Chapter 10

It was on Wednesday night that I received an unexpected visitor. I’d just arrived home from picking up the twins and was in the process of wrangling them out of their winter gear—god, it was like herding cats—when there was a knock at the front door.

Mama had already fed them, thank God. So it was playtime, storytime, then bed.

Jane’s coat was half unzipped, and Rosie still had one of her shoes on as I groaned in frustration and rose to deal with the door. “Do not run off to your room,” I warned them both sternly, “ Please ? Papa is exhausted and does not have the energy to chase you down or clean your muddy boot prints off the floor.”

I’d just deal with this really quick, and then I could finish taking care of the twins.

Maybe it was Baxter? Sometimes he popped by to bring us leftovers. He was sweet like that. I had no idea what he saw in my brother, Paxton, but enjoyed his pastries way too much to openly question it.

Without checking the peephole—because this was Belleville—I tugged the door open with what I hoped was a smile, but was probably more of a grimace.

Work today had been long and grueling.

I loved my job, I really did. I wouldn’t have spent half my life in school for it if I didn’t.

But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t exhausting sometimes. That having everyone and their dog show up all in a row wasn’t enough to make me feel like my head was going to explode. It was Wednesday. Which was admin day.

Had I gotten any admin done?

No.

Not at all.

So fucking frustrating.

I maybe yanked the door a little too hard. Hard enough it slammed into the wall, making a horrible sound that made both twins startle, and…

Oh fuck.

Robin jumped.

Because of course it was Robin at my door after dark, dressed—again—in his ill-fitting winter clothes, his green eyes wide. He stared at the door, then me, then shrank a little. He looked scared. Of me. He looked scared of me.

Oh dear god, what had I done?

“No, no, no,” I soothed without thinking. “It’s okay.”

Robin had taken a half-step back, and that made me want to die.

“Sorry!” Robin blurted, eyes wide like a skittish animal. “You’re probably busy. I should’ve called—except I don’t have your number. And it felt weird to ask Miles for it. Creepy kinda? I dunno.”

We were both far too concerned about appearing creepy for our own good.

“I’m not busy,” I said, pushing aside the day’s frustration. I let it seep away, took a steadying breath, and reached out for him. He didn’t flinch—thank God, but he did look nervous as I gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Would you like to come in?”

“No,” Robin blurted and then laughed. “I mean, yes. Of course I do.” He peeked around my shoulder at the twins, gave a happy wave, and then his eyes narrowed as he took in the space behind them. The long wooden hallway. The grandfather clock at the end of it. The ornate rugs, and the kitchen island that was visible from the door.

“Then come on in,” I pulled on him, but he resisted.

After ogling my home for another greedy second, Robin sucked in a breath, his heels digging in. “I finished the thing,” he told me, eyes bright and manic. There was a smudge of something black on his cheek. Paint, maybe?

I ached to reach out and scrub it away with my thumb.

But I’d taken a lot of liberties already. I’d frightened him when he was supposed to be the one trying to frighten me. I didn’t want to push too hard, for fear I’d send him running. Robin always looked like he had one foot out the door. Like he was one wrong word from disappearing entirely.

“You finished the thing?” My eyebrows rose.

Robin nodded. “Been working on it all week! Miles and Bubba helped.” He nodded again, even more jerkily. The dark circles beneath his eyes were not better. In fact, he somehow looked worse. Skin sallow, a twitch to him that betrayed his exhaustion.

“That’s very sweet of?—”

“Are you ready?” Robin rocked back and forth on his heels, clearly excited. “To see it? Because it’s ready. And up. And ready.”

“I wanna see the thing,” Rosie piped up from behind me, because of course she’d been listening.

“She wants to see it!” Robin pointed at her, like he was trying to convince me—and I wasn’t already pulling my shoes back on.

“I…wanna see it too,” Jane added, more quietly, her tiny hand clutching at my coat. I gave her a little pat to soothe her, took a deep breath, and tried to reroute my thoughts.

I had a hard time when plans got changed.

Had a harder time with surprises, if I was being honest.

It would take me a second to wrap my head around the fact that we would not be sitting down for our usual routine tonight. It’d be Robin’s surprise, and then straight into the bath, and then bed.

Taking a steadying breath, I forced away my unease—knowing it was a product of my brain’s betrayal—before I turned back to the kids to get them done up again.

I must’ve looked pinched because Robin stepped in like he had that day at the park.

“ Do you want to see it?” he asked the girls, mock dubiously. “You don’t look like you want to.”

Both twins swiveled to stare at him, their honeyed eyes narrowing. “What you mean?” Rosie asked, just as dubiously.

