Chapter 22 #2
Hand over mine, we glide over the grass, clipping away at what was once a jungle out here. I clear my throat, trying not to sound affected by his presence. “You’re awfully good at this.”
I misstep to the side, forcing me to fall into him closer than I was. His arms tighten around me to hold me in place.
“Scottie,” he growls out, but I don’t move. My hips press into him, and I can feel everything—and I mean everything—against my back. The only thing it does is sharpen this reckless pull I already have for Tucker. This reckless gravity dragging me over the line again.
His lips brush the shell of my ear, and it takes everything in me not to melt straight into the grass. One breath against my skin and I’m already unraveling—willing to bring myself to my knees again for this man.
“Careful. You’re flirting with danger, Scottie.”
I smirk, turning my head to make eye contact with him over my shoulder, and he’s so close. God, he’s so close.
After thinking about everything the last few nights—the way he admitted he didn’t regret crossing the line with me and the way he said it without flinching like the truth didn’t scare him as much as pretending did.
He was also the first person who ever looked at me and told me I was enough without attaching a condition to it.
He’s let me be myself with him, and I finally understand what I’ve been doing all these years—shrinking what I feel so everyone else can stay comfortable.
I don’t want to do that anymore.
For once, I’m choosing me. And I’m choosing him.
“No, I’m flirting with you. The danger is just a bonus.”
Tucker throws his head back and groans.
Stepping away from me, I feel the loss of his touch everywhere, but I keep moving the weed wacker how he showed me. With more control, I clip down all the high parts of the grass around the edges of the house with Tucker watching me as if to protect me from slicing my ankles in half.
Just as I’m about to finish, I spot the glider swing off to the side of the property again. Taking large steps over the still tall grass patches, I stop in front of it.
Tucker stops beside me, close enough that his arm brushes mine. “We can fix this up,” he says softly, pulling his shirt over his head. “The swing. We don’t have to throw it out.”
I stare at it for another long moment, letting my fingers brush along the armrest. The metal shifting under my touch like it remembers being used. When I turn to face him again, his eyes are steady and show no judgment for why I’m staring at a swing with so many questions.
“Thank you,” I say, surprising myself with how much the words matter.
“I don’t even remember it, if I’m being honest. It’s been so long since visited this house that not even one memory has come back to me since being back here.
But there’s something about this swing…I just… I wish I remembered more.”
“Whether you remember or not, this swing meant something to someone you loved.” I turn to face him, shocked by his words.
He shrugs. “That has to count for something. Besides…” He pauses, walking to the other side of the swing, gripping the chains.
“Sometimes memories come back in pieces. Sometimes not at all. That doesn’t make them any less yours. ”
I swallow, staring down at my hand. I think about how Tucker doesn’t know about how I’ve been feeling toward this place. How I’m missing that connection to the house.
“I told you the other day in the hallway that I don’t remember my grandmother,” I say, not wanting to look at him as I continue.
“I’ve been trying so hard these last few weeks to find a connection to this place—this house.
It doesn’t feel like mine. It’s been nothing more than a checklist for me, and I hate that I don’t remember a single memory I’ve had here. ”
Tucker crosses in front of the swing, coming to a stop in front of me, lifting my head with the back of his finger under my chin. “Maybe it’s not about what you used to feel. Maybe it’s about what you feel now.”
I look up at him, surprised by how steady his eyes are. “And what if I still feel nothing?”
He smiles. “Then we start from nothing. You rebuild it—the house and the memories. Whatever you want this place to mean again.”
My chest tightens at the warmth behind his words. “You make it sound easy,” I whisper.
“It won’t be,” he says honestly, letting his fingers trail along my jaw and down my neck. “But you won’t be doing any of it alone.”
The air between us pulls tight, charged in a way that makes my breath catch.
Tucker is looking at me like I’m not just some girl trying to remember a childhood swing. Like I’m something he wants to reach for.
I want to kiss him, right now in the open. The thought sparks through me so fast it leaves my knees unsteady. His eyes flick down to my mouth, and it’s enough to make my pulse surge to life.
“Tucker Daniels!” a voice shouts from the yard.
