Chapter 19
Luke
The door opens above me. Her footsteps on the stairs—quicker than before, like she’s running out of time for something I’m not part of.
“Sorry about that,” she says. No explanation. No details. Just the apology and the clear expectation that I won’t ask.
I don’t.
I pull out my tape measure and start marking the walls.
She stands by the stairs, arms crossed, one foot on the bottom step like she’s ready to bolt.
Not interested in me. Not performing for me.
Not even aware of me the way women usually are when a man’s in their house, that low-frequency alertness, that constant peripheral calculation.
She’s somewhere else entirely. Running numbers I’m not part of. Solving a problem I can’t see.
That should be a relief. It’s not. And the fact that it’s not is starting to irritate me in a way I can’t file under anything useful.
“Mrs. Mather tells me you used to be a radiologist,” she says.
There it is.
Except—that’s all she says. No soft voice. No sympathy face. No I’m so sorry about what happened. She drops it the way you’d say I hear you’re left-handed.
I wait for the rest. It doesn’t come.
“That’s right,” I say.
“Hated it?”
“Loved it.”
“Then why’d you stop?”
Anyone else, I’d shut this down. But she’s not asking for the story. She’s sorting data.
“Got tired of looking at what’s broken and not being able to fix it,” I say.
She considers that. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t comfort. Just lets it sit between us like a card she’s decided not to play.
Everyone else in this town handles me like I’m made of glass. They lower their voices. They touch my arm. They bring casseroles I didn’t ask for and say things like Emily would have wanted you to move on, as if they’d ever once asked Emily what she wanted.
Marin doesn’t do any of that.
I don’t know what to do with a woman who treats my worst thing like a resume line. But I know I don’t want her to stop.
She looks up the stairs and listens for something—I watch her jaw tighten and then release—and whatever she hears or doesn’t, she moves on.
“How much for materials?”
Just like that. Done. No condolences. No casserole. No she’s in a better place. She asked me why I quit and then asked me how much it costs, and the pivot was so clean it left a mark.
I came here to measure walls and give a quote and drive home and not think about her for the rest of the night. That was the plan. It was a good plan.
“I’ll write up a list tonight,” I say. “Have it done by end of day tomorrow.”
“Great.”
She’s already heading up. Conversation over. I’m dismissed—not cruelly, just completely, the way you set down a glass you’ve emptied.
I’ve wanted women before. That’s simple. That’s a weekend and a bottle of whiskey and nobody’s name in the morning. Ordinary. Manageable. The kind of want that knows its place and stays there.
This doesn’t know its place. This is standing in my old basement watching a woman who doesn’t need me walk away and feeling something land somewhere it shouldn’t have landed without my permission.
Not desire—I can handle desire. Something worse.
Curiosity. The need to know what she’s hiding, what she’s running from, what it would take to make her look at me the way she just looked at those stairs.
I don’t want to be curious about Marin. Curiosity is how you end up in someone’s life, and I’m not built for that anymore.
And yet here I am, memorizing the strip of skin between her sweatshirt and her shorts like it’s evidence of something I’ll need later.
That’s a dangerous want. The kind that doesn’t stay where you put it. The kind that pisses you off precisely because you can’t stop feeding it.
But I won’t.
Something smells off down here.
Not the cleaning product.
Something under it. Sharper. Warm.
I pocket my tape measure and head upstairs.
Probably nothing.