Chapter 7
Tobias
I was starting to understand what wanting felt like.
Not wanting in the vague, academic sense I'd grown up with.
Not the polite preferences of a Langford second son who understood his role was to want what he was supposed to want.
But actual, visceral wanting. The kind that sat in your chest and hummed.
The kind that made you think about something even when you should be thinking about something else.
I wanted things now. Real things. Specific things.
I wanted the worn paperback smell of Vance's bookshelf, the particular creak of the third floorboard from the bathroom, and the way morning light came through the window I cleaned yesterday, falling across the plant on the sill in golden bars.
I wanted cooking. The precision of it, the chemistry. The satisfaction of watching ingredients transform under heat and attention into something edible, something good. Yesterday's pasta had actually tasted like food someone would eat on purpose.
I wanted to draw again. Vance had an old legal pad shoved in a kitchen drawer, the kind with yellow lined paper.
I'd found a pencil stub next to it. Yesterday morning, while he was at work, I sat by the window and sketched the roofline across the street.
Just the way it intersected with the sky, the proportions, and the negative space between the chimney and the neighbor's oak tree.
My hand remembered what to do even when my brain felt lost. Four years at Columbia, studying buildings and spaces and how people moved through them.
For the first time since I'd run, those years felt like they belonged to me instead of my family.
Most of all, I wanted the moments when Vance came home.
He'd stop in the doorway, scanning the room as if surprised to find it changed.
The grunt of acknowledgment that passed for hello in his vocabulary.
The way he'd taste whatever I made, nodding slightly if it was good, saying nothing if it wasn't, which was somehow more honest than any elaborate compliment.
I wanted the evenings. The quiet hours on the couch while he watched TV and I read. The way our feet almost touched in the middle, close enough to feel his warmth without actually making contact.
I wanted him to look at me the way he had last night, when he thought I wasn't watching. Like he was seeing something worth seeing.
That was the wanting that kept me up at night. The wanting I didn't know what to do with.
The cushion thing started as an offhand comment.
I had been sitting on the couch trying to read, but the lumpy frame kept digging into my back.
The couch was a disaster of engineering, held together by hope and what appeared to be duct tape along one seam.
The back support was nearly nonexistent.
The cushions had long ago surrendered any pretense of shape.
"A cushion might help," I said when Vance came home that evening. I had been thinking about it all day. A proper cushion for my lower back would make the couch almost tolerable. "For back support."
He glanced at the couch as if he had never noticed anything wrong with it. "It works fine."
"It works terribly. I'm fairly certain there's a loose spring somewhere in the foundation."
"That spring has been loose for three years. It's stable."
"That's not what stable means."
"It means it hasn't gotten worse." He dropped onto the couch, settling into its contours with ease. "You're welcome to sit somewhere else."
I dropped it. Vance had a stubbornness that matched my own, and there were battles worth fighting and battles that weren't. Couch cushions fell firmly into the second category.
Besides, it wasn't like I was going to be here forever. Eventually, I'd have to figure out my life. Get a job. Find a place to live. Become a real person instead of a runaway heir hiding in a security officer's apartment.
But that was a problem for later. For now, the couch was survivable.
Two days later, Vance came home and tossed a shopping bag at me without comment.
I caught it, confused. The bag was from a home goods store I didn't recognize. Inside was a cushion. Dark blue, memory foam, exactly the right size for the gap between the couch back and where a normal human spine would be.
"You bought a cushion."
"It was on sale."
I looked at the cushion. Then at him. His expression gave nothing away, but his ears were slightly pink around the edges.
"Thank you," I said carefully.
"Don't make a big deal out of it."
He walked to the kitchen and started pulling items from the refrigerator, effectively ending the conversation. I held the cushion in my lap, running my fingers over the soft fabric. Dark blue. My favorite color. I wondered if he knew that or if it was just a coincidence.
Later, when he was in the shower, I checked the tag still attached to the cushion.
Thirty-seven dollars. Full price. No sale sticker. No discount code. Just a plain white tag with the original price printed in bold.
He'd lied about the sale. He'd bought me a full-price cushion and pretended it was nothing.
I tucked the tag in my pocket and said nothing.
That night, sitting on the couch with the cushion behind my lower back, I felt something warm unfurl in my chest. Something that felt like being cared for. Being thought of.
Being wanted.
That evening, I discovered Vance kept his coffee mugs in three different cabinets.
"Why?" I asked, standing in the kitchen, holding a mug wedged behind a stack of plates. "You have six mugs. Why are they in three separate locations?"
"They fit where they fit."
"That's not a system. That's chaos."
"It's efficient." He sprawled on the couch, flipping through channels. "I know where they are."
"Do you? Because this one was behind your plates, which, by the way, are also in two different cabinets."
"The big plates don't fit with the small plates."
"They would if you stacked them properly."
He turned to look at me, amusement and challenge in his expression. "Are you reorganizing my kitchen?"
"I'm considering it."
