Chapter 6
VANESSA
Of all the things that could go wrong before my first cup of coffee, the backyard deciding to reenact Old Faithful wasn’t on my bingo card.
It starts with a sputter. Then a hiss. And then all hell breaks loose.
One second I’m sipping instant coffee from a chipped “World’s Okayest Mom” mug, trying to remember if I paid the gas bill.
The next, I hear a sound like a dragon snorting steam—followed by a sharp pop—and a geyser erupts next to the fence.
Water shoots straight up and sideways, catching the edge of the garage next door like it personally insulted my plumbing.
“Shit!”
I fly out the screen door in my paint-stained sweatpants and a tank top that’s definitely not rated for public appearances.
My flip-flops slap against the wet patio stones as I scramble toward the shutoff valve, wrench in hand, dodging arcs of water like they’re enemy fire.
The sprinkler’s gone rogue, spinning in chaotic bursts, and every time I get close, it swings back to douse me with righteous vengeance.
“I’m trying to fix you, you damn demon pipe!”
Sammy’s at the kitchen window, holding her tablet up to record. Of course she is.
“Mom! You’re trending in our neighborhood Facebook group already!”
“Oh, I’ll trend your butt right back inside—!”
“Too late! Live-streaming!”
Another blast hits me square in the chest. Cold. Relentless. I shriek—half frustration, half hypothermia—and stumble back, soaked to the skin, dripping from my bangs to my waistband.
That’s when I hear him.
“Is this a local weather event,” a voice asks, deep and slow and perplexingly calm, “or have your defenses malfunctioned?”
I whip around.
And immediately forget every word I’ve ever learned.
He stands half in shadow, backlit by morning sun and a wall of glistening mist. Shirtless.
Every inch of him sculpted like he was born from stone and war crimes.
The man is mythic. Herculean. Wet. There’s water beading along the sharp cut of his collarbone and sliding down a chest that has absolutely no business being that firm outside of Marvel movies or Greek epics.
He’s holding what appears to be a garden rake modified with suspiciously not-garden attachments—metal tubing, maybe a laser rangefinder, something that looks like a tactical grip. It’s painted green to blend in. Poorly.
My brain blue-screens.
“What?” I manage.
He steps closer, voice smooth and robotic in the way someone trying to sound human might sound.
“I asked if you require assistance with the pressurized hydro-aggressor.”
“I—what?”
He tilts his head. His hair, wet and tousled, clings to his brow in a way that should be illegal. “The sprinkler,” he clarifies.
“Oh. God. Yes. Yes. Sprinkler. That’s what it is.”
Smooth, Nessa.
Real smooth.
He crouches down beside the valve box like it’s an unexploded bomb.
Doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t ask, just yanks open the lid and begins inspecting it with far too much precision for someone who claims to be an accountant.
His fingers fly over the pipes and fittings, adjusting something with the confidence of a NASA engineer defusing a reactor.
The geyser sputters.
Then stops.
Just like that.
He rises slowly, water dripping off his forearms, and nods once. “Your irrigation node was compromised. I recalibrated the flow junction.”
I stare.
“You fixed it.”
“Yes,” he says simply.
“Did you use... a rake?”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t elaborate.
I blink. “Okay.”
“I am Richard,” he says then, like it’s a new idea that just occurred to him. “I live adjacent.”
“Vanessa. Nessa, actually.” I extend my hand before I realize I’m still drenched, my fingers pruney and probably freezing. “Sorry, I’m kind of... soaked.”
He takes my hand anyway. Firm grip. Warm skin.
His eyes meet mine—deep gold, too rich to be real, flickering slightly in the sun like molten metal under glass.
I swear the world hiccups.
Something pulses between us, electric and strange. I feel it in my chest. In my fingertips. Like standing too close to an old TV and hearing that buzz only kids can hear.
He tilts his head again, narrowing his eyes. “You are experiencing an anomaly.”
“What?”
“Your heartbeat elevated. Skin flushed. Pupils dilated.”
“I’m cold!”
He nods solemnly. “Yes. Cold.”
We both stare.
Behind us, Sammy yells out the window, “MOM! Is the hot neighbor helping you with your lawn-based water war?!”
I close my eyes and exhale. “Lord, grant me strength.”
He still hasn’t let go of my hand.
And I, idiot that I am—haven’t pulled away.
It’s only a second. Maybe two. But it stretches, elastic and thick, like syrup poured slow on Sunday pancakes.
He’s looking at me, and not just in the polite, friendly-neighbor kind of way.
No, this is different. It’s... searching.
Like he’s trying to decode something in my face, read a frequency I didn’t know I was broadcasting.
And then it hits me.
The warmth.
God, it blooms inside my chest without warning—unexpected and primal.
Like flipping on a light in a room you didn’t know was dark.
My breath catches. There’s a jolt, low in my belly, equal parts adrenaline and that aching kind of yearning I thought I’d buried ages ago beneath bills and bruised dreams.
It’s not sexual. Not yet. It’s deeper than that. Stranger.
Like falling. Or remembering.
Or both.
