If It's Only Love (Lexi Ryan) novel Chapter 11

Easton

“Did you know your sister is seeing someone?” I ask Carter as he finishes his last set of squats Monday morning.

He grunts. “I think there’s a guy from school she goes out with sometimes. Nothing serious, though.”

“Does he make her happy?”

“Never met the guy. She doesn’t really talk about him, but I assume he’s decent enough.”

Decent enough. Nah, I’m not gonna step aside for decent enough. “He can’t be that good if she hasn’t brought him around.”

Carter freezes then slowly reracks the barbell before turning to me. “Why?”

His glare could knock a lesser man over, but I just shrug. “Because if he’s not the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to her, if he doesn’t treat her like an absolute goddess, I’m going to do everything in my power to convince her she should be with me and not him.”

The ire in his eyes morphs into shock. “Excuse me?”

“Come on, Carter. You know I’ve had a thing for Shay since she was sixteen.”

“Since you were a fucking college student drooling over my baby sister. Yeah, I remember.”

I nod to the barbell in the rack. He has one hand wrapped around the knurling, squeezing like I imagine he’d like to do to my neck. “You gonna let me squat that or just grope it all day?” He scowls, but I grin slowly. “She’s not a baby anymore, and you don’t fucking scare me.”

“She’s not like the girls you’re used to, East.” He steps away from the rack and helps me add another bumper plate to each side. “If you’re hoping to fuck her and walk away, save yourself the beating, because I won’t let that happen.”

I duck under the barbell, position it on my shoulders, and walk it off the rack. “Who said I want to walk away?”

“Are you serious right now?”

“I have feelings for her, Carter. Deal with it.” I rep out a set of five and rerack the weight.

When I turn back to him, he’s studying me. His eyes flash but he sighs. He scans the gym around us before stepping closer to me. “If you hurt her—if you make my sister cry one fucking tear—I’ll punch you in the nuts so hard you’ll feel them when you gargle. You get me?”

If I hurt her? Too late for that. But I smile and smack Carter on the shoulder. “She’s grown, C. Thirty, last I checked. I don’t think she needs her brothers to play guard dog anymore.” And the last thing I’m going to do is hurt her again.

Shay

“We’ll fly you in on that Thursday morning, and the interview will take place that afternoon. I’ll make sure they give you early check-in at your hotel. That way you don’t have to walk into the interview straight from such a long flight,” Sally says. She’s the administrative assistant for the English department at Emmitson University, and she’s been the point person for every portion of my application process, including the virtual class visit the hiring committee did with my American lit class last week. Apparently they liked what they saw, because now they want to fly me out for an in-person interview—the final step in the hiring process.

“That sounds good,” I say.

“Would you be okay with one of our graduate students picking you up at the airport?”

“Absolutely.” This isn’t the first time I’ve scheduled a flight to L.A., but it’ll be the first time I actually go. Easton lived there for thirteen years, but only next month, when he’s officially moved back to Jackson Harbor, will I actually make the trip. I swallow a bubble of hysteria.

“Everyone’s looking forward to meeting you, Shayleigh, myself included. You’ve been such a pleasure to work with through this process.”

“Thank you so much, Sally.”

“Don’t hesitate to call if you have any questions or need to make any adjustments to your travel plans.”

We say our goodbyes, and I put down my cell phone and take a deep breath. Then another. If I were home, I’d probably go take a nap, which is exactly why I’m working in Jake’s old apartment above Jackson Brews. There’s a bed here, but since I know how often my brothers sneak up here with their respective girlfriends/fiancées/wives, I find any comfort it might offer pretty easy to resist.

I’m two months away from defending my dissertation and finishing up a twelve-year stint in higher education. But every time I get a call for an interview for a tenure-track position, I wince. I’ve worked my ass off for this—for the alphabet soup behind my name and the chance to get tenure and teach something more mentally stimulating than freshman comp. All the dissertation research killed something inside me, so I applied almost exclusively at small colleges with heavier teaching loads and smaller publishing expectations. I don’t want the pressure of publishing articles every semester—of finding something new to say in a field already crowded with voices. But after teaching for the last few years and confronting the reality of students caring more about grades than knowledge, even the classroom has begun to lose its appeal. And the hard truth is that I’ll probably need to move across the country if I want a good job in my field. The most promising jobs are in California, Maine, and Oklahoma.

Ugh.

My stomach hurts.

I’m growing more and more obsessed with the possibility that this degree was a giant waste of time. I’m either going to have to admit that I don’t actually want the prize that’s at the end of this finish line or strap myself to a job that might just be okay in a place that might make me miserable.

The sound of the rattling doorknob draws my attention away from my computer, and I look up to see Easton pushing into the apartment. “Hey, beautiful.”

“I haven’t told anyone about the books.”

“Books. Plural.” He grins like I just told him I can secretly fly. “You’ve been busy.”

“And you did tell someone. You told me.”

I did. Somehow, I admitted my deepest secret—my secret hope—to Easton years ago. In my defense, it was a post-coital confession, and he’d just given me a series of mind-blowing orgasms that loosened my tongue and made me feel brave and invincible. He made me feel like I could have things I never believed possible. Things like him. “It’s not a thing, so please don’t go yapping about it.”

“Not a thing, and yet somehow while finishing a PhD, teaching a full course load at Starling, and being the perfect daughter, sister, aunt, and friend, you’ve managed to go from a few chapters on a book to books—plural.”

“It’s not anything. Just . . .” I shrug. Just a thing I want too much to pursue. Just a dream that’s so much part of my soul that I don’t know if I could handle the blow of inevitable rejection.