Tell Me It’s Right (Sweetspire #1)

Chapter 43

Chapter Forty-Three

GRACIE

“Gracie? You good?”

“She short-circuited. Give her a minute to reboot.”

“No one thinks you’re funny, Leo,” I mutter.

“Ah, there she is.”

There’s still a fifty-percent chance of me passing out, but the light-headedness fades, and the world around me slowly comes into focus. The worst part is Leo is kind of right.

I’ve been through Philly before. Not a lot, but enough. And as soon as I got the job offer, I spent hours scouring the internet for every detail of the area I could find.

But it wasn’t until we were actually driving through the city with my entire life in boxes that it hit me we aren’t just passing through.

They’re going to leave me here.

All by myself.

Everything here is so fast and loud. So many people. So much activity.

My heart is racing by the time we make it to center city, and I’ve all but forgotten how to move my limbs when Keava and Leo start unpacking the car. Leo’s waits behind us with a few bags we couldn’t fit in mine.

And also because we needed two cars. Mine is staying here. Because I am staying here.

And they’re leaving.

“One foot in front of the other,” murmurs Liam beside me. He smiles when I meet his eyes, then squeezes my hand and pulls me from the car. “Come on. I can’t wait to see the place.”

I never thought I’d be living somewhere with a doorman, and I almost expect them to take one look at me, decide I don’t belong here, and shoo me away. But then we’re in the elevator, and I have a brand-new set of keys in my hand.

Luckily, since the place is already furnished, the moving-in process is fairly minimal—just my clothes and personal items.

“Damn,” Liam says under his breath as he sets the box in his hands on the kitchen counter and ventures to the windows on the far wall. “You can see Rittenhouse Square. This view must be amazing in the fall.”

The space is undeniably small. A double bed is tucked in the far corner with a desk beside it and a TV mounted on the opposite wall. They attempted to separate the kitchen from the “bedroom” with a love seat and a tiny bar table. Even with the small furniture, it feels overcrowded, but it’s not much different than the dorms I’d had in college.

“It seemed like you have a ton of restaurants and stuff around here, so that’ll be nice,” Liam goes on. “And there was a grocery store two blocks down. And I like the building. Seems really safe.”

The panic on my face must be really fucking obvious if he’s trying this hard.

His eyes soften, and he pulls me over to the windows so I’m standing with my back against his chest as he wraps his arms around me.

Liam’s right. That view really is amazing, especially compared to feeling like I was living in a cave in Leo’s basement. But instead of the dread I’d felt moving in there, without me noticing it, I guess it started to feel like home. Leaving it behind feels so much more bittersweet than I was expecting.

Not just the basement. But seeing Leo every day. Seeing Carson, Liam. Being close to the water. Being close to my parents, but not too close.

When I used to close my eyes at night and picture the way I thought my life would go after college, it looked a lot like this. A new city. An apartment that was tiny and cramped but at least it was all mine.

A small smile brushes my lips. I can picture myself going for walks through the park in the morning, grabbing coffee down the street. Maybe finding a fitness studio, though that might be stretching my new salary a bit too far. So, the gym in the building then.

And somehow, someway, this feeling of mourning my time back home will fade until this feels like home instead.

“What are you thinking?” Liam murmurs.

I take a deep breath, letting in the nerves and the overwhelm and the fears instead of fighting against them, so when I turn, I don’t have to force my smile.

“I like it.”

Between the four of us, the unpacking doesn’t take long. After taking me on a “practice commute” so I’ll know how to get to my building on the first day, the sun is already setting and it’s time for them to head home.

Leo hesitates in the door, a strange look on his face. “You have that pepper spray I got you?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, Dad.”

“And you need to be careful about where you park that car. There are break-ins all over the city.”

“I know.”

He opens his mouth, closes it, then frowns, like he’s out of things to say but doesn’t want to be.

“I’ll miss you too, Leo,” I say quietly.

He looks away and clears his throat. “We still have all your furniture in your room. Just. If you change your mind. You can always come back.”

Your room. Not the basement .

I hug him before either of us can get emotional because neither of us will know how to deal with that.

“I’m sorry to rush out of here,” he murmurs. “But, you know, Keava has to be up early and?—”

“Leo, it’s okay. Go. Get out of here.”

He ruffles my hair, and I swat him away until he ducks into the hall.

“You’ve got sixty seconds, Brooks, before we leave your ass behind!” he calls.

I turn to where Liam’s standing in the kitchen with his arms crossed.

“You’re sure you have everything you need?” he asks.

I nod. I don’t think I can speak around the emotion rising to the back of my throat. He wraps his arms around my shoulders and pulls me close, the scent of him momentarily blocking out everything else.

“Thank you for helping today,” I mumble into his shirt. “Text me when you get home so I know you made it back okay?”

“You got it.” He kisses the top of my head then holds me out at arm’s length. “I’ll see you soon, okay? We’ll FaceTime tomorrow so you can tell me about your first day.”

He kisses me goodbye, and I last an entire sixty seconds after the door closes behind him before the tears spill over.

The apartment barely looks different with my minimal belongings. There’s a small stack of books on the nightstand, a plant on the desk, my fuzzy pink blanket on the foot of the bed. The portrait Liam painted of me on our first date is the only thing on the wall.

It’s so empty, so quiet. I pace the length of it, looping around the furniture, taking in every square inch. The AC thrums loudly in the background. I grab a leftover slice of the pizza from lunch and a pillow from the couch, then plop on the floor in front of the windows so I can peer out at the city lights as night falls.

I chew the cold pizza, barely tasting it, and hug my knees into my chest. The world looks so much bigger from here. Cars are parked along the sides of the streets, and people walk back and forth on the sidewalks. Traffic stops and starts as the lights change.

Nothing about it looks familiar. Nothing about it looks like home.

But for some inexplicable reason, through the tears running down my cheeks, I smile.