Chapter 13 — The Wall And The Room
The Wall And The Room
The sun had dropped enough that the pool water looked amber instead of blue, and the patio was a riot of wet towels, empty sunscreen bottles, and six women who had claimed my backyard so completely that the lawn chairs no longer felt like mine.
Kiki was in the upstairs shower, her voice carrying through the open window in something cheerful and off-key.
Shay and Tatum had migrated to the sectional with a bowl of popcorn.
Penny stood near the sliders on her phone, platinum hair twisted up, and she kept glancing back at the room with a kind of attention that had nothing to do with whoever she was talking to.
Reese and Eden were at the kitchen island.
Reese with her chestnut hair drying into loose waves, honey-brown eyes bright as she showed Eden something on her phone.
Eden beside her, dark hair pulled back, hazel eyes sharp, thumb tracing the condensation on her water glass in a rhythm that looked idle and wasn't.
I'd been watching them for ten minutes. Not the old way, the guarded look of a man who noticed too much and admitted nothing.
This was different. This was the man who'd stopped pretending he didn't want all six of them in his house, in his life, and was now working out how to make that real without leaving anyone behind.
I set down the beer I hadn't opened, crossed the kitchen, and stood across from them.
"Hey," I said. "Can I take you two somewhere a little quieter for a minute?"
Reese looked up first, warm and immediate. Eden set her phone down, which told me she was taking it seriously.
I took them upstairs. Not my bedroom. The hallway at the top of the stairs, where the late light came through the window at the far end and turned the hardwood gold, and where four claimed rooms stood open or half-open with the evidence of women who had already decided to stay.
Reese leaned against the wall, arms crossed, her damp hair leaving a dark spot on the paint. Eden stood beside her, one shoulder against the same wall, close but not touching, the controlled ease of a woman who treated standing still as a choice.
I stood across from them. The words I'd been rehearsing dissolved into something simpler.
"The rooms that aren't claimed yet," I said. "They're yours. If you want them."
Reese's breath caught. Soft, audible.
"I'm not making this conditional," I said.
"That's the point. However this goes, whatever happens between us or doesn't happen or happens later, the rooms are yours.
This house isn't just mine anymore. It hasn't been for a while.
And I want you both here. Not as guests.
Not as possibilities. As part of whatever this is becoming. "
Reese's eyes went wide and a little shiny. "You mean that? Really mean it?"
"Every word." I stepped closer, close enough to smell the lake on her. "The room across from mine is still open. The one with the window that faces the water. It felt like it belonged to someone specific."
She knew what I meant. The thunderstorms. The way she'd always needed closeness when the sky went dark. The weight of history becoming present hit her in the face like a physical thing.
Her hand found my arm, fingers wrapping around my wrist. "Yes," she whispered. "God, yes. That room. That's exactly the room I wanted. How did you know?"
"I pay attention," I said, and her laugh came out shaky and real, and she pressed her forehead to my shoulder for one brief warm moment that said everything her mouth didn't need to.
I turned to Eden. She hadn't moved. Her posture was still perfect, one shoulder against the wall, hazel eyes holding mine with the sharp focus of a woman who read rooms for sport.
"And you," I said. "Whatever room you want.
The one by the bathroom, the one with the bigger closet, the one that gets the morning light.
However you want it to look. However long you need to decide.
" I kept my voice easy. "No pressure. No timeline.
The room is yours whenever you're ready for it to be yours. "
Something flickered across her face, fast and controlled, and then the smile arrived, slow and certain.
"I've had my eye on the one with the bay window," she said. "Good light. Good sightlines. Good proximity to the stairs, which matters for a woman with plans." She paused, let the word sit. "But I appreciate the lack of conditions, Luke. That's really good."
Reese was already bouncing on her toes, honey-brown eyes bright. "I'm going to paint it," she said. "Something warm. Something that feels like us, but here." She glanced at Eden, then back at me, and that glance carried the weight of all seven of us.
Eden watched her, and the smile she gave was controlled and amused, and underneath it something raw that she wasn't bothering to hide anymore. "I'll help," she said to Reese. "With the painting. I'm better at edges than you are, and we both know it."
