Chapter 5
HAZEL
I’d spent the day conducting triage on a dying house.
I’d counted windowpanes, noted which ones stuck and which ones rattled, tested every outlet with my phone charger, and made a running list that bled from one page to the next—bullets and sub-bullets and parentheses whispering contingencies only I could hear.
The work had steadied me. Numbers and fixtures were predictable. Hinges told you when they needed oil. Wood sagged in ways you could see. People were trickier.
By four, my shoulders had ached. I was halfway down the stairs with a bag of trash on my hip when the bell on the front desk gave a bright, single ding.
I froze.
I hadn’t expected anyone to ding that bell. The sound cut the quiet like a clean blade, and for a heartbeat, it was just me and the echo.
I’d set the trash down carefully on the step and came around the banister, smoothing my hair without thinking. He was there, big and impossible in the foyer, and the world narrowed to the shape of him.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. The kind of build that came from work, not a gym membership.
His T-shirt strained across a chest carved from something older than discipline—mountain muscle, maybe.
His hair was pulled back, dark blond with a hint of copper, the sides shorn close to reveal the sharp cut of his skull.
The beard—thick, burnished gold—framed a mouth that looked made for sin and silence both.
His eyes were a pale, impossible gray, clear and watchful, the kind that saw through walls and people alike.
He didn’t just take up space. He altered it. The air around him shifted, heavier somehow, like even gravity deferred to him.
He looked up at me like he’d expected me to be there, like he’d felt me coming before I appeared at the foot of the stairs. Grey eyes—no, not grey; wolf-colored, changeable—found mine and held.
He didn’t linger. Just accepted the key, and carried his duffel toward the stairs with a kind of quiet confidence that made my pulse skip. No wasted motion. No glance back to see if I was watching. Which, of course, I was.
The boards creaked under his weight—deep, steady sounds that matched the rhythm of his stride. I listened until the noise faded overhead, until the silence filled back in like a tide reclaiming the shore.
Only then did I let out the breath I’d been holding.
I rubbed my palms down my jeans, trying to ground myself in something ordinary—dust, fabric, motion—but the moment had already branded itself somewhere low in my stomach.
“Hazel?”
Maude’s voice carried from the hallway. I jumped.
She appeared with a stack of folded towels in her arms and a knowing look that made me feel like I’d been caught doing something indecent.
“You’ve got a guest?” she asked, not surprised so much as satisfied.
“I guess, I do.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “He just checked in.”
Maude set the towels down on the counter. “That’s good news. The place’ll start to feel alive again with folks coming through.”
“Sure,” I said, though it didn’t feel like good news. It felt like a test.
My eyes drifted toward the staircase. He was up there now—Gideon Dane. The name suited him. Hard consonants, no wasted syllables.
“He’ll be needing supper,” Maude said, already pivoting toward the kitchen. “I’ll see what I can pull together.”
“I can help,” I said automatically, following her.
“You can set the table, if it’ll make you feel useful,” she replied without looking back. “Dinner’s half done already. I was planning shrimp and rice, but I’ve got chicken, too, if he looks like the type that prefers land to sea.”
“He looks like the type who prefers control,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
Maude laughed, a soft sound that somehow managed to feel like wisdom. “Then he’ll eat what he’s served. You go on, dear. I’ll handle the rest.”
I lingered in the doorway while she busied herself with the stove. I could hear the rhythmic scrape of her spoon against the pan, the faint hiss of oil meeting heat. Normally, those sounds would soothe me. Today, I wasn’t sure what I felt.
I’d never really learned to cook. My mother had died when I was twelve—too soon to pass down recipes or rituals, too soon to show me how food could be love, if you let it. After that, meals became something functional, not comforting. In Chicago, I lived on frozen dinners and takeout.
It was strangely nice, watching Maude move around the kitchen like it was a living thing—adding a pinch of salt here, tasting a sauce there.
For a second, I had the oddest urge to learn.
To stand beside her, sleeves rolled up, and let someone teach me something that wasn’t about efficiency or survival.
The thought surprised me so much, I almost smiled.
Instead, I drifted to the window, drawn by movement outside. The late light hit the dunes in gold bands, the sea restless beyond them. And then, through the reflection on the glass, I saw him.
He’d stepped onto the porch, stripped of the usual armor people wore—no phone, no sunglasses, no pretense. Just a man standing still.
His head was tipped slightly, like he was listening. The wind caught the ends of his hair, the copper in it flashing in the sun. He had the kind of stillness that made you wonder what it would take to shake him.
And why you suddenly wanted to try.
I told myself to move, to stop staring. But the truth was, I couldn’t. There was something about the way he stood there—like he’d carried the quiet of someplace big all the way to my doorstep and left it sitting between us.
When he finally turned, our eyes met through the glass. My stomach dropped. He didn’t smile. Didn’t nod. Just looked—calm, assessing, deliberate. Then he went back inside, and I realized my pulse was hammering against the windowpane.
By the time I found my way back to the kitchen, Maude had two plates ready and candles lit on the small dining table near the bay window.
“Go on,” she said, handing me a towel to set down the pan. “It’s not a date, but it won’t kill you to act like you’re hosting.”
“It’s not a date,” I said quickly.
“Good,” she said with a smirk. “Then you won’t mind that I’m serving him the good silver.”
I tried to laugh, but the sound came out uneven. I was halfway through folding napkins when I heard the soft thud of boots behind me.
He’d come in quieter than any man his size had a right to.
“Smells incredible,” he said, voice deep and steady.
I turned too fast and nearly knocked the water pitcher off the table. He caught it midair, reflexes sharp as a striking match.
“Careful,” he murmured, handing it back. Our fingers brushed—just barely—and a live-wire current jumped between us.
