Chapter 18
Levi
Asher’s house smelled like garlic bread and small children, which was more or less its permanent state.
It was the kind of house that had clearly been overtaken by eight-year-olds—crayon drawings pinned to the fridge with mismatched magnets, a pair of small sneakers abandoned in the middle of the hallway in a way that suggested they’d been kicked off mid-stride, a plastic sword propped against the coat rack alongside two backpacks.
Mark and Mara had been put to bed forty minutes ago, which meant they were definitely still awake, and the occasional thump from upstairs suggested at least one of them was using their bedroom floor for purposes it wasn’t designed for.
“They’re fine,” Asher said, when the third thump landed. He dealt the next hand without looking up. “They do this every time I have people over. It’s a performance.”
“It sounds like someone’s moving furniture,” Jude said.
“They’re not. Probably.” He picked up his cards. “They’ll settle.”
Another thump. Then giggling, faintly audible through the ceiling.
“They’re definitely not settling,” Cade said.
“They’ll settle,” Asher repeated, with the unbothered aura of a man who had learned to exist alongside chaos and had simply stopped fighting it. He reached for his beer. “You want to go up there, be my guest.”
Nobody volunteered. Mark and Mara were forces of nature, individually formidable and collectively unstoppable, and they’d had Asher’s number since approximately birth. The rest of us weren’t even close to being able to handle them.
The kitchen table was covered with our usual poker night spread—a bowl of chips that had been steadily depleted since the first hand, a plate of garlic bread that Asher had produced from the oven with the satisfied expression of a man who considered this adequate hosting, four bottles of beer in various states of emptiness, and a bag of pretzels that Jude had brought and was now eating with more focus than he was applying to his cards.
The overhead light was slightly too bright, and someone had knocked one of the chairs crooked an hour ago, and nobody had straightened it.
It felt exactly like every poker night we’d had since we were old enough to be allowed at the table.
Asher was at the head of it, red hair catching the light as he dealt the cards.
Cade to his left, dark-haired and quiet in the way he always was, watching everything and saying less than he knew.
And Jude was across from me, pretending to be oblivious to it all as he stuffed his face with pretzels and attempted to hide the fact that he had a crap hand.
“So,” Asher said, studying his hand. Unlike Jude, his poker face was excellent; none of us could ever tell if he held something excellent or something terrible. “The trailer.”
I had been waiting for this. “What about it?”
“You moved it next to hers.”
“Matt asked me to keep an eye on things. Yes.”
Asher set his cards face down and looked at me with the expression he used when he wanted to make clear he was choosing his words carefully and found the process burdensome.
Being the oldest, he’d leveraged that skill into an authority that was equal parts genuine wisdom and deeply irritating older brother energy.
“I’m not saying it was the wrong call,” he said. “I’m saying you need to be careful.”
“You’re the second person to say that to me today,” I muttered.
“Smart,” Cade said, without looking up from his cards. He always seemed to know slightly more than he was saying. As chief of police, he’d developed an air of permanent low-level authority that even Asher occasionally deferred to, though neither of them would ever admit it.
“You know something,” I said.
“I know lots of things,” he replied. “I raise.”
“Cade.”
He looked up then, and something in his expression was more serious than the tone of the evening had been.
“I’m not getting into it,” he said. “It’s not my place, and it’s not my information to share, not here.
But Matt and I have had some conversations lately, and what I will tell you is that you’re right to be where you are, and you need to keep your eyes open.
” He held my gaze for a second, then looked back at his cards. “That’s all I’ve got for you.”
The table was quiet for a moment. Jude, to his credit, didn’t make a joke, which told me he’d already picked up on the weight of it.
“Is she safe?” I asked.
“She’s safer with you next door than without,” Cade said. “Leave it there.”
I left it there because Cade in cop mode was immovable, and I knew better than to push.
But his words settled into my chest and sat there, a combination of worry and resolve that had been living in me since I’d first moved the trailer and seen the way she’d clocked the distance between our windows and gone very carefully neutral.
