Chapter Nine
James made a mean everything-omelet, filled with bacon and peppers, onions and two types of cheeses.
It was his go-to meal, and had been since he was a teen.
Now, as a man past thirty, wearing a set of coveralls and living in a house he had bought with money he’d earned with his hands, the meal felt different somehow.
Maybe because the first person he had served it to outside of his family had not only praised it, but asked for seconds.
It was more than satisfaction for him. It was a point of pride. A pride he wore with a growing smugness as he cleared the plates and handed her the coffee she had requested.
“I could get used to this,” Rose muttered, taking the coffee with a nod. “You could turn this place into a bed-and-breakfast with your kind of service.”
James laughed at that. He motioned to the peeling wallpaper in the corner and then the extremely outdated countertops and appliances.
“I’m not sure many people would want to vacation here, never mind in Seven Roads. We’re not exactly a tourist trap.”
“Hey, don’t forget the power of passers-through, especially with the motel being out of business now.” She shrugged. “A little paint here and there and I could see this place working.”
James started to fix his own coffee. It was more a reflex than a need. Since offering Rose a place to stay he hadn’t had any trouble staying awake.
“Sadly, my plans for this place aren’t as grand as all that. I just want somewhere to grow roots, house some kids, and drive me a little crazy as we both age. I don’t need outsiders trying to pay me to be nice.”
Rose made a noise into her coffee. James turned with an eyebrow raised.
“What, are you surprised the big ol’ mechanic man bought a house specifically for future kids?” he asked.
Rose put her coffee down and shook her hands in front of her.
“Not surprised you want to, just surprised how casual you were about saying it, is all. But maybe that’s because I’m so used to getting asked when I’ll get married and settle down that I’m a bit quiet on the topic.”
James leaned against the counter. He knew it wasn’t exactly his business, but he was curious.
“Do you want to get married and settle down?”
He half expected a glare or a pointed barb sent in his direction at the intrusion. Instead, he was met with a shrug.
“It’s not off the table,” she said. “I just haven’t sat down at the table it’s on yet, so to speak.
” She let out a sigh. He wondered if her head still hurt but decided to hold that question for later.
Unlike this one, he wasn’t sure she would be as honest with her answer.
Admitting she was in pain didn’t seem to be Rose Little’s strong suit.
“The last guy I dated wasn’t a fan of my job and—while I get that it’s not for everyone and I don’t blame those who stay away—he kept waiting for me to change my mind and leave the department.
Leave Seven Roads. I’m not sure if he wanted the whole white picket fence thing but I know he didn’t want me wearing a badge.
” Her hand moved beneath his sightline under the table.
Like she was reaching for her badge on memory alone.
She lifted her gaze back to his. Her smile felt watered down but nonetheless sincere.
“I know I can belong other places but it’s here where I want to belong,” she finished.
James understood her, if only for different reasons. Since Rose had given him some information, he decided to share in kind.
“I had the opposite problem with my ex,” he started.
“She wanted me to stay in there and I wanted to be in Seven Roads. She didn’t want a house of kids, and I don’t think I could live in a house without them.
” James ran a hand across the back of his neck.
“Though I’ve gotten a little off-track since helping Dad with the shop.
Or maybe it sounds nicer to use your ‘not at the right table yet’ analogy.
I’m not even sure I’m in the right room as my table yet. ”
As he said it, he couldn’t help but notice that Rose was sitting at a very real table in his very real home. On the one hand, it was surreal. On the other, it felt oddly normal.
Rose’s brow drew in. She voiced her question next.
“I don’t know if it’s impolite for me to ask but why did you want to live in Seven Roads? You only lived here for a few years when you were a kid, right? Then came back a few years ago to start the shop? Why?”
This wasn’t an unexpected question. James had been asked some variation of it more than a dozen times. Why had the kid with no true hometown come back to plant a flag, so to speak, in a place that he’d barely lived in before?
James pushed off the counter’s edge and closed the space between them in two steps. He took her hand.
“Let me show you.”
The land the old house sat on was just over one acre. It included the field and a cropping of trees just beyond it. That field of tall, wild grass looked the same as it had when he was six. Decades later and in the dying sunlight.
“When I was six, I got into a really big fight in a foster home I was staying at. It was a bad one too. I got hurt pretty good, landed myself in the hospital, and pretty much scared myself off people too. The county agency decided it would be better to shift me to a new place and, after a lot of back and forth, I landed in Seven Roads.”
They were standing on the back porch, which was surprisingly not as worn as the rest of the home. James had dropped Rose’s hand after they had gone through the back door, and now placed his own on the railing. The solid wood railing showed the remnants of stain long-since perfect.
He patted it once and with absolute affection.
“This was my last foster home before I went to the Kellers but that’s not why I bought this place. Want to see the real reason?”
Where he expected a little resistance, he received none. Instead, Rose let him take her hand again and this time lead her out into the tall grass. The fading light almost perfectly matched his memory as they walked through the overgrown back lot at a light pace.
Not too far from the house James stopped them and turned back around.
He dropped her hand and sighed out long.
That feeling was back, just as it always was when he was here.
And that was what James wanted to explain to Rose, for whatever reason.
“I was standing about right here when my mom called out to me that it was time to leave,” he said.
“Dad had just packed the last of my things I’d left behind and my aunt was helping my foster family tie up loose ends.
I was out here, running around, because I was never really big on saying bye to a place.