We step apart, both of our heads snap toward the sound, and we spot Nan storming over to where we stand, offended and dramatic. She’s waving a pair of gardening gloves over her head like she’s signaling a passing plane.
“Tucker Daniels,” she repeats, stopping between us. She pokes him hard in his chest, forcing his hands to fly up in defense. “I just found out a little something-something.”
“Huh?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “You really texted Griffin for help with all of this, but not me? I’m wounded.” She pokes his chest again. “I’m offended.” Another poke. “I feel so betrayed.”
“Whoa, Nan,” he says, holding her by both shoulders and leveling his stare with hers. “You. Don’t. Text. Remember?”
She gasps. “I do too! I sent you a picture of my rose bush last month!”
“That was a letter,” Tucker deadpans. “You mailed me a printed photo as if you don’t see me every single day at the bar or around town.”
Nan waves him off. “Details. You still should have alerted me. You know, I could have organized this little plan you had.”
This plan?
Wait, did—
“And I could’ve been more prepared and brought my chainsaw,” she huffs.
“No chainsaw,” Tucker and I say in unison.
“Fine. But next time, you talk to me first,” she says. Tucker nods, and she lifts her chin in victory. “Now, back to whatever you two were doin’.”
As she stomps away, something in my brain clicks into place.
All of this—the town, the help, the overwhelming feeling that I’m not alone.
This was Tucker.
He called them for me.
He cares enough to assemble an army to help me win this battle against the jungle that is my yard, so I didn’t feel so behind. My heart does a weird flip, and I press a hand to it like I can calm it with just my touch.
“You okay?” Tucker asks.
I nod, but my voice is trapped somewhere in my chest. “It’s just…a lot.” I gesture to everything around us with my hand. “Everyone is helping today as if it matters to them.
“It does matter to them.”
“It feels like…” I pause, searching for the right word. “Like belonging.”
“You already do.” His gaze softens. “Whatever you need from here on out, you tell me. I’ll make it happen. You want to make sure we’re on time? I can do that. You want a break? Consider it done. No more stressing about this project alone.”
My eyes sting with hope as everything inside me shifts.
Tucker held me when I cried on his porch, and today, he made sure I wouldn’t have to do any of this alone. He reminded me that I won’t ever have to.
He breaks our stare first, not because he’s cutting off the moment, but because he’s giving me space to feel it.
But I’m not hiding from it anymore.
Not from him.
My eyes sting with hope as everything inside me shifts.
The yard slowly settles into a rhythm with the town working together and the hum of conversation blending with the buzz of power tools.
I find Nan by the porch, directing two kids who look terrified of disappointing her, while attempting to untangle a hose that has seen better days. Once they get it done and Nan looks satisfied, they smile and run off.
I step closer, glancing back toward the yard where Tucker stands laughing at something Griffin is saying. I smile and return my attention back to Nan.
“Hey, Nan.”
“Ah. There she is. How ya holdin’ up?”
I shrug. “Not too bad. But I want to ask you something.”
“If it’s about ripping up that bush, it needed to go.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Definitely not about the bush. That really did need to go. It…smelled funny.”
“Like cat piss? Yeah. You’re right.” Her expression shifts—not dramatic, but softer when she notices my lack of reaction. “Now, since it’s not about the bush, what’s going on in that head?”
I hesitate. For someone who can flirt with danger five minutes ago, this feels so much harder.
“What was she like?” I ask. “My grandmother.”
Nan stares at me, registering my words. For a moment I don’t think she’s going to tell me. Then she reaches toward me and wipes a smudge of dirt from my cheek with her thumb. The gesture feels so maternal it nearly undoes me.
“You don’t remember her at all?” she asks gently.
For a bull-in-a-china-shop type of woman, this softness from her feels so different.
I shake my head. “I keep trying. I keep thinking if I stand in the right room or touch the right thing, it’ll just…click.” I swallow, looking from her to the house behind her. “But it doesn’t.”
“She was stubborn.”
I blink. “Stubborn?”
“Lord, yes. That woman once argued with the city for three months about a mailbox regulation. Three months, Scottie. Over the angle of the post.” I laugh, but she continues.