“You don’t have your clothes on properly.” Robin’s hands were on his hips as he eyed the missing shoe and unzipped coat. “No hats. No shoes.” He shook his head. “You must not actually want to go.”

Before I could blink, both little girls were tearing their winter gear back on. Their motor control wasn’t the best, so I still had to help, but the willingness to get redressed made a huge difference in my efforts.

When they were done up like my little goth penguins again, I gently pushed them toward the door, surprised, when both girls latched on to one of Robin’s hands, and he began to march forward. He flashed me a grin over his shoulder, all bluster, but I’d seen the look on his face when they’d grabbed his hands.

Seen the reverence there, the wonder.

The joy.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I turned off the lights and locked up behind us. Then I headed down the steps in the back toward the parking lot where Robin and my children had disappeared.

“What is the thing?” Rosie asked. I could hear her tiny little voice from several feet away.

“Nun-ya,” Robin replied.

“Nun-ya what?” Jane echoed, confused. Robin slowed down when it was obvious that Jane was stumbling. My heart ached.

“Nun-ya business.”

The twins laughed, a high tinkling little sound—delighted, like Robin had just said the funniest thing in the history of the entire universe.

I died a little on the inside, warm, warm, warm.

Because they were right. He was.

The funniest, the sweetest, the most wonderful man I’d had the fortune to meet.

And he was leaving .

I couldn’t keep him.

Even if I wanted to.

Robin was nothing if not dramatic. I realized this the moment we stepped onto the lawn of the B&B and I saw what he’d done to the place. Lights lit up the path—brand new, probably bought from the hardware store. Spooky, orange and red, they danced across the wilted fence and led the way around the back of the large, white latticed building.

“Go on!” Robin urged, passing the twins to me, and lingering behind us.

I held their hands tight, but didn’t move.

Wasn’t he coming?

My question must’ve been written all over my face because he replied without me having to utter a word. “This was for you,” he told me, eyes crinkling. “Not me.”

I didn’t know what he meant until he turned to the girls, hand spread out, his painted fingers flashing. “Your dad has a surprise just for you,” he told them, eyes wide, lips curled into a playful grin.

“He does?” Rosie asked immediately, always curious.

“He does,” Robin nodded. “Just around the corner.”

He’s not taking credit.

The thought spun and spun and spun around inside my head as I stared at him, too shocked to have words to reply.

He’s not taking credit for this.

Hours and hours of work.

And he’s letting you take the ? —

“No,” I jolted, turning back to him to try and communicate with my eyes that I didn’t want this. I wanted him to be appreciated. I wanted my girls to know just how much work he’d put into this—even before we saw the damn thing.

Robin shook his head.

And it was only because of the respect I felt for him that my mouth clicked shut.

“Aren’t you coming?” Rosie asked, twisting to look at Robin. “We can share our surprise with you if you want.”

Robin wavered.

Clearly he’d wanted this to be a gift for me—for them . And I didn’t know what to do now that the girls had decided he needed to be a part of it. When Jane latched on to his hand, offering him a shy little smile, Robin melted.

“I…” he glanced at me again, still conflicted.

“Onward,” I declared in the silly way I often did when I played with the girls.

“Onward!” they parroted back excitedly, moving forward. There was no more room for hesitation. No more room for second-guessing. Taking charge felt second nature, which was unsurprising.

What was surprising, however, was how right it felt for Robin to be included in our little familial unit. Jane didn’t say a single word to him, and he didn’t try to push for more. And as we wandered through the decades old—recently repainted—foam cemetery outback, I couldn’t help but spare Robin more than a few glances.

I stared at his expressive mouth. Stared at his unruly eyebrow and the way it twitched up with delight whenever Rosie pointed out something he’d done.

“Last year that looked way worse,” she told him, and I watched with more than a little affection as his chest puffed up with pride.

“Did it?” Robin asked, green eyes dancing, flickering with the Halloween fairy lights that lit up the backyard just like they had in the front.

The new haunted house was spooky, yes.

Scary? Not so much.

But that didn’t seem to matter. Not to the girls, not to Robin, and certainly not to me.

At one point Jane accidentally knocked into the very same skeleton I’d pieced together for Robin. And rather than get angry when the pieces fell to the ground, scattering wildly, he simply laughed, bent down and picked up one of the bones, and handed it to her.

Jane’s eyes were wide, the waterworks that had been about to occur stalled by her confusion.

She watched warily as Robin picked up a femur for himself, and then jauntily tapped their bones together.

Delight spread across her face as rapidly as the sadness had.

She smacked him back.

Hard .

And for the last twenty minutes we spent in the backyard of the B&B I sat on the rickety fence and enjoyed the way Robin chased my daughters around. All of them smacked bones together, like a bastardization of fencing, and even Jane seemed to be warming up to him.

