Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
BECKETT
BECKETT
Three things I've learned since moving to a mountain in British Columbia.
One. Espresso machines need filtered water or they produce something that tastes like battery acid mixed with regret.
Two. Cell service doesn't exist past the second switchback on my road, which my board discovered when I missed a shareholder call and my CFO drove forty minutes to physically hand me a phone. Three. My neighbour hates me.
That last one bothers me more than it should.
The water line was fixed by five p.m. the same day she showed up on my property with mud on her boots and fury in her brown eyes. My contractor, Steve, looked genuinely horrified when I told him he'd rerouted a shared access line. Apologized. Fixed it. Took him two hours. Easy.
The six a.m. noise was addressed the following morning. Crew now starts at seven thirty because I pushed it past the legal minimum out of what my therapist would call an outsized desire to be liked by a woman who clearly has no interest in liking me.
The mug was harder. I spent forty minutes on my phone in the one spot behind the build site where I get a single bar of signal, scrolling through thrift store resale sites looking for a cactus mug that says Stuck On You.
Found one on an Etsy shop in Kamloops. Paid sixty dollars for a mug that probably cost three. Had it overnighted.
Left it on her porch with a note.
Found it. Not the same one, but close. Sorry about the helicopter. —B
That was four days ago. No response. No knock on the door. Nothing.
My name is Beckett Rhodes. I'm thirty-seven.
I sold the biggest division of my cybersecurity company eight months ago for a number that made my accountant cry actual tears.
Still run the consulting arm, still answer to a board.
I bought this property on impulse during what my therapist calls "a breakthrough" and what my board calls "a liability.
" I left Vancouver because I woke up in a penthouse with floor to ceiling views of the harbour and couldn't think of a single person who'd notice if I didn't.
That's the thing about building a company from a dorm room. You build the company. You don't build the life around it.
Every relationship I've had started at a launch party or a conference or a charity gala and ended when the woman realized that I'm exactly what I look like.
A man who works too much, talks about server architecture at dinner, and doesn't own a single piece of furniture he picked out himself because his assistant did all the buying.
So I bought a mountain. The plan was vague. Something about fresh air, perspective, maybe learning to cook something that doesn't come from a delivery app. My architect, Greta, flew in from Vancouver, walked the property, looked at the existing cabin, and said "Burn it." We started from scratch.
The new house is beautiful. It's also freezing at night, half finished, and making sounds I can't identify coming from the crawl space. Greta says it's settling. I think it's judgement.
None of this explains why I'm standing at my kitchen window on a Saturday afternoon watching Desireen Laurent wrestle a four by four post into a hole she dug herself while rain threatens from the west. She's been at it for an hour.
No help. No power tools on this particular project.
Just her body, a post hole digger, a level, and a stubbornness I find physically impossible to look away from.
The porch railing on her cabin's south side is broken. Has been since before I moved in. One of the balusters snapped clean through, leaving a gap wide enough for someone to fall through if they leaned wrong. She's replacing the whole section herself.
My phone buzzes. One bar. A text from Jake Winters, the security consultant who helped implement our membership software for some private club in a town called Crimson Hollow about an hour from here.
Jake:
Heard you moved to the mountains. You doing ok up there or do I need to send a search party?
Me:
I'm fine. Watching my neighbour build a porch railing in the rain.
Jake:
Why aren't you helping?
Me:
She'd kill me.
Jake:
Sounds like my kind of people. Come visit Crimson Hollow sometime. Trish says you need friends.
Me:
Tell Trish I have friends.
Jake:
Name one that isn't on your payroll.
Fair point. I put the phone down.
The rain starts. Properly now, not the threatening drizzle from the last hour.
Full commitment rain. Desireen doesn't stop working.
She's bracing the post with one hand, holding the level with the other, and the rain is soaking through her tank top.
Her braids are piled on top of her head under a bandana that's slipping.
Her arms flex with the effort of holding the post plumb while she kicks gravel into the base.
She's going to lose the post. The hole isn't deep enough for the saturation, the gravel base won't hold without concrete in this soil, and the rain is softening everything.
I pull on a jacket. Grab the bag of quick-set concrete I bought for my own fence posts that are sitting in my garage untouched because I haven't gotten to fencing yet. Walk next door.
She sees me coming. The expression on her face is exactly what I expected.
"No."
"Your post is going to shift overnight without concrete."
"I'm aware."
"I have quick-set. It's already mixed with aggregate. You just pour it in the hole, add water, and it sets in thirty minutes."
"I know what quick-set concrete is. I'm a landscape designer."
"Right." Rain is running down my neck. The bag weighs fifty pounds on my shoulder. "Then you know the gravel alone won't hold in this soil type. Not with this much moisture."
Her jaw tightens. The post wobbles. She catches it.
"Just let me set the bag down. You don't have to talk to me. You don't even have to acknowledge I'm here. Just let the concrete do its job."
For a long moment she stares at me through the rain. Water running down her face, dripping off her chin. Her eyes are so dark they're almost black, and the intensity in them makes my chest do something inconvenient.
"Fine. Set it down."
We work without speaking. She holds the post plumb while I pour the quick-set around the base, then she adds water from the garden hose.
Twenty minutes. The post is solid. She checks the level three times because she doesn't trust me, or doesn't trust anything she didn't do entirely alone. Both, probably.