“Thanks,” I said, too quickly. “Dinner’s ready.”
He nodded once. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”
“You’re not,” I lied.
He glanced around the dining room like he was cataloguing exits and shadows, and for some reason, that made me feel safer. Seen, even. He moved like someone used to scanning for danger—and disarming it.
As he took his seat, I caught the faint scent of soap and rain. He’d showered, or maybe just washed the road off his skin. Either way, the air around him shifted again, thick with something I couldn’t name.
I sat across from him, and Maude disappeared with her usual grace, leaving the two of us in the kind of silence that hums when it’s about to turn into something else.
He reached for his fork, then paused. “You live here alone?”
I blinked. “Yes. Well, Maude’s in the apartment out back. But otherwise … yeah. For now.”
He studied me for a beat longer than was polite. “That’s brave.”
“It’s not bravery,” I said, forcing a smile. “It’s a clause in a will.”
Something in his expression softened, like he recognized the truth of that more than he should have. “Still brave,” he said quietly.
I let out a small breath that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“My grandmother owned this place. She ran it herself until she couldn’t anymore.
When she died, she left it to me on the condition that I keep it for a year before I can sell.
” I gave a half-shrug, glancing down at my plate.
“One year. No exceptions. I think she was trying to teach me something.”
“About what?” he asked, his voice low, almost gentle.
“Roots,” I said, then winced at how hollow it sounded. “Patience, maybe. She built this place from nothing and held on even when it stopped making sense. She was stubborn like that.”
“She sounds like someone worth remembering.”
“She was.” I toyed with my fork, pushing a piece of shrimp through a smear of sauce. “But she was also someone who made everything hard on herself. On everyone, really. I think she believed struggle meant strength.”
He nodded slowly, like he understood that language fluently. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“You believe that, too?”
“I believe in order,” I said before I could stop myself. “Predictability. You can’t lose what you keep organized.”
He tilted his head, studying me in a way that made my chest feel too tight. “Sounds lonely.”
I looked down again, throat dry. “Sometimes it’s peaceful.”
A silence settled, not awkward—just full. He didn’t push, and I didn’t fill it. Outside, the wind shifted, carrying the faint crash of waves through the old glass panes.
I gestured vaguely toward the window, desperate to move the conversation.
“The inn’s a mess. Half the shutters are hanging by a thread, the porch railing’s about to collapse, and I’m pretty sure the roof leaks in at least three places.
The plumbing hums like it’s alive, and the upstairs floor dips like it’s plotting my death. ”
He smiled then, slow and small, like the sun catching the edge of something dangerous. “You planning to fix it yourself?”
“I’ll do what I can. Hire help where I have to.”
He leaned back slightly, the chair creaking under his weight. “Bet you could handle more than you think.”
Something in the way he said it made my pulse trip. I looked up—mistake. His eyes had gone a shade darker, that gray taking on a stormy edge.
I tried to speak, to deflect, but my voice betrayed me. “I … I don’t know. I’ve never fixed anything like this before. I live in a condo in Chicago.”
His gaze flicked to my hands, resting on the table, then back to my face. “You learn by doing.”
My heart gave a traitorous kick. “And you? You look like someone who knows how to fix things.”
His mouth curved, not a smile exactly—more like an acknowledgment of something dangerous between us. “Depends on the thing.”
The air thickened even more. I caught myself staring at his hands—broad, strong, veins tracing over tan skin. They looked capable of rebuilding walls, or breaking them down. Of steadying something fragile … or undoing it entirely.
My mind went where it shouldn’t. Heat crawled up my neck before I could stop it.
I pictured those hands—big, rough, and steady—wrapped around a hammer, braced against weathered wood as he repaired the porch rail. The image shifted before I could blink. The hammer was gone. The wood was me.
Those same hands, steady and certain, sliding down my hips, gripping, guiding.
The same precision that could rebuild something broken turned toward ruin instead—mine.
I imagined what his skin would feel like against mine, that calloused drag over the softest parts of me, the contrast so sharp it made me ache.
I wondered how a man like him touched when he wanted something—if he was patient or punishing. If he gave orders or took them. If that low voice would sound the same when it wasn’t speaking in full sentences, but just my name, rough and wrecked.
The thought hit like a pulse between my legs. I bit the inside of my cheek, willing the color in my face to fade, but it only burned hotter.
God, what was wrong with me? I’d known him for thirty minutes. I didn’t even know where he was from, what he wanted, or why he’d shown up at my door. And yet my body reacted like it recognized him—like it had been waiting for him.
That was the worst part. The wanting felt familiar. Dangerous. Like muscle memory I didn’t remember learning.
When I looked up, he was watching me.
“You just thought of something,” he said. Not a question. A statement. His tone was low, rough velvet over gravel.
I shook my head too quickly. “I didn’t.”
He leaned in slightly, elbows resting on the table, eyes sharp and amused. “You did.”
I felt the blush deepen, betraying me. “It’s nothing,” I whispered.
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
His voice sent a shiver down my spine—steady, patient, dangerous in how sure it was. I gripped my napkin, willing my pulse to slow.
“I should check on Maude,” I said, my chair scraping softly against the floor. “Maybe she’d like a plate.”
He didn’t move, didn’t stop me, but his gaze followed me like a touch. “Dinner was good,” he said as I passed. “But something tells me dessert could be better.”
I froze in the doorway, my breath catching hard in my throat.
When I glanced back, he was still watching me—calm, unreadable, gaze pinning me in place.
“Goodnight, Hazel,” he said, his voice a low promise wrapped in politeness.
I swallowed, my hand tightening on the doorframe. “Goodnight.”
The moment stretched, thin as silk, before I forced myself to walk away.