Free It Takes Two by Erin Nicholas Page A

sit-around guy,” he said. “Isabelle’s not wrong about me liking the action and fun.”
    Emma pushed up to sitting, crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. “You know that you’re going to hate this quiet stuff she wants to do at the cabin, right?”
    He didn’t want it to be true. But he had to be honest. “I’ll try it, but I think I already know how it’s going to go.”
    “You and I are a lot alike,” Emma said. “Quiet nights at home aren’t really our style.”
    “And you’re going to tell me that I should tone it down, make it work.”
    Emma laughed. “You can’t tone it down.”
    “I could try.”
    “No. This is you. This is who you are. If you try to change you’ll be miserable. And you’ll fail at it and break my sister’s heart anyway.”
    Shane frowned. “This pep talk sucks.”
    “Look, I know you love her. I love her too. But I also know what it’s like to live with her.” Emma leaned her elbows on her knees and looked at him seriously. “She made me try decoupage. I decorated this cute little jewelry box that my mother absolutely loved and now cherishes.”
    Shane sat up and faced her, mimicking her sitting position. “You’re telling me there are good things about living with Isabelle. That I should give it a try?”
    Emma frowned and swatted him on the arm. “No. I’m telling you that living with Isabelle led to me learning to decoupage . You know that’s gluing little pictures on stuff, right?”
    “What kind of stuff?”
    “Frames, jewelry boxes—” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I did that because she’s my sister and I love her. We have to compromise because we don’t have the option of ending our relationship.” She paused and looked at him meaningfully.
    He did have that option. “You’re telling me to walk away?” Dammit. That was not the answer he wanted.
    “That’s not what I’m telling you,” Emma said. She sighed, clearly frustrated. “I’m saying that you can not let yourself think that all you have to do is decoupage a jewelry box and everything will be fine. But,” she added, “don’t let her convince you that if you don’t make a jewelry box, your relationship is doomed.”
    Shane frowned. This seemed complicated. “So are you telling me I should decoupage or I should not decoupage?”
    Emma pinned him with a direct stare. “I did it because I knew that even if it sucked, I wasn’t going anywhere. Iz and I have a long history of her being awesome in spite of the arts and crafts. She was there every day when I was in the hospital. She was there when I changed majors five times in college. She loved me even when I broke the vase that she’d had since my dad gave her flowers on her eighth birthday.”
    “And you don’t think we have enough history,” Shane said, feeling a huge knot form in his stomach.
    Emma didn’t have to confirm that. He’d known Isabelle for eight months—six of crazy passionate love and two of…whatever they’d been doing since she tried to break up with him.
    “I do wish you had a ton of stuff to look back at, like I do, that would make you truly determined to make this work.”
    He did have enough to look at, dammit. He felt fully determined to make this work. But Emma knew Isabelle and this situation better than he did. Her trepidation about this made him nervous. “Okay, what do I do?”
    “Go to the cabin with her and learn all about decoupage and…the knitting. Spend twenty-four-seven together. See how it goes for real. But don’t let her talk you into thinking that it’s decoupage or nothing. She’s going to try to scare you off. Even though she wants to be with you. Show her that you can still be together even if you never glue a stupid tiny picture of a flower onto a stupid wooden box.”
    The knot in his stomach pulled tighter. Emma was suggesting they test their relationship. A week ago he would have said hell yeah because he would have been confident that