Chapter 15
Audrey
There is a special place reserved for women who use kind, unsuspecting men. Somewhere hot. Somewhere with a pitchfork and a great deal of explaining to do at the gates.
I am going there. I've purchased the ticket. I am, in fact, sitting in the front seat for the ride.
"—and the funny part is, I didn't even mean for it to track spin rate." Declan turns his phone toward me, thumb sliding across the screen. "That part was an accident. I was just trying to clean up the bat path read."
"Mm." I lean in. I'm very good at this part. "That's amazing."
The coffee in front of me has gone lukewarm.
I haven't touched it past the first sip, because the first sip told me what the rest of the cup would do to the nail somebody is driving through the left side of my skull.
The pain has been there since the parking lot when the Uber driver dropped me off.
Steady. Patient. The kind that waits for me to forget about it and then knocks again, harder, just to prove it can.
I keep my face soft, keep my eyes on the screen.
Bellamy's hums around us, low and warm, the espresso machine hissing behind the counter.
It's a coffee shop near the university in Harlow, close to Nora's design studio, the kind that stays open past eleven for students who need somewhere to study that isn't a dorm.
String lights loop across the ceiling. Half the room is lit by laptop screens.
A boy two tables over is highlighting every line in a textbook like the act itself commits them to memory.
On Declan's phone, a video plays. There's a kid in a batting cage, mid-swing, the frame frozen and dissected by thin white lines that move when the kid moves.
"Watch his hands here." Declan taps. "He's casting. See it? Bat head drops out early, every time. He's been doing it for two years and nobody caught it because his numbers were fine. Numbers hide a lot."
I do see it. I shouldn't be able to, but the little white lines make it obvious, the wrist breaking a half-second too soon, and something in me leans forward without being told to.
"So what did you do?"
"Told him to choke up an inch. Didn't tell him why." Declan shrugs, setting the phone down. "Kid thinks he figured it out himself. He’s hitting .340 now."
He says it like it's nothing. Like it's the most natural thing in the world to fix a person and let them keep the credit.
I look at him for a second longer than I should.
He's a good-looking man. I'm not blind. Sandy hair starting to gray at the temples, even though he can't be more than thirty-five.
You'd never know unless you were sitting this close.
Big, careful hands wrapped around a mug that looks small in them.
A face that listens even when he's the one talking. Serious. Kind.
"That's incredible, Declan." And I mean it. "You built that whole thing yourself?"
"Over nights. Weekends." He turns the mug a quarter turn on the table. "I like to stay busy."
"What else do you stay busy with?"
He gives a small laugh, almost embarrassed. "Right now? Tearing apart my staircase."
"Your staircase?"
"The treads were shot. Whoever built the place used soft pine, and seventy years of feet did the rest." He says it plainly, the way a man talks when he knows exactly what he’s doing. "Pulled them all out. I'm cutting new ones from white oak. Doing the railing by hand too. The balusters. All of it."
I picture it without meaning to. A man alone in a quiet house, sawdust on his forearms, fitting a stair tread into place because the old one wore out under everyone who climbed it.
"You built a tool that reads bat speed off a phone," I say, "and you also rebuild staircases."
"I told you. I like to stay busy." His mouth tilts. "Idle hands."
I should laugh. I do laugh, a small one, and it costs me almost nothing because none of this is hard. He's easy to sit with. He's kind in a way that doesn't ask for anything back. He is, by every measure I have ever been taught to trust, exactly the kind of man a woman in my position should want.
And the spark just isn't there.
I keep waiting for it. I've been waiting all night, the way you wait for water to boil, the way I waited at the barbecue for the migraine to ease and it only got worse.
Declan smiles and I feel warmth, the ordinary kind, the kind I'd feel for toddlers at the playground or cashiers at the grocery store.
No pull. No heat climbing up my spine. Nothing that lives below the ribs.
I take a sip of coffee so I don’t have to look at him.
There's no fault in him. The fault is mine.
Because there's someone else.
And he's parked outside.
