Round Sixteen
ROSE
“I would’ve gone.” Nerves settle in my throat in thick, seemingly impenetrable balls that clog my airway and leave me tiptoeing toward dizziness.
But Ollie opens the passenger door of his truck and waits for me to unsnap my belt.
For me to turn. Impossibly patient, he waits for me to accept his helping hand and slide out onto the loose gravel of his driveway, and when I do, he slams the door shut and pulls my suitcase out of the back. “Ollie, I would’ve—”
“I know.” He grabs my arm and steadies me as we move from the driveway to his snow-covered yard, his eyes bright as he gestures toward a beautiful farm-style home on the fringes of town.
His street looks no different from the one that changed my life two weeks ago; the same tree line, the same quiet, almost unused space.
It’s almost like Ollie is the only person who exists out here, though, of course, there are houses on both sides that say otherwise.
He juggles my things and helps me across the yard, onto a concrete footpath lined with snow, then up a half-dozen steps until we arrive on a timber porch.
“I know you would’ve gone,” he murmurs. “Because you have this irrational fear of upsetting anyone. Ever. Once you stopped being afraid of the nurses, you felt bad for interrupting their day.”
I fuse my feet to the porch, my throat bone dry as I stare at his front door and wonder… did I ruin his life by agreeing to come here? Did I choose wrong?
“Rose?”
“If they find out you’ve brought me here, you’re going to get in trouble.”
“They, who?” He chuckles. “The undercover NASA folks we’re not supposed to talk about?”
“The hospital! The… whoever your boss is!” I wrap my arm around the thick column holding his porch roof up. “You can’t take patients home! There are rules about this, right?”
“The only thing I heard my boss say was your ass needed to be out of there by nine o’clock this morning.
” He crosses the porch without me and whips the wire door open, slipping a key into the lock and pushing the heavy, creaking wooden door open.
“Those discharge papers say you’re no longer a patient.
” He lobs my suitcase inside and turns back with a bright, beaming smile.
“That means I didn’t bring a patient home. I brought my friend home.”
“You’re looking for technicalities.”
“So?”
“So, those technicalities won’t save you when you have no job and your reputation is ruined and your career is over and…”
He rolls his eyes. “Doctor Dawes is three minutes away from turning a hundred. I assure you, the board won’t fire me, because I’m literally the only idiot with a medical degree willing to work in this godforsaken town.
Not only that, but I work for pennies and good vibes.
They can’t afford to fire me.” He crosses the porch and grabs my hand, callously jerking me from my column and marching me through the front door and into a living room that is…
warm. And dark. Natural wood walls. Floors.
Ceiling. Exposed beams draw my eyes up to an A-frame ceiling, then across to vast glass skylights currently darkened by the snow.
His home smells of wood… dirt… cinnamon, perhaps. It’s a concentrated smell that hugs every inch of space, and now that I’m here, the air filling my lungs to bursting, I realize this is him.
This is his smell.
Stop smiling, Rose!
“You like that, huh?” He steps around me and closes the door, his shoulder brushing mine as he walks.
“This place was a dump when I bought it. The ceiling was falling in, and the floors were covered with the world’s ugliest linoleum.
I started pulling things up, hauling things out, and discovered the treasure underneath.
Some dumb dingus sold this place for a steal. Now it’s all mine.”
“Lucky it didn’t cost much, since you only make pennies.” Pleasure ripples through my blood as he comes to a stop right in front of me. “It smells like you in here.”
“Yeah? I figured I must smell like antiseptic soap most of the time.”
“No.” I lean forward and stop with my nose about six inches from his chest. I don’t touch.
I don’t dare. But I inhale and pull away with a goofy grin.
“The antiseptic detracts from the real you at the hospital. But I caught it a few times when the breeze was just right. Or when my room door had been closed a while, and you were hanging around long enough.”
He tips his nose to the sky and sniffs the air. “It’s not a bad smell, right?”
“No. I like it. You smell earthy and real. Like you mess around in the dirt a lot. Or you work with wood sometimes.”
“I do. Sometimes.”
“Really?”
“Mm. I have a lathe, and I’ve tried making a few things over the years, but I mostly spend my time cutting straight lines.
” He wraps his arm around mine and ambles through the living room toward the hall.
