15. Maddox
Maddox
The house settles after dinner. Mom hums while she wipes the counters, and I put away the dishes despite her insisting I don’t need to help. It’s easier than sitting still.
I stare at the no-longer-leaking faucet in the kitchen—it’s fixed—and the electrician fixed the outdoor outlet yesterday. These are small things, but there’s quiet satisfaction in a list getting shorter.
A satisfaction that lasts about as long as it takes my mind to drift back to Grace, soot-streaked and stubborn, standing in this kitchen like she belongs here. My knees nearly gave out when I first saw her. And the thought of her facing fire alone.
She’s upstairs now, trying to wash off the ordeal. I offered earlier to fix the old bathroom window latch—it always sticks and lets in cold drafts, another thing on the list—and she brushed me off with an “I’ll manage.”
Typical.
And for reasons I’m not prepared to examine, it made me smile.
I slide the last plate into the cupboard. “You okay?”
Mom nods, though a crease stays between her brows. “A little shaken for Patsy. I wish she’d stayed here with us, but she insisted on going back to an empty house. You know how she is—she’ll land on her feet.”
“She’s lucky you were there.”
“Grace did the hard part. According to Patsy, she handled the extinguisher like she came out of the womb with one.”
Despite myself, I smile. Again. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
Her gaze lifts to my face, narrowing slightly, my mother’s version of a tactical assessment. “You like her.”
I nearly choke on my own breath. “Mom.”
“What? She’s bright, brave, and thoughtful, not to mention a smoke show.” She waves her cloth at me.
“A smoke show?” Laughter bursts out of me. “What do you even know about that?” I’m teasing, but I don’t deny it—how can I when it’s true?
“I know a thing or two despite my age, mister.” The knowing curve of her lips makes me want to scoff like a teenager caught out by a parent who’s supposed to be clueless. “And best of all, Grace clearly rattles you in all the right ways.”
“She’s a reporter.” I cringe at my own defensive tone. “She’s only here because Marcos twisted my arm about the interview.”
“Could be.” Mom shrugs lightly. “But sometimes the wrong reason puts the right person in your path.”
I don’t answer. I’m not sure I can.
Not long after, she heads to her room on the ground floor, and I move through the house doing the rounds—checking locks, switching off lights, all the small rituals my dad drilled into me when I was a boy desperate to be taken for a man.
As I pass the foot of the stairs, a faint thud echoes from above, followed by a low, irritated curse. It isn’t Mom.
“Grace?”
Silence. Then another frustrated sound.
I take the stairs, wood creaking under my weight, and follow the noise to the guest bathroom. The door is ajar.
I knock lightly on the frame. “Everything okay?”
“No.” Her snarl filters into the hallway. “There’s no hot water, the window’s jammed, and I can’t get all this soot out of my hair.”
I hesitate at the threshold. “Want me to take a look?”
A pause—I can practically hear her wrestling with her pride—and then a long, weary exhale. “Yes. Please.”
I push the door open and have to remind myself to breathe. Grace kneels by the tub, still dressed, a towel draped over her shoulders, hair wild and damp and streaked with stubborn lines of soot.
Twin spots of color warm her cheeks, and her eyes are tired but defiant, like someone who’s fought two disasters today and is already bracing for a third.
I can’t help it. I grin.
What is it about this woman? I’m always smiling, either at her or at the thought of her.
Juggling the edges of the window frame, I slide it shut and latch it. “I thought you were done playing hero for the day.”
“Apparently not.” She gestures helplessly at the bathtub faucet. “The water’s barely trickling, and it’s freezing.”
“Old pipes.” I roll up my sleeves, mentally adding a plumber to my list. “Mind if?”
She slides back and I crouch beside the tub, fiddling with the handle. Our arms brush, and something tightens in my chest at the pull I have no business feeling, fierce and poorly timed.
The pipes groan in protest like they resent being disturbed at this hour, but after a few stubborn twists, the warm water finally gushes out in a steady stream.
“There.” I sit back on my heels and make the mistake of looking at her.
She’s watching me, chest rising and falling a little too fast, eyes a shade too dark. Steam from the tub curls around her cheeks, lifting strands of her damp hair in soft, loose waves.
There’s a smudge of ash at her collarbone she’s missed, and something in me wants to reach out and brush it away the same way I did in the kitchen, which is exactly the kind of thought I need to shut down.
I don’t.
I look away instead, jaw tight, and push to my feet. Grace Buchanan is the last complication I need right now. I know that. I believe it completely. I wish the rest of me was listening.
My teeth grind together at my own absurdity as her shoulders drop by degrees. “You’re officially handier than you look. The whole bus thing aside.”
“I choose to take that as a compliment.”
Her laugh lands squarely in my chest. Too accurate.
She leans over the tub to re-wet her hair, and when she reaches for the shampoo, her slick fingers slip, the bottle hitting the porcelain with a hollow clatter. Grace curses under her breath, and before I can think better of it, I’m already reaching.
“Here.” I pick up the bottle. “You missed a spot earlier. I can …?”
She freezes, glancing up at me from beneath damp lashes. “You’re offering to wash my hair?”
I hear it then. How it sounds. How it could sound.
“Not like that.” My tone comes out higher than intended, maybe because part of me wants it to be exactly like that, or maybe I have no idea what’s happening to me anymore. “You’ve still got soot in there. It’ll clog the drain.”
Her lips twitch. “Sure. This is about your plumbing.”