I don't look. I haven't once. I clocked the car the second we walked in, parked across the street and a couple storefronts down, dark and far too nice for this block at this hour. He's smart enough to park where Declan won't notice it.
The car sits there. I sit here, keeping my eyes on a man who deserves better than to be dragged into a fight that isn't his.
I think about the strange little orbit of men Nora somehow found.
Nate, who is so steady and so decent that I keep waiting for the catch, and it never comes. Nora found a man who's basically a public service announcement for stability, and I thank the stars she got to keep him.
Declan, across from me, who volunteers with the kids' little league, builds machines that see what people can't, and lights up when he talks about a kid he's helped. Surprising. Genuinely surprising.
And the big, quiet one. Kade? Kyle? No. Knox.
The one who frightens me more than any of them, because he says maybe nine words in three hours and watches everything like he's deciding whether to allow it.
He's the one who managed to get a signed Taylor Smith autograph for Nora's birthday addressed to her—an impossible feat—and handed it over like it was a grocery item he picked up on the way.
Nobody knows exactly how. I was too afraid to ask for specifics.
Good men. Capable men. Men a sensible woman could build a life around.
And then there's Asher.
The infamous Harlow Heartbreaker. A man who uses an image and humor to hide his photographic memory.
Who remembers the play I was forbidden to perform when I was thirteen and recites it back to me like he's been carrying it in his back pocket.
Who calls me ridiculous names because he remembers not to call me baby.
Sitting in a parked car outside a coffee shop at half-past nine on a weeknight.
Watching me.
The nail drives in another inch. I press my thumb to my left eyebrow like I'm thinking hard about something Declan said, and the pressure does nothing, but the gesture buys me a second to breathe.
"You okay?" Declan asks.
"Long week." I smile and drop the hand. "Tell me about the railing."
He does. He starts explaining the difference between a turned baluster and a square one, and I nod at all the right places. My head's not here. I'm thinking about the man outside who told me he was done being a secret, walked out, then followed me to watch me drink coffee with somebody else.
He drew the line. Wouldn't consider my request or hear any of the reasons behind it. Then he said he wasn't making promises. So why should I?
He pushed me past the breaking point, then walked out. And now he's sitting in his too-nice car like a chaperone at a dance, like he has any right at all to be furious about a date he is currently surveilling.
The audacity of it. The sheer, breathtaking nerve.
I am going to take his head off. Metaphorically. Mostly.
"—but I'm boring you," Declan says.
"You're not."
"I am. It's fine." He smiles, and there's no edge to it. "Old houses. I could go on all night. My wife used to set a timer."
It lands softly, the mention. Not a wound he's opening. Just a fact he keeps in his pocket and takes out sometimes to look at. I feel the pull of recognition, the small click of one widow hearing another, and I let myself hold it for a moment because that part, at least, is honest.
"Thomas used to read news articles out loud," I say. "Every morning he’d just read off headlines he found interesting. Somewhere along the way it became part of the routine."
Declan nods. He doesn’t apologize or say anything. He just lets it sit between us, two people who lost the everyday small things, and the silence is the kindest thing anyone's done for me all week.
Which is exactly when the guilt comes back, sharp enough to compete with the nail.
I check my phone and pull up the app. Start typing my address into the field for a car.
"You ordering a ride?" Declan asks.
"I am. I didn't drive." I keep my eyes on the screen. "My eyes don't love driving at night, and the headache's not helping."
"I'll take you."
I look up.
He's already reaching for his keys, easy, like it's settled. "I'm parked right out front. It's no trouble. You shouldn't be waiting on a curb at this hour with a headache."
"Declan, you don't have to—"
"I know I don't." He stands and drops a few bills by the mugs before I can move for my purse.
"It's an hour away."
"Idle hands. I don't mind. Come on."
I could say no. I should say no. But the nail is at full depth now, and the thought of standing on a corner waiting for a stranger's car while the streetlight stabs into my eye is more than I can handle. So I close the app and gather my bag to follow him out.
I already know.
He's going to follow us.