“But she was the kind of stubborn that meant she didn’t quit on people and things.
Ever. If she loved you, she loved you all the way through. No conditions.”
I look from Nan to the ground, unsure of what to make of all this.
If she didn’t quit on me, then why did I stop coming here?
Why did my mom, my dad, and I, stop coming here?
Turning my head to the side, my eyes land on the swing off to the edge of the property where I stood with Tucker an hour ago.
“She sat on that swing every morning,” Nan says, noticing what I’m looking at.
“Coffee in a chipped mug she refused to replace. The swing used to sit right here.” Nan walks toward the spot in the grass just off the side of the porch and I follow her.
She stops, circling where the swing used to sit.
“She’d wave at everyone who drove by, which wasn’t many people on this side of town. ” She laughs.
“She sounds…” I struggle for the word.
“Like someone who knew exactly where she belonged,” she says with certainty.
The words settle over me, hitting me right to the core.
Nan looks from me to the house, turning my body to face it with her. “She loved this house. Not because it was perfect. Lord knows it wasn’t. But she loved it because it was hers.”
I think about the way I’ve been looking at this house like it’s a project.
A checklist.
A deadline.
“I don’t feel that,” I admit, facing her again. “I feel like I’m borrowing it. Like I’m renovating someone else’s story for a show.”
Nan studies me carefully. “You know…memories don’t always show up the way we expect them to. Sometimes they’re not pictures in your head. Sometimes they’re instincts.”
“Instincts?”
She nods. “The way you stand in a room and already know how it should the look. The way you don’t want to throw that swing away. The way you fight for this place even when you say you don’t feel connected.”
My throat tightens and I feel my eyes burn with tears. “You think that’s her?”
“I think,” Nan says firmly, “that you are more like her than you realize.”
A breeze rushes through the air, rustling the pieces of tall grass that hasn’t been cut yet. We both look down at it and then Nan looks up to the sky smiling. “Millie used to say ‘just because you can’t remember something doesn’t mean it didn’t shape you.’”
“She said that?”
Nan shrugs. “Among a lot of other things. Some of which I can’t repeat in polite company.”
I force a laugh because I know she’s trying to bring me back to the present.
She’s trying to help me get my head out of this space I’m currently trapped in.
But her words cling to me. I’ve been treating my missing memories like a failure.
Like if I can’t replay a scene in my mind or hear her voice clearly, then maybe I didn’t love her enough.
Clearly, Mimi Millie loved me enough to leave this house to me, but there’s nothing else she left behind for me to piece together the missing parts.
But what if love doesn’t work like that?
What if it’s quieter?
What if it’s in the way I refuse to throw out the swing. In the way I couldn’t get rid of the pink bathtub. In the way I still need pieces of the house to stay the same so that I can make it shine again for her.
“Nan?” I ask, pulling her from her face to the sky moment. “What if I fix this place up and it still doesn’t feel like mine?”
She smiles, stepping closer to me. “Then you keep living in it until it does. Homes aren’t built from memory, Scottie girl. They’re built from moments.”
My gaze drifts back to the yard—to Tucker adjusting his backward baseball cap now in deep conversation with Levi, to Lily smiling and handing out pastries, and to Dallas pretending not to let the kids win in whatever game he’s playing with them.
To belonging.
“She would’ve liked him,” Nan says. My eyes snap to her and then follow her line to sight to Tucker.
I nearly choke. “Nan.”
“I may be old, but I ain’t blind. Millie always liked people who show up,” she continues. “And that boy? He shows up.”
I scoff. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“With the house, or with him?”
“Yes.”
Nan laughs so loudly that half the yard turns to face us. “Well,” she says, squeezing my shoulder. “Good thing neither of those things are finished yet.” She starts to step away and then pauses. “Oh, and Scottie?”
“Yeah?”
“She would be really damn proud of you.”
Nan says it with such certainty that I believe it. I smile because I can’t help it, and she pats my cheek once before turning back toward the chaos of the yard, already shouting at someone about proper shrub planting techniques.
I stand there a moment longer.
The house doesn’t feel empty and hollow anymore.
It feels…in progress.
And maybe that’s enough for now.