Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
GAVIN
She looked ridiculous in my shirt. Ridiculously perfect.
We’d just finished dinner—a stir fry of chicken and vegetables, nothing fancy.
The sight of Rose sitting at my kitchen table in a black cotton shirt stamped with my company’s logo, sleeves rolled up over her delicate wrists, her hair a little less-than-perfect from the countertop events earlier, made my chest tighten in the way it always did when something felt too good.
Her legs were crossed beneath her, bare except for the oversized boxers that she’d cinched tight at the waist with a few rolls.
I hadn’t even realized how much I’d missed this until now.
A woman. At my table.
Sharing a meal with someone else.
It felt … normal. But not in an average normal way. In the kind of way that gut punches you with how much you'd needed and missed something so simple without realizing it.
I couldn’t stop stealing glances at her.
I loved watching her tuck loose strands of hair behind her ear.
The way she’d smiled when she took the first bite and still seemed shocked I could cook something edible …
besides a cup of hot chocolate and a grilled cheese.
The way her index finger on her free hand kept tapping the edge of her plate like all of her energy was directed to that one movement.
Christ, I was a goner.
Dinner conversation had been light. She asked about my crew and teased me about my wardrobe choices always lacking color. We argued playfully about whether pineapple belonged on pizza. She agreed to disagree on that one—however, I planned to work on that because it certainly does.
But now the house was quiet again.
This, the quietness of two people sitting at this table, is what I’d gotten used to over the last decade. That is, on the very rare occasions—mainly only holidays—when Teagan joined me.
After we lost Vanessa, meals were … silent. Tense. We either avoided each other altogether or sat across the table from one another like strangers. She didn’t want to talk, and I didn’t know how to push her without breaking her more than she had already been broken.
Eventually, I stopped trying. Not because I wanted to but because she was seventeen, almost eighteen, when we lost her mother.
I had tried everything to get her back—to get back even just a sliver of the wild, energetic, kind-of-reckless, but caring daughter we’d raised.
Nothing worked. Shortly after the house was finished, she chose to move into the guest house out back.
While I hated the fact that it shut me out more, I was at least happy to know she was safe.
I got used to eating alone. On the couch with whatever was on the TV, or out on the deck, staring out at the trees behind the house with a beer in my hand and the weight of my own failures dragging down my shoulders.
I didn’t hate the silence—it was easier than watching someone you love look through you like you weren’t there.
Or worse, like you’d caused all the pain they ever felt.
“Thank you for dinner,” Rose said softly.
I blinked, pulled back to the present, and noticed a smile on those perfect lips.
“You’re welcome,” I muttered.
She looked around, eyes sweeping over the open floorplan. The kitchen spilled into the living room, and just beyond that, dark-paned double doors led out to the deck. Her brow furrowed gently and then she hummed to herself. Not judging. Just thinking.
“What’s on your mind, sweetheart?”
She looked back at me, her voice slow and thoughtful. “It’s just … this place doesn’t really feel like you.”
That surprised me.
I followed her gaze out into the space. Clean lines. Neutral colors. Everything coordinated. Comfortable, sure, but not lived in.
I exhaled through my nose. “That’s because it’s not.”
She looked at me curiously.
I pushed my plate away and rested my forearms on the table. “A home’s not the wood or walls. It’s who’s inside it. And for the last nine years … it’s felt pretty damn empty here.”
Rose didn’t say anything. Just nodded once, slow and understanding, before settling deeper into her chair like she knew I needed space to say it all.
So I did.
“I built this place a year after Vanessa died,” I said quietly, my voice heavier now.
“The house we raised our daughter in … it turned into a prison after we lost her. For both of us. Teagan and I couldn’t breathe in it without choking on the memories.
Our bedroom. The kitchen counter where she’d make Teagan eat her breakfast each morning, and where she’d leave me a thermos of black coffee with one piece of peppermint candy on top.
” I gave a light laugh at the slight head tilt of confusion Rose gave.
"She always said no one wanted to speak to someone with coffee breath.”
I rubbed a hand down my face.
“Vanessa’s parents tried to help. They came and packed things away, trying to make it easier.
But it didn’t matter. Every corner of that place was haunted.
Teagan and I were close before the accident.
But after? It was like I became everything she resented in the world.
She raged and rebelled, as I am sure you remember from the last year of high school. ”
I looked over at Rose again. She hadn’t moved—just listened. Still and soft in the best kind of way.
“Then, one day, I saw the listing for this land. Your parents had just put it on the market. And I jumped. I needed a distraction. Something to do with my hands. Something that made sense.”
I swallowed hard.
“I also thought … maybe if I gave Teagan control over the design, the furniture, the finishes—maybe she’d like me again.
Maybe she’d see I was trying. That I wanted us to be better.
Which, saying out loud, sounds like I was trying to buy my daughter’s affection, which is fucked up.
But I was out of options.” I took a breath and looked around the house again.
“Clearly, it didn’t work. She just sent me a photo of a staged house from a past remodel and said it was fine. So here we are.”
Rose got up without a word and walked over to me. She climbed gently into my lap, arms winding behind my neck, and rested her head on my shoulder, leaving little space between her lips and the exposed skin above my collar.
The scent of her shampoo—vanilla with a hint of lemon, maybe—settled into me like peace. My arms found her waist on instinct.
“Teagan does love you,” she whispered against my skin. “Maybe not in the way she used to. But it’s still there.”
Her fingers found the nape of my neck and began to toy with the hairs there. Soft, calming strokes. I closed my eyes.
She pulled back just enough to look at me, one hand on my shoulder, the other pressed to the center of my chest.
“I know enough about the accident,” she said softly, “to know it wasn’t your fault.”
My breath caught. I didn’t speak. I just stared into those big brown eyes that were full of warmth, comfort, and understanding.
How did she know? How could she see this guilt that never loosened its grip?
I looked away, jaw clenched. She couldn’t know what I knew. What I remembered. I was sure she’d heard bits and pieces from her parents, but not the full details.
Not the parts that kept me awake so many years later, on multiple occasions.
It had been my fault. All of it.
I’d been working late. Again. On some job I couldn’t even name now. Some house. Some family. Not mine. Not the one that mattered.
I’d been too busy to mow the lawn. To replace the fence post that had cracked the month before, when Teagan and her friends kicked a soccer ball too hard while practicing for their upcoming game. A game I was too busy to attend.
I was also too busy, too distracted, to replace the tires on Vanessa’s car like I’d promised I would—the ones I’d been warned about. The ones I knew needed to be dealt with.
The ones the emergency crew said blew out on a curve that night in the rain.
She didn’t die because of bad luck. She died because I kept thinking there’d be time to fix it all later.
I hadn’t fixed a damn thing.
Rose brushed her thumb over my chest, over my heart, and it took everything in me not to fall apart under her touch.
She didn’t speak right away.
She just stayed there, holding me together while everything inside me cracked open a little more.