And honestly, I think I was still nervous I’d be left behind again. ”
James felt Rose’s gaze on him, but he kept his stare locked onto the memory. He pointed to the back porch.
“But then Mom came out there and said it was time to go home. And she didn’t move until I ran all the way from here to there.
” James looked at the distance between him and that porch.
If there was ever one stretch of land he knew better than the rest, this small run was it.
“My life changed in that next house—the house I ended up growing up in—but this is where my little world actually changed. It’s the first time I felt like I was running toward something worth running for.
So when I saw it was up for sale, I came back here with Dad to check it out.
And wouldn’t you know it, all I had to do was stand right here and that feeling came right on back. ”
He gave out a self-deprecating laugh.
“So I bought the house for this one piece of land as a gift to that scared and anxious seven-year-old. We made it! It was scary and stressful sometimes, but we made it all the same.”
James knew it sounded cheesy, like some kind of movie that had a lot of crying and sharing of feelings, but it was all true.
Standing in the field and looking back at the house in the distance, lights on and warm against the approaching night, was a comfort. Plain and true.
A comfort he had never shared with anyone before, he realized.
Finally, he looked over at Rose.
She was facing the house now. Her hair was cute, held up in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. James bet she might tease him for his dramatic take on the dirt and grass they were standing on. However, Rose was frowning. Even in profile, it was pronounced.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Her voice was nothing but agitation.
“You brought me—the lady who already got your workplace blown up—to a place this special and irreplaceable?” She whirled around to face him. Her hands went right to her hips like she was a teacher scolding a disappointing student. “Are you kidding me? Thanks for the pressure there, Mr. Keller!”
For a second, James worried that she was seriously mad. But then she rolled her eyes at him.
“Now I’m going to be worried about protecting you, me and an entire house,” she continued.
James couldn’t help but smile at how exasperated she sounded, especially when she started to walk back to the house, still complaining.
“I thought it was just some silly old house you got because the housing market is horrible,” she continued. “But noooo. It’s so sentimental that it made my heart squeeze. Ugh. Now I definitely need to find Damon as soon as possible.”
James’s smile softened as he watched the little Little stomp her way back toward the house with fake outrage.
He waited until she was a few steps away. Like he always did, James imagined his seven-year-old self running ahead, stomach knotted up in barely suppressed excitement.
That didn’t change as he started to walk now.
This time, though, there was definitely something different.
This time he had someone to follow.
* * *
THERE WAS NO news from Liam, Detective Williams, or anyone else in the next few hours.
It made Rose more anxious than if there had been something to report on, bad or not.
Instead, she whittled the time away by pacing James’s living room, being told by James not to pace in his living room, and by going back to pacing in James’s living room.
He put the TV on and managed to sidetrack her for a while but eventually Rose decided she needed something stronger than idle chatter.
So she took a bath.
The guest bathroom might have been dated but the tub was wide, deep and clean.
There was even some fancy bubble bath mix beneath the sink, courtesy of James’s mother, who—according to him—believed all baths should be drowning in bubbles.
Rose didn’t know if she agreed with it to that extent, but she poured in the lavender mix with the mindset of “when in Rome.”
Thoughts about bubbles, bombs and Damon Tillman melted away as soon as Rose lowered herself into the hot water. The stress she had been carrying for days didn’t go away but it had the peace of mind to pause.
Rose sighed out at the temporary relief.
Her thoughts floated around to simpler things.
She wondered what she might have for breakfast the next day, what the weather might look like, about which house the couple on the TV show they had been watching ended up picking, and if James Keller took baths.
Because, as she stretched her legs out and let her feet walk up the opposite end of the tub, she couldn’t imagine a man as big as him fitting in one that wasn’t extra-large.
She stayed with that image a little longer than she probably should have and then marveled at how ridiculous the last week or so of her life had gotten, from trying to get her car fixed to lounging in the mechanic’s tub.
She decided to never again judge another movie heroine who went from a normal life to a chaotic one so quickly.
Rose’s thoughts doubled back to the man himself, and the image of him standing next to her in the grassy field earlier.
He had been so vulnerable, so honest, with his past that Rose hadn’t known what to say—what to do.
Putting on an act of being annoyed at trusting her around such a precious place was a last-second effort to remain unattached to his story.
But now she let her heart ache for him.
He had been through a lot and still found the bright side. A giant wall of an optimist wrapped in coveralls and muscle.
Rose started to smile, thinking about how he was still wearing his work coveralls, when a knock sounded on the door.
Her face instantly heated.
“Yeah?” she called.
The knock sounded again.
“I’m in the bath,” she added, not that he should need reminding.
Rose imagined a sheepish grin on James’s face on the other side of the door. Maybe he’d come to ask her if she needed anything or warn her about the old pipes or something.
But that knock came again.
Rose shifted in the bathwater, suddenly uncomfortable.
She eyed her phone on the counter, just out of arm’s reach.
Maybe James was just messing with her.
Maybe he was just trying to scare her?
Even as she thought it, Rose knew that wasn’t the case.
James might have acted childish on occasion, but his manners were all well-behaved man. He wouldn’t interrupt her privacy without a good reason.
That was why, without thinking, Rose hadn’t locked the bathroom door.
And that was how, in what felt like slow motion, Rose watched that same door open.
Her opinion of James stayed true—he wasn’t the type of man to invade her privacy and that was why she had felt safe.
But the man standing in the doorway now?
Good manners or not, he was no James Keller at all.