“Yes.”
Something in her expression softens in a way that makes the small bathroom dangerously intimate.
“All right, Coach.” A sly smile. “Show me your technique.”
My pulse stumbles. The room shrinks, steam thickening the air between us.
She settles on the floor with her back against the tub, angled toward me, and I perch on the edge and ease a small amount of shampoo into my palms.
Her hair is softer than I expect, silky and warm and heavy between my fingers. Clean, understated floral notes rise with the heat, threading into my lungs like something I could crave.
We fall quiet, nothing but the gentle rush of the faucet and the slow rhythm of my hands working through her hair.
She murmurs a low, appreciative sound. “I’m guessing this isn’t in your coaching job description.”
“Not usually part of practice.” Why the hell does my voice come out husky like that?
She laughs, a quiet, breathy sound that travels the full length of my spine.
“You can relax, you know.” I gently tug at the roots of her hair, mostly to distract myself. “I’m not going to break you.”
“What?”
“Your shoulders are practically up to your ears.” I work the soap through the strands, careful and deliberate, painfully aware of every point of contact.
My knees are a breath from her shoulder, face inches from hers, fingertips grazing her scalp with a lightness I have to concentrate to maintain. I guide her back under the water and rinse out the soap, watching it run clear in thin rivulets down her neck.
She tilts her head toward me, eyes half-closed, mouth quirked. “Maybe I’m on edge because that’s what you do to people.”
“What? Drive them to the brink of insanity?”
“Something like that.”
The air thickens.
My hands still in her hair, thumbs grazing a tender spot behind her ear. Her breath hitches, and heat rushes up the back of my neck, prickling under my collar. It would be so easy—too easy—to lean in, let my fingers cradle her head, drag her an inch closer.
Which is exactly why I push to my feet and clear my throat. “That should do it.”
She straightens, droplets sliding over her temple. “Thanks. You didn’t have to—”
“I know.”
“But you did.” She rises, meeting my eyes briefly.
“I’m a fixer.” The smile I manage feels thin even to me. “Can’t seem to help myself.”
She studies me—longer than comfortable, longer than safe—and the joking edge fades from her eyes, replaced by a quiet curiosity.
“You ever stop?” Her voice drops, soft and low. “Trying to fix everything?”
There she goes again, seeing straight through me, to the thing I’m not saying.
For a moment, I forget the steam, the running water, the scent of her hair, the dangerous proximity of all of it—everything but the truth she’s quietly pressing on.
“Someone’s got to.” It sounds like the wrong answer, even to me.
She’s going to push, ask a follow-up I’m nowhere near ready for, but then she surprises me by simply nodding. “Well, for what it’s worth, you did fix the shower.”
“Glad to be of service.” Grabbing a towel, I dry my hands slowly, deliberately, because the space between us feels electrified and narrowing by the second. “You need anything else? Toothbrush, something to sleep in?”
“No, your mom took care of all that.”
We’re close enough I can feel her warmth, count the seconds between her breaths. Neither of us moves. My hand lifts before I’ve decided anything—knuckles brushing the edge of the towel at her shoulder, accidental and not accidental at all.
Her breath stutters. I feel it against my mouth, a soft, shaky exhale landing right where my resolve is weakest.
My thumb slides under her jaw, tilting her face up. Her pulse kicks hard against my touch, fast and unsteady, like it already knows what I’m about to do before I do.
I tilt my head without meaning to, call it muscle memory or, more truthfully, want. The kind that’s lived in my body longer than sense. Grace inches closer, meeting me halfway before she can stop herself.
I pull back, breath rough, chest tight, hand dropping like I’ve been burned. The space between us yawns open, cold and unforgiving, and every instinct I have wants to close it again.
We still, both of us staring, neither saying a word—almost as if speaking would shatter the fragile thing hovering between us.
And that’s what does it. I step back, then turn toward the door, not willing to give in to whatever spell this is.
I’m halfway to the doorway when she says, almost whisper-quiet, “Maddox.”
I stop. Turn. Not because I’m uncertain—I’ve made up my mind—but because I’m unable to ignore her.
“Why did you really retire?”
The question hits harder than it should. Not because she’s a reporter asking it. Because right now, in this steam-hazed bathroom with her hair damp and her pulse still visible at her throat, she isn’t.
We almost kissed. Almost crossed a line we can’t uncross. And she’s looking at me differently now, gentler than curiosity, more careful than concern, like she wants the truth for reasons that have nothing to do with the article.
It terrifies me. Not because I don’t want to answer her, but because part of me does.
“That’s in your notes somewhere, isn’t it? My on-the-record statement. Save it for the article.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting tonight.”
Her lips part, readying to push, to pry, to pull something real out of me, and I step toward the doorway before she can. “Get some rest, Inkslinger.”
The nickname is deliberate. A distance-maker. A small, necessary barrier dropped between us like a stone wall.
She doesn’t like it. Good.
I pull the door shut behind me, enough to put literal space between us, and move down the hall. At my bedroom door, I stop, grip the knob, and hold on. My heartbeat is too loud. Too fast.
I should’ve stayed downstairs and left the damn pipes alone. I should’ve remembered she’s a reporter—a good one—and carelessness around her comes at a cost I can’t afford. She’s asking questions I’ve spent months outrunning. If I’m not careful, she’ll find the answers.
But that’s not what has my pulse stuttering.
What terrifies me is I know all of that, every word of it, and I still can’t stop wanting her.