The bell over the door chimes. The night air is cool against my face, and I don't look at the dark car one storefront down. I get into Declan's truck, and it smells like clean laundry and wood. He waits until I'm buckled before he pulls out.
The drive is fifty minutes long, and I spend every one of them watching the side mirror.
Headlights. Two of them, holding back, never close enough to be obvious but never gone.
Through the turn onto the county road. Through the long dark stretch where there's nothing but us and the corn and those two patient lights.
Declan talks a little, something about the road, the deer, how he hit one once outside Harlow.
I answer, but I don't remember what I say.
The lights stay with us.
He pulls in front of the house, and the headlights behind us slide past and on down the street, unhurried, gone. Like a man who knows the route. Like a man who's been here before, in the dark, parked a block away.
"This is me," I say, uselessly.
"I'll walk you up."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
He joins me at the curb, hands in his pockets as he walks me up.
We stop at the door. The porch light's on, and it casts a warm circle around the two of us standing not too close. I dig for my keys to have something to do with my hands.
"I had a really nice time, Audrey," Declan says.
"Me too." It's not even a lie. It was nice. That just makes me feel worse.
He leans in slowly enough that I feel it before it happens, and I hold still. His lips touch my cheek, warm and brief and entirely without demand.
I stand there, waiting.
Nothing.
There's nothing. Just the brush of a kind man's mouth on my skin, the nail in my skull, and the empty street behind him where a car used to be.
He pulls back, reading my face.
"Sorry—" His eyes drop to the porch boards then come back up. "Too soon?"
I give him a tiny smile because he's too good, and it's easier than the truth. "It's okay. But yeah, I think it might be too soon."
"No, I get it." He steps back gently. "Don't worry about it." He's already easing off the porch, giving me room. "Get some rest and drink some water for that headache."
"I will. Goodnight, Declan."
"Night."
I watch his truck back out and roll away, the taillights small and red, until they turn the corner, and it's just me, the porch light, and the bugs ticking against the bulb.
?I let him drive home with the lie, and the worst part is that it isn't even true. It's not too soon. It's that the porch is empty where someone else should be, and a kind man kissed my cheek and I felt less than I feel watching a parked car.
I let myself in.
Marissa's on the couch with her knees up and her phone glowing in her face. She scrambles to standing when the door opens, all sixteen-year-old apology. "Hi, Mrs. Sullivan. You're back earlier than I thought."
"How was it?"
"They were perfect. Eli wanted five books at bedtime, but we stopped at two, like you warned me."
"You're a saint." I count bills into her hand and add an extra ten. "Text me when you're inside, okay?"
"It's eight houses down."
"Text me anyway."
She grins and ducks out. I lock the door behind her, set the deadbolt, and stand for a second with my forehead almost touching the wood.
The house is quiet the way it only gets after ten. I climb the stairs, the third one from the top creaking the way it always does, and I think, absurdly, of white oak and a man replacing every worn-down step with something built to last.
I get to Eli's door first. He's a starfish, blankets kicked to the floor, mouth open.
I cover him back up, smiling as I hear his faint, little snore.
I check on Sophie next, curled small and facing the wall, the line of her shoulder rising and falling slowly.
I stand in her doorway longer than I need to.
Then I go back down to the kitchen and stand in the dark with my hand flat on the cold counter. Slowly, the anger comes up where the guilt had been.
He didn't make me do this.
He didn't put me in a car or drive me out to Harlow or set up the date. I did all of that. I picked up the phone. I sent the text. I built this little play and cast a good man in it without telling him what role he was playing.
But he's the reason. Every bit of it traces back to one stool and one crooked grin and one ridiculous, unforgivable doll face I should have walked away from.
He's the reason my body woke up after eight months of nothing.
He's the reason I do things I would have sworn no woman like me was capable of.
He drew the line in my bedroom, in the candlelight, and then he followed me all night like he gets to have it both ways.
He does not get to have it both ways.
The phone is warm in my hand. A text appears, saying Marissa made it home.
I'm going to give that infuriating, devastating man a piece of my mind.
And I already know it's the last piece I've got left to give.