Chapter 6 Rosemarie
SIX
ROSEMARIE
She thought I was his daughter?
My throat felt too tight, my chest too full of heat. Not just anger—though there was that. No, this was something deeper. Embarrassment, shame, desire—all tangled together and pressing heavy against my ribs.
I mean … seriously?
We didn’t even look alike.
I’m fair—pale enough that the sun treated me like a chew toy every summer.
A tiny splash of freckles. Wide brown eyes that give everything away before I even speak.
Long, loose blonde curls that were always either laying perfectly or looking like I’d gotten into a fight with my hairbrush that morning.
There was this girl-next-door thing I couldn’t seem to shake. Sweet. Quiet. Well-behaved. The kind of girl who read romance novels behind the register and got flustered when a contractor showed up with a tool belt and too much forearm on display.
Gavin was … Gavin.
Tall. Broad. Built like he’d been lifting things heavier than a half dozen of me since before I was born. His arms were thick with strength that wasn’t for show—strength that was earned.
He had tanned skin that held onto the sun like a second layer. Calloused hands that probably could have snapped a wrench in half, but that still moved gently when needed. Storm-cloud grey-blue eyes that always seemed to show more than he said. And that beard …
Scruffy but trimmed, kissed with silver, the kind of beard that made him look dangerous and safe all at once.
He wasn’t cute. He wasn’t “handsome” in a suit-and-tie way. He was undeniably masculine. And he smelled like cedar and clean sweat and a little bit of sawdust.
We didn’t look alike. We didn’t act alike.
We weren’t alike.
And the worst part? I knew his daughter.
Teagan.
Since we were the same age, we’d grown up alongside one another. We were never super close like her and Elodie. Just close by association. She was … sharp. Pretty in that effortless, intimidating kind of way. She didn’t try to fit in; people fit themselves around her.
She’d always had a bit of an edge to her. The kind of girl who knew how to flirt with teachers and break curfews and always got away with both.
I thought she was a little mean. Cold, sometimes. But even then, I knew where her bite came from.
Teagan lost her mom too young. Seventeen. And that kind of hole? It didn’t just close up. It echoed.
Still, I never forgot that one night, years ago.
I should’ve been asleep.
I had a chemistry final the next morning, and I was stressed to hell. Midnight had come and gone. My highlighters were dry. My eyes were fried. I told myself I’d go downstairs, make hot chocolate, just breathe for a second, and then go to bed … Okay, maybe after one more practice test.
I padded down the stairs in socks, the old floorboards groaning like they were trying to warn me.
Halfway down, I caught sight of him.
Gavin, sitting at the kitchen island, shoulders hunched forward like the weight of the world had finally broken through his spine. His hands were clasped tight in front of him, head bowed. A glass of something dark—whiskey, I think—rested untouched beside him.
My dad sat next to him, elbows on the counter, with so much concern and care etched into his face. I could hear my mom’s voice from the other side of the island, soft and steady in the kind of tone she only used when someone needed mothering in the gentlest way. A tone I rarely got from her.
“I’m trying,” Gavin said, voice low and raw. “I really am. But it’s not good enough. Teagan hates me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not cut out for this.”
There was silence. Heavy. A silence with edges.
Then my mom answered, calm and even. “Teens are hard. Even the ones with two parents. You’re not failing, Gavin. You’re just tired.”
“She looks at me like I ruined her life,” he sighed. “And maybe I did. I don’t know how to be both parents.”
“You’re doing your best,” my dad said, his voice warm and unshaken. “That counts for something.”
And then Gavin said it.
“I see Rosie and she’s so … perfect. Kind. Polite. A good kid. You two hit the jackpot.”
I remember how my breath caught. How my fingers curled around the railing.
My mom gave a soft laugh. “We are lucky. But Teagan lost someone, Gavin. Her mom was her world. She’s not trying to get in trouble. She’s just … lost.”
They kept talking, voices dipping into a kind of quiet understanding that wrapped around the room like a blanket.
But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. Couldn’t breathe.
I’d never seen Gavin like that. Never imagined that someone so solid, so sure, could bend under the weight like that. That their heart could bleed like that.
That night changed something in me.
It was the first time I realized grown men weren’t invincible. That they could carry grief like bricks in their chest and still show up the next day.
Still cook dinner.
Still fold the laundry.
Still try to be someone for someone else.
Trying to parent. Trying to love. Trying not to drown.
And now—years later—standing beside him in the dark, the scent of Thai food curling through the air and far too many feelings crashing in at once, I realized something else.
That night, he saw me as perfect. The well-behaved girl with polite manners and a quiet mouth.
Safe.
Untouchable.
But what if I didn’t want to be his “friends’ perfect daughter” anymore?
What if I didn’t want to be sweet or polite or safe?
What if I wanted him to see me now—really see me? Not as the kid upstairs or the girl next door.
But as a woman.
As his woman.