Chapter 17

I'm a dick.

It's Sunday afternoon, and I still haven't gone around to check on Claire or talk to her about the Jeep. I know I should tell her I can't help and steer her toward someone who can—toward Rex, probably—but I keep putting it off.

Because I want to be the man who steps up for her. I want to feed her cookies, teach her to drive stick shift, and tell her that she looks like she's made from gold, with her golden eyes and blonde hair—and the invasiveness of those thoughts is no less than stunning.

Truthfully, I haven't thought about a damn thing other than Claire Rainey. It doesn't help that my sister keeps calling and texting, asking for updates that don't exist. I've only seen glimpses of her over the past few days—walking to and from the car with Damien, her hair a blur of gold.

I went out for a beer with Rex last night to get my mind off Claire, but I guess the town's bored of gossiping only about the people we've all known for years, so the three hot topics of discussion at the bar were Claire, Nicole, and Damien. By now, everyone knows they're expected to stay at the house for a month in order to inherit it. The Marshall gossip collective is also aware that Claire got fired from her job as Agnes Lewis's assistant because of the throwing-up-on-national-TV incident. No one knows what Nicole and Damien do, other than that they don't seem to mind racking up charges on their platinum credit cards.

Within five minutes, it became extremely fucking clear to me that the only reason Rex had asked me for a drink was to pump me for information I didn't really have and had no inclination to give him. Judging by the glances the people around us kept casting in our direction, half the bar was in on it. But he'd accepted my one-syllable answers with something like grace, and we'd slid into a conversation about sports, which I felt pretty lukewarm about given that the only teams I care about are from a state I can't publicly acknowledge I'm from.

When I got home from the bar, I eyed the house next door for a few minutes. I could see a flash of gold through the window, and I knew all I had to do to see her was grow a pair and go up and knock. But I didn't. Because if she knew everything about me, she'd run—or maybe ask Damien for a ride to the police station so she could turn me in.

I've spent most of the day trying to find projects to do around the house, falling short with everything I try, even though they're simple tasks. I can't concentrate enough to nail in a loose floorboard, let alone do anything more complicated, but I still decide the grout in the bathroom needs to be replaced. It's simple, tedious, and time-consuming, so it should be perfect. My mind keeps wandering, though, and I'm getting nowhere.

Rocket's been following me around like he feels lost too, so after wasting the better part of an hour, I decide to give up and look down at him. "You need to go out, buddy?"

His tail wags like it wants to come clear off his body, and he scurries out of the bathroom and heads to the front door to retrieve my shoes—a trick Dick spent weeks teaching him, because that's the kind of guy he was—too lazy to get his own shoes, but not to tackle the much harder task of teaching a dog to get them for him.

I feel a pulse of grief, but I breathe through it as I slip on the shoes and find Rocket's leash. Snap it on. It's a pain in the ass to put it on every time we leave the house, especially since he used to freely roam back when Dick was alive, but I've made sure to put it on every time we leave the house after his "dognapping" last weekend. I still don't know what Nicole and Damien are up to—with my unsteady income and lack of a social life, I'm hardly a gold-star candidate for Claire—but it's a constant discomfort, knowing they're there, next door. Knowing she is.

I go to open the door, and the person standing directly outside it, fist raised as if to knock, shrieks—prompting me to yell in surprise and Rocket to start barking.

Then my brain catches up and finds the visitor to be Claire. Claire, as if my thoughts drew her to me. She's wearing a black sleeveless dress, probably another lender from Nicole, with a short-sleeved cardigan over it. She's taller than her sister, though, and the dress shows off her long legs.

"I'm so sorry," she blurts. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"I wasn't scared," I say automatically, even though I just made a sound that contradicts that statement. It hits me that this woman has only known me a little over a week and has seen me act like a coward twice already—a pathetic record. One that makes me think again of my uncle. Soft, like your mother. You'll never amount to anything.

She gives me an if you say so look I've gotten countless times from my sister, and I shift on my feet. "There's nothing wrong with being scared," she says. "It doesn't make you less of a man."

"Being scared of something that should scare you, sure. Being scared of you? That does make me less of a man. So I couldn't possibly admit to it."

"Your secret's safe with me," she says with the slightest of smiles.

I watch, chest constricting, as she leans down to pet Rocket. Her dress gapes at the front, giving me a glimpse of heaven, and then she catches me looking, her eyes dilating, her mouth forming a perfect oh of surprise.

I clear my throat. "You're here about the Jeep. I've been meaning to come talk to you about that."

"No, I'm not, actually. I…" She pauses, laughs. "You were about to go for a walk with your dog." She blushes, the pink flush on her cheeks making her eyes sparkle in the low lighting of the porch. "It's just…I…kind of got locked out of the house, and I was wondering if you had a spare key."

