Before
BEFORE
My cousin Patrick answers the door in a bathrobe.
At least I think it’s my cousin, but he’s not what I pictured. Lank brown hair falls past his ears while a toothpick juts from between his teeth. Eyes as small and dark as watermelon seeds slide over me, making me wish I’d worn a parka. Even though it’s June.
Better yet, I wish I’d knocked on a different door.
“Mina Sutton?”
All my hopes of having rung the wrong doorbell evaporate. “Um...yeah. Hi. Are you Patrick? We spoke on the phone about—”
“Nah, I’m Randall, Patrick’s friend. He said you were coming today, so I told him I’d get you set up. He’s letting me crash here for a bit.”
The back of my neck prickles. “Oh. Really? He didn’t say anything about sharing the house.”
“Yeah, it was pretty last-minute. I got evicted from my apartment and needed a place to stay. But don’t worry, I won’t be getting in your way.”
I sidle back a step. Randall’s grin suggests he’d like nothing more than to get in my way.
“Why don’t you come in?” he says.
I peer past him into Rosalie’s house, hesitant.
My eyes widen at what greets me. Mountains of clutter teeter on every available surface, like an episode of Hoarders come to life. And damn, Kate’s right—it smells like cats. Ones that never get let outside.
My stomach drops. What is this? I agreed to sell off an estate, not dismantle years’ worth of accumulated bric-a-brac.
Randall rolls his toothpick between his molars and grins. “Pat left some garbage bags in the kitchen. Gotta say, it looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
I gulp. Dear god. This is not what I pictured. At all. Not Randall, not the house—none of it.
“I think there’s been a mistake.” My voice thins to a wisp. “I agreed to do an estate sale. Not sort through trash.”
Randall shrugs. “What’s the difference?”
I chance another peek inside. In one corner of the room, a pile of discarded bottle caps avalanches onto the carpet. On a broken end table, a fish tank bookended by towering stacks of newspaper overflows with broken seashells. “Patrick needs a cleanup crew, not me. Tell him I’m sorry, but this isn’t what I signed up for.”
I turn away, praying Michael hasn’t left yet.
“Wait, where’re you going?” Randall’s doughy fist clamps around my arm. “You can’t just leave.”
“Of course I can,” I shrill. “Let me go!” I try to shake him off, but I’m tiny, and he very much isn’t .
“No.” Desperation seeps into his voice. “Patrick’ll think I scared you off, and he’ll kick me out, and then where will I go?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you should take this job instead.” Electricity surges in my muscles, but even when I funnel all my strength into making an escape, Randall’s grip only tightens.
“Come on,” he whines. “Do I look like I wanna sort through all this?”
Panic mounts. I pull harder, and all I can think is that Kate was right, only she suspected the wrong man, and the one I should’ve stayed in the car with must already be—
Here .
The smell of rain fills my nose. Michael appears from nowhere and yanks me free. He tows me backward and plants himself between me and the house like he intends to shield me from a bullet.
“What the fuck?” he growls. “She told you to let go, loud enough that I heard her from the car. What the hell’re you doing?”
Randall throws up his hands. “Hey, man, it’s cool. This your girlfriend? I didn’t mean anything by it, if so.”
Michael bares his teeth. “Does that mean you did mean something by it, if not?”
Randall pauses, confused. “Um...no?”
Michael’s snarl only deepens, his eyes sparking like cinders. Nothing about the past three hours has suggested he had this kind of glorious anger inside him, yet nothing about it intimidates me. If anything, I just feel safe.
Randall steps outside. “Look, dude, she’s supposed to—”
Michael jabs a finger at him. “If you so much as come near her, I’ll turn that toothpick into a permanent part of your face.”
Randall recoils, clearly at a loss.
Michael stands there, his back heaving. I step in to wrap a hand around his wrist. His fists are clenched, the muscles in his forearms standing out like cords. “Come on,” I say. “He doesn’t matter.”
He swings around to look at me, his hair sliding over one eye. My heart skips. Damn, he’s tall. Way taller than I realized, though I knew from his driver’s license that he tops me by over a foot.
I just haven’t stood next to him like this, up close.
“You’re not staying here,” he rumbles.
“No. Definitely not.”
“Hey,” Randall cuts in. “What am I supposed to tell—”
Michael flings out a finger. “I don’t care. Just walk away, man. It’s not our problem.”
I don’t look over to gauge Randall’s reaction, but the front door clicks shut as Michael escorts me back toward the car.