“Five minutes,” I called, even though we probably should’ve gone home ten minutes earlier. It was past their bedtime. I was very strict about bedtime. Circadian rhythms were important, especially for children their age.

“Ahhhh,” both girls complained.

Rosie was hiding behind a tombstone—not well, because her little pom-pom-topped hat was sticking out. Jane was just behind her, even more obvious. Robin was pretending like he hadn’t seen them, wandering around in “search of them” as my little hellions clearly planned to launch their very own attack.

They didn’t seem to realize that the fact they’d spoken had given them away entirely.

Robin gave no indication that it had, either.

He was a good sport.

Silly, yes.

And a good sport.

“Oh, where could they be,” he hummed to himself thoughtfully, hands on his hips. He took a long, exaggerated pause in front of the tombstone my darlings hid behind. He looked ridiculously cute like that. Though his cuteness was once again ruined by my very real concern that he was freezing.

I made a mental note to go through my closet and find him something warmer to wear to tide him over before I could take him shopping.

Riotous giggles escaped the girls, muffled by their gloves, but still ringing crystal clear despite that.

Upstairs in the B&B, the lights glowed yellow through the windows. There were several shadows watching us, but I paid them no mind. Belleville had and always would be the nosiest place in the world. I was not surprised that we were being watched. No doubt I’d get well-meaning, excited comments at work the next day.

Because no one had anything better to do than become incredibly invested in my non-existent love life.

Don’t ask me why it didn’t bother me that the whole town seemed to think Robin Johnson and I were an item.

And don’t ask me why I hadn’t corrected them.

Because correcting them felt like lying, and I wasn’t ready to fully acknowledge that yet.

“Stay here,” I hummed, situating Robin on the couch before doubling back for the girls and their winter gear. The grandfather clock tick, ticked and Rosie and Jane were so tired they barely complained as I tugged their coats and mittens off.

Half an hour later—a miracle, honestly, because normally it took far longer to get them bathed and into bed—the twins were sound asleep. Giddy, I took a deep breath and prepared myself for what was to come.

I’d insisted Robin come over.

It was only nine o’clock and I’d thought…perhaps a late dinner might be nice. When I’d asked him to come back with me he’d lit up like a kid on Christmas. Always eager to be included. It didn’t take my degree, or even my general interest in psychology for me to read between those lines.

Robin was a desperately lonely person.

It was etched into everything he did.

Breaking his back for scraps of attention, and yet surprised when others gave him exactly what he’d been working for. As though he had stopped allowing himself to hope. How many times had he been disappointed?

How many people had ignored him till he screamed himself hoarse?

Till he decided he’d stop asking altogether.

It was dark aside from the light above the stove. Outside the front windows, Main Street was a ghost town of flickering fairy lights. Already the shops had begun decorating for Christmas. The hardware store had been the first, but the rest were quick to follow.

As I made my way down the hallway toward the living room, I wasn’t sure what I was about to walk into. Half of me wanted to forgo dinner and conversation altogether. That half wanted to push Robin to the couch, to climb atop him, to kiss him till he was breathless and warm and his chilled cheeks were red for an entirely new reason.

The other half of me understood that things were more complicated than that.

The more I got to know Robin the more I wanted to care for him.

And if I kissed him—if I took what I wanted so freely—without having built trust first, I might shatter what little of his confidence there was left. Plus…part of me was terrified that if I pushed too hard, too soon he’d run.

I didn't need to worry, apparently.

Because when I took that last step out of the hallway Robin wasn’t waiting, eager as a puppy on the couch for me like I’d hoped. Yes, he was on the couch. But there was nothing bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about him. He’d tipped over, his face squished against the cushions, body contorted in a way that made me cringe.

My back would have ached for weeks after performing a stunt like that.

Robin’s white-blond hair was a mess around his face, his hands tucked tight against his chest like he had tried to make himself as small as possible. Like he was scared of taking up too much space. And most devastating of all…my coat—my still-chilly coat—was curled beneath his cheek, his sweet little face pressed tightly into it like he was seeking comfort from it.

Like something about me made him feel safe .

My knees became weak, and for a moment I had to lean against the wall so they wouldn’t buckle. Because if there was one thing that had just become obvious to me it was the fact that Robin was my kryptonite.

Sleepily, with a muffled groan, Robin cracked one eye open, like he’d sensed my presence. “Were you scared?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Was I…” It took me a moment to remember the fact he’d made it his mission to frighten me. That day at the airport felt like it’d occurred years ago, not a few short days.

“At the haunted house?” Robin clarified.

“No, sweetheart,” I countered, voice low and soft.

“Bah humbug,” Robin sighed. And then, after that particularly adorable grumble, he fell right back to sleep again.