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"How do you know either of us wants to?"

Morgan gave her a get-real look "I have eyes in my head, don’t I? That man wants you, bad"

"There’s more to a relationship than sex," Elle said

"I suppose," Morgan said, not overly iuy looked at o for it You’re lucky, you know that?"

Elle didn’t kno to respond to this

Morgan rolled her eyes "Oh come on If you were able to believe in Santa Claus for like, what, eight years, you can believe in yourself for like five seconds You got this, Elle"

"Hey," Elle said "I’d have believed in Santa a lot longer if you hadn’t made hbor out of his presents to his daughters, which she then put beneath our tree--and, by the way, our tree was a hed "See? I protected you fro to ht with you

"You and your tea"

"Do you want soan smiled She’d always been amused by the little habits of coed to every place they’d ever stayed The book of poeed to her father Elle had no idea if that was actually true or not but her mom had always sworn to it and Elle had decided she had to believe in soan said "I’d love so look "And, Elle?"

"Yeah?"

Morgan’s shed "I don’t hate you, Morgan And I don’t want anything to happen to you" She paused "Well, , like every tihed but sobered quickly enough "I’uilt settled in Elle’s gut "You haven’t"

"Oh don’t be nice now We both know I’ve done exactly that And I keeptrouble with my Plan A"

"Hey, at least there’s a lot an said and then hesitated

"What?"

"It’s kinda nice not to be alone in this any her da harder and harder because she was starting to understand just how alone her sister had really been Elle had always thought of herself as being alone too, but that wasn’t really true She had Spence and Willa and Pru and the others at her back

And despite his deceptions, she was beginning to realize she also had Archer And although she kneas trying to back off and let her be her own strong capable self, the truth was that no one was better at watching her back than hian asked