteen is thirty feet away, yet you’ve both been doing an elaborate dance around each other for six weeks now. I thought by forcing you to coexist that you’d finally get your shit together, but that’s not going to happen if you don’t both grow the hell up.”

I stopped breathing the moment he said the word love.

“Don’t,” he orders before I can make a sound. “I’m not going to pretend I don’t see it anymore. I’m too old for that.”

The door slams at Cole’s house, dragging my focus to the window.

“He has his reasons…and I have mine.” It’s as close to honest as I can get.

“He’s always been complicated…especially when it concerns you.” Nolan looks at his hands. “But it’s not only about him. I just wanted to say that whatever’s happening here, whatever you decide, you don’t have to handle it alone. That’s what I should’ve said before I left for Japan. It’s what I should’ve said when Fen showed me Grace’s video. So I’m saying it now. No matter what happens in this life, I’ll always be there for you, and I think Cole will be too.”

My throat grows spikes just to attack the uncomfortable feelings growing there.

“Support has never been the issue, Nolan. It’s everything else.”

“Do you still love him?” He’s quiet in a different way now. Protective. Contemplative.

“It’s hard to say.”