Closing Books

Chapter 2

Dan forced himself to keep his eyes on his plate instead of looking up at Evelyn's disappearing figure.

"What's wrong with her?" Kate asked. "You haven't gone out with her since we went on our honeymoon?"

He pushed the food around on his plate as he looked up at Kate. "Something like that." He tried to speak as nonchalantly as possible, but when he saw Kate's lips thinning, he realized he wasn't doing a terrific job of concealing his feelings.

Months before the wedding, someone had set fire to Kate's house; a fire that almost killed both Kate and Evelyn. Immediately after, Evelyn retreated into her shell, barely speaking to him.

He'd thought that experiencing a life and death situation would bring about the epiphany of living life to the fullest and treasuring people she loved. Either that was a whole load of nonsense or Evelyn just wasn't like normal people.

Evelyn's cold-shoulder treatment toward him continued until the preparations for Kate and Tyler's wedding kicked into high gear. The planning for the wedding and the renovation of the mansion forced them to work together.

And it was clear that whenever they were together, they couldn't get enough of each other.

It was undeniable that they had terrific chemistry.

Whenever they were working together or going out on a date, they would spend half the night laughing away, and time always flew by way too quickly.

But despite all the laughter they shared, there was always an invisible barrier between them—the past she refused to speak of.

He didn't mind. He believed that with time she would trust him enough to tell him what had happened, and he was willing to wait.

When Evelyn wasn't busy pulling away from him or being all mysterious, she had a genuinely open and candid personality. He had never met anyone like her before.

He hadn't been with many women in his life. The two most prominent ones were already too much for him to handle. Throughout his life, his dramatic mother never spoke her mind and loved resorting to theatrics to instill guilt in him. Guilt was his mother's sole weapon of manipulating him into doing things her way.

Unfortunately, that unbearable characteristic had passed down to his sister as well.

Evelyn's frankness was a refreshing change. She had no problem telling the truth about anything, and they could chat about everything under the sun; everything except relationships and her past.

Each time he spoke of something that had happened when he was young, she'd laugh at his anecdote but never reveal any of hers. On occasions when Dan asked about her childhood, she would clam up and simply state that there wasn't much to talk about.

Though they weren't officially in a relationship, they spent all their time together and didn't date anyone else.

But Dan wasn't satisfied with their ambiguous status.

He knew what he wanted in life. He wasn't one of those who had flings and left a trail of broken hearts behind. He took each relationship he had seriously.

With Evelyn, he didn't even know if what they had qualified to be considered a relationship.

They always had a great time, and he couldn't think of any reason why they shouldn't be together.

But whenever he tried to push Evelyn into a relationship, she'd push as well; she would push him away. All communications would cease to exist between them, and she would treat him as if he never existed.