Reese laughed and hooked an arm through Eden's, pulling her off the wall with the Madden warmth that treated physical contact as inevitable.
"Deal. But I pick the color, and it's going to be something ridiculous, and you're going to hate it, and then you're going to love it, because that's how this works. "
They moved down the hall together, Reese talking about paint samples and throw pillows and the way the morning light hit that window, and Eden listening with the controlled amusement of a woman who had already decided she was staying and was working out the details.
I stood in the hallway for six seconds and looked at the doors. Four open, two closed, and the rightness of it settled over me like something I'd been missing without knowing the name for the hole.
From downstairs, someone laughed. The shower shut off. A door opened and closed. The house was filling up with the people who belonged there, and the old bachelor pad I'd lived in for years felt like something I was finally outgrowing.
***
Two days later, Reese carried a dusty cardboard box into the kitchen and set it on the island with the care of someone handling something fragile and important.
"My mom's been cleaning out the garage," she said, and her honey-brown eyes were bright with warmth that bordered on mischief.
"Dangerous activity for a Madden. We keep everything.
Photos, videos, the ticket stub from that concert where Tatum threw up on the security guard, which I have, by the way, and I'm not sorry. "
I laughed, rusty and real, and put my hand on the edge of the box, feeling the weight of it through the cardboard. "How far back does this go?"
"Far." Reese lifted the lid, and the smell hit me.
Old paper, lake air, summers preserved in stacks of prints nobody had looked at in years.
"Dock days. Birthdays. That storm where the power went out and we all slept in the living room.
" She pulled out a handful and spread them across the island.
"Prepare yourself. There's a lot of you in here.
Very thorough documentation of a man who had no idea he was being collected. "
I looked down at the first photo she placed in front of me, and my chest went tight.
Me, younger, standing on the Bishop dock with an arm around Kiki, her golden hair in braids, her smile wide and unselfconscious.
Behind us, the lake stretched blue and perfect, and the trust in her eyes, the way my hand rested on her shoulder as a steady presence rather than a claim, hit me with a force I hadn't expected.
"Keep going," Reese said, watching my face.
She laid out more. Me with Shay on the Hollis boat, both of us laughing, her arm hooked through mine.
Me with Tatum, both of us soaked from some water fight I'd clearly lost, her grin containing zero remorse.
Me with Penny at a lakeside party, her platinum hair catching string lights.
And Reese herself, over and over. Reese at fourteen on the Madden porch during a thunderstorm, her body angled toward mine like I was the safest thing in the room.
Reese at eighteen handing me a drink on the dock.
Reese at twenty with our shoulders touching, both of us looking at something off-camera, and the ease of it, the way her body knew the shape of mine without being told, sat in the photo like evidence.
Eden appeared in the doorway, hair loose around her shoulders, hazel eyes sharp behind the casualness. "What's all this?"
"Blackmail material," Reese said, grinning. "Very thorough. Also, very beautiful, which is annoying, because I was hoping for at least one bad photo of Luke and there isn't one. The man is photogenic at all times, which is rude."
Eden crossed to the island and picked up a photo. The Fourth of July, all seven of us clustered together, sparklers in hand, everyone laughing. Her thumb traced the edge of the print with a care that contradicted everything about her posture.
"We should frame them," Reese said, and the words came out quiet and warm and completely meant.
"Not hide them. Not keep them in a box. Put them on the wall right here.
" She gestured at the blank wall beside the kitchen, the one that faced the lake through the sliders.
"Photos of you with all of us. Across years.
Proof of what we've been and what we're becoming.
" She looked at me, and the vulnerability in her eyes was so raw it nearly broke me.
"Not just lovers. Not just a secret. Family.
The seven of us. It should be on the wall, Luke. It should be where we can see it."
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Because she had found the place in me I didn't know was still waiting to be touched.
The six people I loved most in the world, the six women who had somehow turned my house from a place I lived into a place I wanted to come home to, and Reese wanted them on the wall. Not hidden. Not explained away. Not treated like something temporary or dangerous or too complicated to name.
Seen.
Kept.