Page 32 of No One But Us

James snorts. “A little bird named Ginny thinks a whole lot of things that aren’t even vaguely true, and she mouths off about most of them. But that one’s new even to me.”

“So you’re not? Proposing, I mean?” My heart rate doubles, at least.

He shakes his head. “Jesus, no.” He laughs in exasperation. “Like my life isn’t enough of a fucking mess. Where does Ginny get these ideas?”

I’m beginning to think she gets them from Allison, but I keep my mouth shut. “You just bailed on an internship. That’s not a mess—not like the kind I’m in, anyway.”

He grins. “Yeah, yours is kind of a train wreck, isn’t it?”

I smack his arm, and he laughs. It’s a low rumble in his throat, and it completely unseats me. I could be in the middle of a funeral and start thinking about bad things if I heard that sound.

“If only I had Ginny offering me a daily lecture on the perils of failure like she does you,” I say.

Her lectures to James are tedious even to me, so I can’t imagine how tiresome he finds them.

“My parents make Ginny look restrained.” He sighs. “They think I’m going to turn into Max.”

“No, they don’t.”

He sighs. “They will once they know the worst part.”

I raise a brow. “What worst part?”

He hesitates. “You won’t say anything?”

I nod.

“I’m not going back to law school.”

For a moment I am absolutely speechless. “But...but...you’ve only got a year left.”

“I fucking hate it, Elle. I’ve always hated it, but I was going to gut it out anyway until my grandfather died this spring. He’d just retired. He and my grandmother were going to spend the next two years traveling. They had these amazing plans. But instead, he spent his whole fucking life in that office, doing shit I seriously doubt he enjoyed, and then he died.”

“And you didn’t want to be him,” I conclude quietly. “That makes sense to me.”

He looks at me, something pleading in his eyes that makes me feel, for the first time, as if I’m the older of the two of us. “Does it?”

“Of course it does. Your family is so intense and goal-driven that I’m sure it’s hard to see, but there are millions of jobs out there, and many of them could make you happy. It’d be insanity to agree to the job you know won’t.”

“Can you not say anything to Ginny yet? This is as big a deal to her as it is to my parents. She was banking on me taking over the law firm so she’d be off the hook. At this point, she’s probably imagining that it’s me and Allison taking over,” he adds with a groan. “She’s going to fucking flip out.”

“When are you going to let them know?” I ask.

“As soon as I can tell them for certain what I’m doing in its place.”

“Which is what?”

He glances at me. “Last week I didn’t go to DC just to visit friends. I was mostly there to interview with the FBI. They made an offer. I’m waiting until I get the official letter to tell my parents.”

“You’re leaving?” My voice cracks as I ask the question.

He shakes his head. “Not until the next training opens for agents. Late September.”

Relief whistles through my chest. With my fear out of the way, I look at the future he’s creating for himself and see how absolutely perfect it is. James is a natural protector of things. It’s in his nature. Even as a kid, he watched out for me more than my parents ever did.

“I can’t think of a better job for you, James. What parent wouldn’t be proud of that?”

“My parents,” he says flatly. “My mother will take one look at the kind of salary I’ll bring home as a government employee and weep as if I’ve died.”