"The other two posts are fine." She says it without looking at me. "Just this one had rot at the base."
"Makes sense. South facing gets the most weather."
Now she looks at me. Studies my face with an expression caught between suspicion and curiosity. "You know about post rot?"
"I Googled porch railing repair at two a.m. last week."
"Why?"
"Because yours was broken and I couldn't sleep."
The rain picks up. We're both soaked. Her tank top is plastered to her body, and I'm trying very hard to look at her face because the alternative is noticing the curve of her waist, the fullness of her breasts, the way the wet fabric leaves absolutely nothing to my imagination.
My hands are filthy. Concrete dust turned to paste on my fingers. She's got mud up to her elbows.
"You Googled how to fix my porch railing." Not a question.
"I also Googled how to fix a leaky roof, how to increase hot water heater capacity, and what kind of soil amendment works best at this elevation. In case any of that comes up."
"You're researching my problems."
"I'm a problem solver. It's what I do."
She pushes wet braids off her forehead. Something shifts behind her eyes. A crack. Small. Just enough.
"The cactus mug was close. Not the same. But close."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I used it this morning."
Something warm spreads through my chest. Stupid. A woman used a mug. That's it. But the fact that she kept it, used it, acknowledged it, feels like the first inch of ground gained in a campaign I didn't plan to start.
"Come inside," she says. Pauses. "For coffee. Because we're soaked and you just carried fifty pounds of concrete up my driveway."
Her cabin is small. Warm. Smells like fresh soil from the seedlings on every available surface. The kitchen counter has sketches spread across it. Landscape designs, precise and detailed, with plant labels in neat handwriting. A laptop open to a client proposal. A half-eaten sandwich.
She pours coffee from a French press. The cactus mug goes to me. She drinks from a mason jar.
"You gave me your good mug."
"You earned one coffee in the good mug. Don't get used to it."
We sit on opposite sides of her kitchen table. Rain hammering the roof. She wraps both hands around the mason jar. Steam rises between us.
"Why'd you really move up here, Beck?"
The question is direct. No softening. She asks questions the way she does everything, like the answer matters and she won't waste time pretending it doesn't.
"Because I'm thirty-seven years old and I couldn't name a single person outside my company who'd notice if I disappeared."
Her fingers tighten on the jar. The crack widens.
"That's either very honest or very sad."
"Probably both."
She sets the jar down. Leans back in her chair. Studies me the way she studied that post before she committed to the hole.
"My parents ran a restaurant in Vancouver for twenty-two years.
Haitian food. Best griot in the city. The landlord sold the building out from under them when the lease was up.
Everything they built, gone, because someone else held the deed.
" She says it flat. Factual. But her hand is flat on the table, pressing down.
"That's why I bought this place. Outright. No mortgage. Nobody can take it."
"That's why you won't let anyone help you with it."
Her eyes snap to mine. "Accepting help means giving someone leverage."
"Or it means the concrete sets before the rain washes out your gravel."
The corner of her mouth twitches. Almost. Close enough that I feel it in my whole body.
"Finish your coffee, Rhodes. Then go home."
I finish the coffee. Walk to the door. Turn back. She's standing at the kitchen counter, rinsing the cactus mug by hand, careful with it. Rain in her braids. Mud on her arms.
"Thanks for the coffee, Desireen."
"Desi."
One word. Four letters. My hand pauses on the doorframe.
"Desi." I say it carefully. Let it sit on my tongue. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight, Beck."
She follows me to the porch. Why, I don't know. Maybe to make sure I actually leave. Maybe something else. The rain has eased to a slow, steady drip off the roofline, the kind that blurs everything beyond the porch into soft grey.
We're standing too close. The porch is narrow, barely enough room for two people side by side, and she's between me and the steps. Her shoulder almost touches my chest. A drop of rain falls from the overhang onto her collarbone, slides down the wet skin into the hollow of her throat.
Every functioning brain cell tells me to say goodnight again, walk down the steps, go home. Every other part of me is rooted to her porch watching a raindrop travel down her neck.
She turns. Looks up. Brown eyes almost black in the dim light, searching my face with an expression I haven't seen from her yet. No suspicion. No wall. Just a question she isn't asking out loud.
My hand lifts. Reaches toward her face. Stops. My thumb hovers a half inch from her cheek, close enough to feel the warmth coming off her skin. Close enough that she can see exactly what I want and decide for herself.
Her breath changes. Shorter. Quicker. Her chin tilts up. Just barely. A fraction. And my entire body goes tight.
Then a gust of wind sends a sheet of rain sideways across the porch, hitting us both like a cold slap. She blinks. Steps back. My hand drops.
"You're gonna catch pneumonia standing on my porch, Rhodes."
"Probably."
"Go home."
"Going."
But neither of us moves for another three seconds that feel like an hour. Her hand comes up, presses flat against my chest for a beat, warm through the wet shirt. Then pushes. Gentle. Firm. Get out of here. Her fingers curl against the fabric for a fraction of a second before she pulls away.
Walking back to my unfinished house in the rain, fifty pounds lighter, something still burning where her hand pressed against my ribs, I'm smiling so hard my face hurts.
She told me to call her Desi.
She gave me the good mug. She put her hand on my chest and had to push me away because the alternative was pulling me in.
The almost is going to keep me awake all night.
It does.