“Rachel is coming?”

He nods, watching me carefully. “Will that make you uncomfortable?”

I’m trying not to react too much outwardly, but I feel my brows pulling down, setting a frown on my forehead. “I don’t think so?”

“That sounds an awful lot like a question,” he says quietly. Pushing off the counter, he takes two steps over to me. “I should have mentioned that. She doesn’t have local family. Or . . . very many local friends.”

I look around the room we’re standing in. “Did she live here with you?”

“No,” he says. “But she stayed here a fair amount.”

Oh. I look at the stove and see images of this unknown Rachel standing there, scrambling eggs in her underwear while Elliot showered. I picture him pouring coffee for her after, kissing her bare, pale shoulder. I wonder if this burning jealousy is how he felt seeing me with Sean and knowing I slept in the same bed as he did, let him touch me in ways Elliot had only started to.

Looking up at him, I say, “I’m trying not to have a fit about your ex-girlfriend coming over today.”

Elliot lifts one shoulder. “I understand. I might not have planned this so well.”

“It wasn’t intentional to have us both here to make me feel . . . jealous? Not even a little?”

“I swear it wasn’t.”

One look at his face, and I believe him. Elliot has occasionally been oblivious about how other girls in his life affected me, but he’s not cruel. Nodding, I look down at the floor. “Does she know who I am?”

“Yes.”

Another thought occurs to me. “Does she know I’ll be here?”

He hesitates, and guilt spreads in a flush up his neck. “Yes.”

“So she knew, but I didn’t? Elliot, seriously?”

He lifts a hand, scratching the top of his head. “I wanted you to come.” His eyes go warm and soft, the way they do when he feels urgent about something. “I really, really wanted you to come. And I didn’t want her to be alone today. But I worried if I told you that you’d back out.”

I probably would have. Nothing sounds more awkward than a holiday meal with Elliot’s ex-girlfriend.

“Does she think we’re . . . back together?”

“I don’t know what she thinks,” he says. “But it’s sort of moot, isn’t it?” He watches me carefully. “You’re engaged.”

Guilt slices sharply through me, sending a jolt of pain to my ribs. I’m not ready to tell Elliot that I’m single, but I’m not okay letting him think I’m being chronically emotionally unfaithful, either. “Things there are . . . complicated.”

He seems to marinate in these words for a few beats before reaching for my hand, tugging it. “Come on. Let me give you the tour.”

The living room is longer than it is wide, and at the narrow end is a tall leaded-glass window looking out onto a surprisingly beautiful backyard. There are fig trees, plum trees, and a tiny, lush lawn—a rarity in the Bay Area.