I squint at her. "What happened to the fake rock?"

Her lips twitch with humor. "It's not there anymore. Damien got rid of it after you told him it was a security hazard."

"Isn't he home?" It's a stupid thing to say, because clearly he mustn't be if she's over here, asking for my help. But my brain's struggling to work properly.

"No," she says. "I think he left to pick Nicole up from the airport. I went out to take a walk, and when I came back, the door was locked. I must have used the doorknob lock without realizing. You know…New York reflexes."

I pause, working through this. No, I do not have a key. Yes, I can get past it easily if it's a doorknob lock.

"I don't have a key, but I can get you in."

Her eyes widen. "Oh, I don't want to break anything."

"Won't need to break it. You got a couple of hair pins?"

Her upper teeth capture her lip. "No, not on me."

Rocket paws at my pant leg. I hand his leash over to Claire, who takes it readily enough. "Wait down here. I'll be right back."

As I run upstairs it hits me that I should have invited her in. It would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, but I don't really want her in my space, among my things. It'll be harder to banish the memory of her if she's actually been inside, if her scent is attached to my walls, my space. I grab a couple of hairpins from my bug-out bag and jog back downstairs. When I get there, I see Claire bowed down over Rocket, her hand cupped around his soft little face, and warmth unfurls in my gut. Shit. Shit. Shit.

"Let's go," I say, my voice harsher than intended.

She gets up and looks at me, eyebrows lifting when she notices the bobby pins in my hand. "You have women's hairpins in your bedroom?"

I snort, because I can tell she thinks I have a closet full of discarded women's things up there, hairpins and sweaters and panties. "No one but me has ever been here before."

Her eyes widen. "Really? Why not?"

Because if you want to keep to yourself, it's best to do so thoroughly. This is a place where I let myself keep out traces of Rosie and Seamus and the life that was before—and even if they're only things I'll understand the meaning of, I still don't want to share them with strangers. I'm too greedy for them.

But I settle for saying, "For the reasons I've told you. The hairpins are part of my bug-out bag."

From the look on her face, she neither has a bug-out bag nor is aware of their existence, so I say, "It's something you prepare in case of emergencies. You know…if you have to leave at a moment's notice."

Her eyes widen. Maybe she wants to ask which emergency would require women's hairpins, or she would if she weren't in the middle of one.

"Well, let's go."

Rocket whimpers when I try to put him back in the house. "Oh, we should bring him," Claire says, her fingers brushing against mine, sending a sensation through me like an electric jolt that pulls memories from my brain. Claire's golden eyes, her lips soft against mine, her hand weaving into my hair to pull me closer…

Her mouth, open to receive that madeleine, and the way she pulled me to her by the front of my apron.

Fuck. I keep thinking of what I wanted to do. Of what I would have done if Damien hadn't picked that exact minute to walk through the door.

"I don't want to ruin his walk," she insists, pulling me out of my head. "I can hold his leash while you're working."

"You think he'll get a kick out of watching me break into your house?" I ask, letting the knuckles of the hand holding the leash brush against her hand.

"Well, he was my bio-dad's dog. From every account, it seems like the kind of thing Dick would have enjoyed."

Indeed.

I nod. "Far be it from me to rob him of simple pleasures."

We walk over to the other house companionably, neither of us feeling the need to talk. My hand brushes against her arm accidentally, and it feels good, so I do it on purpose the next time. When we crest the porch, I hand over Rocket's leash, and she takes it with such solemnity I almost laugh.

I bend over the knob. It's dark, so fucking dark, and I'm going to need my flashlight to see what I'm doing. I grab my phone from my pocket and switch the light on, then hand it to Claire so she can shine it on the knob.

It takes half a second to turn the lock.

When I look back at Claire, on the other end of that flashlight beam, she looks stricken. Maybe I should have made it last longer. She's afraid now, maybe of me, maybe of the thought that she's been living out there, in the woods, with a lock it takes half a second to break. I try not to be sorry for the former; I'm grateful for the latter—she should be careful. I'm home a lot, but I'm not always home.

"Use the deadbolt," I say as the door creaks open, pocketing the pins and reclaiming my phone from her. "It would have taken longer for me to break in if you had."

"But you still could have done it."

No point in lying. "Probably."

"Why?"

There's no need to answer her honestly other than I want to. I take a second to ask myself why, and I acknowledge that it's because I want her to know me. I've been giving her the little pieces I can dispense with without telling her the thing that sent me here. Clearing my throat, I say, "My uncle taught me. He was another man your father wouldn't have approved of."

"Would you like to come in for a minute?"

Yes.