“Okay,” Asher said, apparently deciding the serious portion of the evening had run its course. “Different angle. Are you in love with her?”
“Asher—”
“It’s a yes or no question.”
“It’s absolutely not a yes or no question, and you know it.”
“It really is, though,” Jude said, helping himself to another pretzel. “I’ve seen you look at her. It’s very much a yes or no situation.”
“You’re my twin,” I said. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am on your side. That’s why I’m asking.” He pointed a pretzel at me. “Because I’ve been watching you look at her for years and doing absolutely nothing about it, and I’m running out of patience on your behalf.”
“That’s very considerate of you.”
“I think so.” He ate the pretzel. “So. Yes or no.”
I picked up my beer, took a long sip, and said nothing, which was answer enough for all three of them apparently, because Asher leaned back in his chair with the expression of a man whose suspicions had been confirmed.
“Here’s the thing,” he said, in the tone that meant he’d been thinking about this for a while and was finally going to say it.
“We’re not worried about you being in love with her.
That ship has sailed, and there’s no point pretending otherwise.
” He picked up his cards again. “What we’re worried about is you getting hurt. ”
“I’m not going to get hurt.”
“You’ve been quietly carrying a torch for this woman since before any of us can remember,” Asher said.
“She’s had a rough year. She’s been through it with Travis, with the job, with all of it.
And now she’s living thirty feet from your front door, and you’re—” he gestured at me, “—whatever this is. We just want you to go into it with your eyes open.”
“My eyes are open.”
“And Travis,” Asher added, like he’d been building to it. “What’s the situation there? Because that’s been on and off more times than I can count, and I’d hate for you to be in the middle of it when it swings back the other way.”
“It’s not swinging back,” I said.
“You sure about that?”
“I’m sure.”
Asher didn’t look convinced. He had the skepticism of someone who had watched the Travis situation from a distance for long enough to have formed strong opinions about its structural integrity. “She’s said it was over before,” he said, not unkindly. “More than once.”
“This is different,” I said.
“How?”
I thought about how to explain it—the way she’d talked about Travis lately, not with the careful tone of someone still working through feelings, but with the flat, settled finality of someone who had already done that work and come out the other side.
The way she’d set the boundary in the parking lot was with the directness of someone who had stopped leaving room for negotiation.
The way she said his name now, when it came up at all—like it was something she was already putting behind her rather than something she was still carrying.
“She doesn’t talk about him the way she used to,” I said. “There’s no weight to it anymore. No unfinished business in the way she says it. It’s just done. I can tell the difference.”
Jude nodded slowly, like that matched something he’d observed independently.
“She told me the same thing,” he said. “And I’ve known Becca a long time.
She compartmentalizes when she’s still working something out; she goes quiet and careful.
She’s not quiet and careful about Travis anymore.
She’s just—done. The way she said it to me, it wasn’t sad or angry or anything.
It was just fact.” He reached for another pretzel. “I believe her.”
“You’re her friend,” Asher said. “You want to believe her.”
“I am her friend,” Jude agreed pleasantly. “Which is exactly why I’d know if she was unsure about it. She’s not.”
Cade had been quiet through this exchange, in the way he got when he was deciding how much to contribute.
He set his cards down now and folded his hands on the table.
“Matt’s not worried about Travis in that context,” he said carefully.
“What I mean by that is—the situation with Travis is its own thing, and it’s something we’re paying attention to for reasons I’m not going to get into.
But as far as her going back to him?” He shook his head once.
“No. That’s not what Matt thinks either. ”
The table absorbed that. There was something in the way Cade had said it—the careful separation of Travis as a concern from Travis as a romantic prospect—that landed with a particular weight. I filed it away and didn’t push, because Cade had drawn his line and I knew better.
“Okay,” Asher said, after a moment. He looked at me steadily.
“So she’s done with Travis. I’ll take that.
” He picked up his cards again. “But you tend to absorb a lot on her behalf without saying anything about it, and we just want you to go into this with your eyes open. That’s all.
” He shrugged. “We’ve noticed. Over the years. ”