“You’ll see the deck out back in a minute.
I started it in the summer, but work keeps me busy, and my friends had a baby.
Life got in the way and slowed me down. Now that winter’s here, I can’t be bothered going out in the cold after work.
But I’ll get there.” He draws me into the hall, where a wide doorway leads into the kitchen and a massive bouquet of flowers explodes from a vase on a counter.
The bright blooms draw my focus. They spark something in the back of my mind.
But he continues his tour before I can latch on, leading me deeper into the house.
“Bathroom’s just here.” He taps a door with the toe of his shoe and pushes it wide enough to show glistening white tiles and a rich black bathtub. Black vanity. Black framed mirror.
“Oh, my goodness.” My breath catches as I stare straight through the room and out into the snow-covered backyard, because the entire far wall is glass. “Ollie—”
“There’s only one bathroom in this house, so we’ll have to share. But don’t worry about the window; it’s one-way.”
“It’s amazing.” I don’t cross the threshold.
I don’t dare impose without a strict invitation.
But I press my hand to the doorframe and lean in, all to get a look at the showerhead nestled in the ceiling, and the wide shower stall large enough for…
well, six or seven or more. “You did all this work yourself?”
He scoffs. “I helped. I follow instructions. Mostly, my friends—Chris and Tommy—provide the brute strength and enough common sense not to get us killed, and our other friend, Cliff, takes care of the more complicated stuff. He’s a perfectionist. And lucky for me—” He flashes a wide smile in my peripherals.
“He works for pennies, too. Come on.” He tugs me away and leads me along the hall to the next door, tapping it open to reveal a room with hardwood flooring, a single bed nestled under a massive window, and the same stunning view as the bathroom.
“My sister sleeps here sometimes when she stays over, but this can be your room until we get things figured out.” He steps in ahead of me and slides a mirrored door aside to reveal a closet half full of things.
Boardgames. Textbooks. Thick snow jackets.
“The drawers are empty for now. But we’ll get you some more stuff. ”
“You don’t have to—”
“I’ll get you more stuff,” he insists, the warmth in his eyes transforming to something else entirely.
A command, heated enough to make my stomach jump.
“The window is one-way in here, as well. In fact, they all are, so you don’t have to worry about people peeking in.
Even if it’s dark outside, no one would see you. ”
“Could they see my shape?” I look down at the heavy jacket puffing me out to twice my natural size. “Like, would someone outside know a person was passing in front of the window?”
“Yeah.” He wanders back in my direction, through the door, and into the hall. Grabbing my hand without missing a beat, he leads me to the next door. But this time, he hesitates. He slows himself down and contemplates long enough to put a line of sweat on my spine.
Frowning, he opens the door and reveals a room of dark, rich wood.
Built-in shelves span one wall, with a flat screen TV mounted in the middle, and books—so, so many books—stacked into every tiny gap available.
A king-size bed takes up a massive portion of floor space, with a deep green blanket bundled in the middle, the pillows lying askew.
Nervous, he releases me and hurriedly makes the bed, yanking the covers up and righting the pillows. “I usually do this every morning before work. But you caught me on a lazy day. I was rushing out and forgot.”
“Your room is beautiful.” I shouldn’t follow him in.
God knows, intruding on this man’s private bedroom is just another thing on a long list of bad things I’ve done to Ollie since we met—starting with forcing him to become emotionally invested in my medical care—but I can’t help that my feet lead me to the overflowing bookshelves.
I can’t stop the way my eyes scour title after title, or how I stroke the spines with the tip of my finger. “You read a lot, huh?”
He scoffs, shaking his head in my peripherals. “I read a normal amount. Less these days than I used to.”
I zero in on a familiar title and narrow my eyes. “Gone with the Wind.” I pull it from the shelf and turn it over in my hands. “But the spine hasn’t even been cracked. It looks brand new.” I peek across at him. “You haven’t read it?”
Guilt flashes in his eyes, but he’s quick to lower his gaze, and though he’s careful, he peels the book from my grasp and puts it back where it began.
“I haven’t read a lot of them. Alana bought a struggling bookstore in a small town where most of her clientele came to gossip and swipe the free coffee, not buy books from the woman they didn’t even like. ”
“So you… You buy books you won’t even read from her shop? Why?”