"It's been working fine for three years."
"It's been working adequately for three years. There's a difference."
He snorted, which I was learning was his version of a laugh. "You sound like a management consultant."
"Architecture degree. We're trained to optimize spatial flow."
"Spatial flow." He said it like it was a foreign language. "In a kitchen the size of a closet."
"Especially in a small space. Every inch matters.
" I placed the mug with the others I'd already gathered, lining them up on the counter.
"If you group items by frequency of use, you save time and movement.
Coffee mugs should be near the coffee maker.
Plates should be near the dishwasher. It's basic ergonomics. "
"Or I could just reach wherever and grab what I need."
"That's what you've been doing. And you've been wasting approximately—" I calculated quickly "—thirty seconds per meal on unnecessary movement."
"Thirty seconds."
"It adds up."
He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head and turned back to the TV. "Reorganize whatever you want. Just don't touch my beer fridge."
"You have a beer fridge?"
"Bottom shelf of the regular fridge. That's the beer fridge."
"That's not a fridge, that's a shelf."
"It's a fridge within a fridge. Beer fridge."
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it. Some battles weren't worth fighting.
The mugs were definitely getting reorganized.
The peace lasted until I started thinking about what came next.
At some point, the media frenzy would die down. The Langfords would stop looking, and I'd have to figure out what came next.
The problem was, whenever I pictured "after," Vance was always there.
Making coffee in the morning, squinting at the machine like it might betray him. Watching TV in the evening, his feet propped on the coffee table. Teaching me to cook, his voice low and patient.
I didn't know what that meant. Didn't know if it meant anything at all.
"You're staring."
I blinked. Vance was looking at me, one eyebrow raised.
"Sorry. Just thinking."
"About?"
You. "Whether I should reorganize your bookshelf next."
"Don't you dare."
"It's alphabetized by nothing. Not author, title, or genre—"
"It's alphabetized by when I bought them."
"That's not alphabetizing. That's just... chronological chaos."
"It works for me."
"Does it? When was the last time you found a book without searching three shelves?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it. I'd scored a point.
"Fine," he said. "But if you touch my books, you're cooking for a week."
"I've been cooking anyway."
"Cooking things I choose. No more experimental risotto."
"That risotto was perfectly adequate."
"It was crunchy."
"Risotto has texture."
"Rice shouldn't crunch, Tobias."
I bit back a smile. "Noted. No more crunchy risotto."
"And no touching my Clancy novels. They stay where they are."
"Why Clancy specifically?"
"They're signed."
That made me pause. "Tom Clancy signed your books?"
"Met him at an event before he died." He said it casually, like it was nothing. "He was a decent guy. Talked to me about submarines for twenty minutes."
There was a story there. I could see it in the way his expression softened, just slightly.
"Maybe," I said carefully, "you could tell me about it sometime."
He looked at me for a long moment. Something flickered in his gray eyes.
"Maybe," he said. "Sometime."
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close. The closest I'd seen from him since I arrived.
"You're bossy."
"I'm organized. There's a difference."
"Uh-huh." He stood, stretching in a way that made his t-shirt ride up and his shoulders flex. I looked away too quickly, felt my face heat, hoping he hadn't noticed.
He noticed.
His eyes narrowed slightly, curiosity entering his expression. But he didn't comment. Just said, "I'm going to shower. Try not to reorganize anything else while I'm gone."
"No promises."
He made a sound that was almost a laugh and disappeared into the bathroom.
I sat on the couch, clutching a book I wasn't reading, and tried very hard not to think about Vance in the shower. About water running down broad shoulders. About steam and soap and skin.
I failed completely.
That night, we ate leftover carbonara and watched two more episodes of the procedural.
Vance sat at one end of the couch. I sat at the other, the new cushion comfortable against my back. There was space between us. Appropriate space. Safe space.
It didn't feel like enough.
"Thank you," I said during a commercial break. "For the cushion. And the books. And letting me stay."
"You've said thank you a hundred times already."
"It bears repeating."
He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was rougher than usual.
"You don't have to keep thanking me. You're not a burden."
"I'm definitely a complication."
"Those aren't the same thing." He turned to look at me, something unreadable in his gray eyes. "You're allowed to take up space, Tobias. You're allowed to be here."
I didn't know what to say. Nobody had ever told me I was allowed to take up space before. The Langfords were all about minimizing inconvenience, about being useful without being visible. Be present for photos. Attend required events. Otherwise, stay out of the way.
"I don't know how to do that," I admitted. "Be somewhere I'm actually wanted."
The words hung in the air between us. Too honest. Too raw.
Vance's jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought he might say something. Then the commercial ended, the show returned, and the moment passed.
But something had changed.
I could feel it in the space between us. The air was different now, charged with something I didn't have a name for.
That night, I lay awake for hours, thinking about gray eyes and rough voices and the way he'd said you're allowed to be here like it was simple. Like wanting things was simple.
Like wanting him might be simple too.