I should breathe a sigh of relief, but he stops us by the Audi, staring at me with such focus that I can’t breathe. If I called him arresting before, now he’s something else entirely. The blush of sun on my cheeks and the hum of the lawnmower one block over fade to nothing. There’s just me and him, this stranger who doesn’t feel like a stranger at all, who just came to my rescue without hesitation.
“Are you okay?” he says.
“Yeah.” Strangely, with him here, it’s true. “Are you ?”
“Well, I just told a man to walk away from me in front of his own house.” He rolls his shoulders as if trying to shrug off his fury. “That’s a new one. Reviews are mixed.”
I crook a smile. “You also said you were going to turn his toothpick into a permanent part of his face. I have to say, I have no idea what that means.”
“Me neither. But he looked like he was going to piss his pants when I said it, so I’m calling that one a win.”
I giggle. It sounds odd, tinny, and I wonder if I’m panicking. If so, why do I feel so calm?
Michael flicks a narrowed gaze back at the house. “What is this place, anyway? You said you had family here, but when that guy grabbed you, you looked... terrified . You’re not actually related to him, are you?”
“No. My great-aunt died a couple months ago, and her grandson hired me to auction off all her property. Only Patrick never mentioned that the house was a disaster. Or that his friend would be rooming with me. I was supposed to be staying here for the next month, earning enough for my ticket. But now...” I fumble for more. Nothing comes.
“Your ticket to Greece, you mean?”
“Yeah.” My breathing turns ragged as the fantasy I came so close to touching recedes. “I have enough saved up to live in Athens for a while, just not enough to get there. And... Oh, god. I have no clue what to do now. Except text Patrick and tell him the job isn’t something I can do.”
Michael’s eyebrows pull together. “Well, all you need is a ticket, right?” He yanks his phone from his back pocket, then starts typing and swiping with fervor.
“Yeah, but... What’re you doing?”
“Booking you a flight. There’s one from Sea-Tac at eleven eleven tonight, connecting through Heathrow. Will that do?”
I wonder if I’ve lost my mind, or if he has. “No, what? You can’t do that. You can’t just... buy me a plane ticket.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t even know me.”
“The hell I don’t.” His fingers pause. When he glances up, something fierce glitters in his expression. “Besides, I’m not leaving you here with Toothpick Boy. Or letting you get into a situation with some other asshole like him.”
“Put your phone away.”
“Why,” he says. Not a question, but a challenge.
“Because.” I flail about for an explanation. “I have to earn it. Greece, this whole trip... None of it means anything if I don’t make it happen on my own.”
His jaw hardens, but a grudging respect flares in his eyes. “Well, damn.” He stashes his phone. “What’re our options, then?”
The our throws me. The whole insane, incredible situation throws me. In a matter of hours, this man has single-handedly prompted me to rethink my entire life, and now I can only blink up at him while he watches me expectantly.
“I don’t understand you,” I say.
“What?”
“ You . I don’t get it. I barely know you, but here you are taking me on road trips and rescuing me from aggressive jerks and trying to buy me international plane tickets. It’s like everything Sarah and Brooke said was the complete opposite of the truth.”
His eyes flare. “ Sarah? And Brooke? How the hell do you know them?”
“I don’t. I just met them for a second. Inside Seaside House, while I was looking for you.”
“Huh.” He blinks a few times. “I’m surprised you made it out to the parking lot if they got to you first. What’d they say?”
I bite my lip. “That you’ve been acting weird for the past month. Avoiding everyone.”
His gaze slides away. “Uh-huh. Well, that’s definitely true.”
When he doesn’t elaborate, I consider asking for more, but after what he shared in the car, that almost seems uncharitable.
“What else?” he asks.
“Um...that you’re an asshole.”
“Oh.” He nods slowly. “Well, they’re not wrong about that, either.”
My breath spills out, and I edge closer. I don’t know why, except that he anchors me somehow. “But you’ve been the exact opposite of an asshole.”
“To you .” He curls one hand around my elbow and pulls—gently, almost hesitantly. “But you’re different.”
I try to hold on to logic, but I feel myself changing shape inside. “How can you say that? You’ve known me for a day.”
“It’d be obvious to anyone with a brain.” He exhales sharply. “I mean, I just tried to buy you a twenty-two-hundred-dollar plane ticket, and you wouldn’t let me . Even if we ignore the entire car ride before that, that pretty much says it all.”