"No, I'd better take Rocket around." Rocket licks my leg at the sound of his name and proceeds to plant his butt down like he's in no hurry and would happily sit here all night on this porch that used to be his. It hits me that it has to be strange for him—living next door to his old home, not knowing what happened or why, only that it did.

"Okay." Claire bites her lip again, and my dick gives a faint twitch. "But there's something else I wanted to ask you."

I'm curious, and also wary, because whatever it is, I want to give it to her—even if I should say no. "What is it?"

"Do you know much about flowers? I feel like the local shop is giving me the runaround. I mean…sure…the flowers I'm looking for are rare, because they smell really bad, and no one in their right mind would grow them, but the heart wants what it wants."

I pause, considering. "Why are you getting flowers? Did you and Nicole decide to do something for Dick? Because if so, I don't think you need to worry about floral arrangements. He didn't like flowers. Said the only use for them was to get a women to… Never mind."

She sighs, visibly deflating. "Dick really was a dick, wasn't he?"

I shift on my feet, wanting to put an arm around her or lead her inside and pour her a drink. But it's not my right to do those things, and if I do them anyway, it'll be hard to know when to stop—what line I can't cross before it becomes too late, and all I see is her.

"No, Claire," I say gruffly. "He wasn't just bad. Most people aren't just anything. He was funny, and he could be generous. Caring. But it was always on his own terms." As I say the words, I feel them in my gut. Not just about Dick, but about my uncle. A worse man than her biological father, to be certain, and yet, there were moments when I'd felt close to him. When I'd believed he truly cared about me. I think about the good times every now and then to balance the bad.

The people we lose never really leave us. They haunt us whether they intend to or not, and my uncle haunts me in particular. When I walked into this house a few weeks ago and found Dick sprawled at the bottom of the steps, I nearly had a heart attack, because for a second it was my uncle's face I saw on his body. My uncle, dead a second time.

But Dick's accident was an accident, and the universe doesn't care enough about me to haunt me specifically. I'm just unlucky, I guess.

"I'm sorry," she says, touching my arm, and it feels wrong—her apologizing for my loss when he was her father. She smiles. "You know, get rid of the generous and caring part, and he sounds like Nicole."

"At least you're willing to admit I'm funny," a voice interjects from inside the house, making both of us flinch for the second time tonight. Even Rocket flinches, then cowers against my leg as Nicole steps out of the back hallway in a robe, a towel wrapped around her hair.

"I thought Damien left to pick you up," Claire asks, still gaping at her.

"If he did, he's going to be sorely disappointed. I took an Uber. Damien probably had a job in Asheville. We haven't all lucked into indentured servant jobs with rich old people."

"Wait…" Claire glances outside and then back at the door. "Did you purposefully lock me out?"

"Did you purposefully leave the door open?" Nicole asks. "I had to take a shower. I didn't want some pervy neighbor sneaking in."

I clear my throat. "As your only neighbor, I can assure you that you had nothing to worry about."

"Here I am, in my robe," she says, giving him a pointed look. "And here you are at the door."

I shake my head, torn between beating a retreat and laughing, because fuck…is she ever Dick's kid. I don't see it as much with Claire, but there are glimmers here and there. Her sense of humor. Her vibrancy. The way she wants to grab life by the balls but hasn't let herself try yet.

Nicole waves a hand in dismissal. "Oh, we all know you'd only try to peek at Claire in the shower."

"On that note," I say, nodding to Claire. "I'm going to go walk Rocket. But if you want to take a drive in the Jeep on Wednesday, I'm free from noon onward."

"Yes," she says, her eyes widening. "That would be great. I'll take the afternoon off. And about the flowers…"

"I'll text you."

"You don't have my number."

"It's okay," Nicole says, "we have his number."

I gave it to her, when she first came by with Rocket, so I shouldn't feel uneasy. But I do. There's something uncanny about this woman. She knows too much and is too damn curious. This is twice now that she's gone out of her way to guarantee that Claire and I run into each other—because I'm guessing it was no accident that she locked the front door. Maybe three times, if you count the oven incident with Damien.

Nicole's unpredictable. Dangerous. But I'm truly fucked in the head because what I don't like is that I'm leaving her alone with Claire.

"You okay?" I ask her.

"Are you worried a woman in a bathrobe is going to kill her?" Nicole asks with a snort. "If you're worried about anyone, it should be the person who was almost left naked and helpless in the bathroom, the door open for anyone to come in. Really, Claire. You need to pay more attention to your surroundings."

"I don't think you're ever helpless," Claire replies. Turning her attention to me, she insists, "I'm okay." She drops her hand from my arm. "Goodnight, Declan. I'll see you on Wednesday."

Well, shit. That gives me three days to learn how to drive stick shift.

Then again, I brought down my uncle, a drug kingpin in Western Pennsylvania. I've done harder things.