My lips part on a drawn breath. God, he’s so close, and so tall, and his smell makes my head spin. His fingers stroke my elbow, turning me fuzzy and electric inside. A hum builds in my center, as if I’m standing beneath a spool of high-voltage power lines and the current has sneaked beneath my skin.
“You asked why I’ve never left the country,” I say. “And why my mother’s so protective.”
He stills. “I did.”
The truth wells up. This time, it’s easy. The easiest thing I’ve ever done. “It’s because my brother died. On the day I was born. In Ireland.”
Michael’s breathing sharpens. “What?”
“Yeah. My mom was seven months pregnant with me. My brother, Jasper, was two. She and my dad had taken him to Europe, thinking they’d have one last big trip together before I was born. But Jasper got sick. Just fever and vomiting, at first, which my parents thought was food poisoning. But then he got worse. They finally took him to a clinic, but the doctor said it was a stomach bug and sent them away. Except Jasper just got sicker, and by the time everyone realized it was something more, his appendix had ruptured. They rushed him to the hospital, but...too late.”
Michael’s gaze bores into mine.
I swallow hard. “I guess it’s rare for that to happen in kids that young, but my mom’s convinced if we’d been here, the doctors would’ve caught it right away. Obviously, there’s no way to tell. But who knows. Maybe she’s right.”
Michael’s thumb circles my elbow, encouraging.
“My parents never really talk about the rest, but I’m guessing my mom went into shock, because I was born later that night. In the same hospital Jasper died in. The doctors say that’s part of why I’m so small, because I was nine weeks premature. I was in the NICU for two months before my parents could finally bring me home. And ever since...”
His mouth tightens. “They’ve been terrified to leave the country? To let you leave the country?”
“Yeah.” I blink away the sting in my eyes. I don’t know if I’ve ever spoken about this so openly. “For a long time, I thought they’d get over it, but in tenth grade, one of my best friends did a foreign exchange program in Costa Rica and didn’t come back. She was doing one of those rainforest zip line things and didn’t clip her harness in the right way. She fell.”
He does a slow, horrified blink.
“For my parents, that was absolute proof. Their terror come to life. And so I’ve never gone anywhere. I’ve just spent my life... Spent it...”
The corners of his mouth edge downward. “Shackled by other people’s fear?”
Something twists inside my chest. “Yes. That. Exactly that.”
“So you’re a nomad at heart. But static by necessity.”
I can’t help it—I have to touch him. It’s like something is pulling at me, commanding me to press a hand to his shirtfront. The thud of his heartbeat against my fingers feels like coming home, only to a house I’ve never set foot in before.
It’s the weirdest thing, a brand of magic I’ve seen in movies but never thought actually existed. People don’t feel this magnetic pull toward complete strangers.
But I do, and it’s taking me by the hand, tugging me somewhere dangerous and lush and beautiful. As I stare into those turquoise depths, I decide I’m going to plunge headfirst into this ocean, if Michael lets me. At least until I figure out a way to get to Greece.
“Thank you,” he says. “For trusting me with that.”
I nod, marveling at just how superior that response is to the one I gave him.
His fingers come up to feather against my jaw. “I want to take you somewhere. Right now. Would you let me?”
Hesitation doesn’t so much as stir. “Anywhere. Take me to the freaking moon.”
His touch lingers, the silence more eloquent than any words. When we finally finish making some kind of pact with our eyes, Michael tosses my bag into the Audi again. We slide back into the air-conditioned safety of the car.
“Are you sure you don’t want that plane ticket?” he says. “Because your entire life could change at eleven eleven tonight.”
It’s funny. An undercurrent of doubt has tainted most everything I’ve ever done, but now, it’s gone quiet. Fallen asleep while I bared my secrets. “I hope it does. I’m just not sure I actually need to get on a plane for that to happen.”
To my amazement, color sneaks into his cheeks.
Wow. He’s blushing. I made Adonis blush.
“Okay, then.” He clears his throat. “This is going to take a while, so we might not get back ’til late. But we can figure out what to do with you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I laugh softly as a brand-new warmth unspools in my veins. “Haven’t you heard? There’s no such thing.”
“Jesus. You minx.” He sticks the key into the ignition. “You really are going to break my heart, aren’t you?”
I smile as he accelerates back onto the interstate. Without a doubt, this has been the strangest day of my life, but I find myself wanting more. I want to drink down each minute, throw myself headlong into living and see where it takes me.
The freedom of it intoxicates me.
“I guess we’ll see,” I say, “won’t we?”