Richard blinks. For a moment, his expression falters. The mask slips. Just a crack. But I see it. Confusion. Recognition. Fear?
Then it’s gone. Replaced by that same polite, vaguely robotic calm.
But it’s too late. I felt it. And so did he.
“What was that?” I whisper before I can stop myself.
He lets go of my hand.
Steps back.
“I do not know,” he says carefully, like he’s defusing something volatile. “Perhaps a... static discharge.”
“From what? My soul?”
A twitch at the corner of his mouth. A smile threatening to happen, but never quite making it past security.
“You are... humorous,” he offers.
“I try.”
He turns slightly, gives a very stiff nod in the direction of his garage—still half-obscured by jungle-grade gardening tools and what I now realize might be parts of a drone.
“You should... dry yourself,” he says. “Your thermal levels have likely dropped below safe parameters.”
“My thermal levels?”
“You’re wet.”
“Well, yeah.”
“I will return to my indoor base.”
“Your... house, you mean?”
“Yes. House. That is what I said.”
He turns and strides off like he’s walking into battle, posture rigid and military, hips too narrow for a man who moves like a war machine.
His back muscles flex beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, and my brain, which has already gone through several malfunctions this morning, decides now is the time to short-circuit entirely.
I stand there in my front yard like a crash test dummy rebooting mid-sentence.
“What the actual hell.”
Sammy’s already halfway down the steps, still barefoot, tablet in hand. “Told you he was weird.”
“He’s... something.”
“He’s an alien. That ‘hydro-aggressor’ thing? Classic cover story. Probably thinks sprinklers are some kind of anti-aircraft defense.”
I sigh and wring out the edge of my shirt. “Baby, can we not jump to conclusions?”
“Mom, you looked at him like he was made of chocolate and hope.”
“Excuse me?”
“You were blushing.”
“I was freezing.”
“You looked like you were about to ask if he needed help recalibrating his human interface.”
I groan. “You’re grounded.”
“You’re deflecting.”
I shoot her a look.
She just grins and skips past me toward the porch, humming the X-Files theme like she owns it.
Back inside, I peel off my wet clothes, throw on a hoodie and leggings, and try to shake the image of golden eyes and too-perfect teeth out of my head. But the feeling lingers. That jolt. That pull. Like gravity had its own opinion about where I should be standing.
I sit on the edge of the tub and stare at the wall.
There was something in that look—more than just awkward neighborliness or thirst trap muscle flexing. It was ancient. Instinctive. Known.
And I don’t know what the hell to do with that.
By the time I gather the nerve to reemerge into the glaring sun, he’s already back in his yard—kneeling over something with a screwdriver the size of a turkey baster, poking at what might be either a lawn ornament or a weapons-grade surveillance node.
Honestly, at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised either way.
I make my approach slow. Casual. Like I’m not still buzzing inside from that eye contact. Like I’m not suddenly way too aware of how my hoodie hugs the curves I usually try to ignore. Like I haven’t just spent fifteen minutes Googling "spontaneous emotional heart arrhythmia.”
He glances up at my footsteps.
“Vanessa Malone,” he says, as if tasting my name on his tongue for the first time.
“Richard.”
A pause.
I gesture lamely toward the weird metallic tripod beside him. “Fixing your... gnome?”
“This is a precipitation analyzer. I must monitor hydrostatic fluctuations.”
“Right. Weather station.”
He hesitates. “Yes. Weather.”
We stand there, bathed in the golden hush of late afternoon. Cicadas buzz like static in the background. The scent of mown grass clings to the air—earthy, sharp, and clean. Somewhere down the block, a car backfires and makes us both flinch.
“Do you—uh—need help with anything?”
“No,” he says immediately. Then softens. “But thank you. I am... competent.”
“Clearly,” I murmur, watching the flex of his forearms.
We lapse into a conversation that’s not really a conversation at all—just a patchwork of broken sentences and mismatched cultural references. I mention raccoons knocking over my trash bins.
He frowns. “Rodent combatants are a known Earth infestation.”
“Combatants?”
“I saw one last night. It stared at me. With judgment.”
“Yeah. They do that.”
“And then it urinated near my perimeter.”
I choke on a laugh. “That’s... territorial.”
“I considered retaliation.”
“Please don’t wage war on the local wildlife.”
He nods solemnly. “Understood. Ceasefire acknowledged.”
There’s something so earnest in the way he says these things—like he’s memorized the shape of a joke but hasn’t quite figured out the punchline. It should be creepy. Or at the very least, alarming. But instead, it’s... endearing.
And that’s what scares me most.
Because I’ve been down the hot-guy road before. Been charmed out of my common sense and good judgment. But this isn’t about charm. This is about something stranger, deeper. Like there’s a thread connecting me to him that I didn’t know existed, tugging gently every time he’s near.
“So really... what do you do? For work?”
He straightens, as if anticipating a quiz. “I am an accountant.”
I raise a brow. “You are?”
“Yes.”
“Do you, like... have an office?”
He pauses. “Soon.”
“Do you have a computer?”
Another beat. “I have... access.”
“Uh huh.”
He doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t shift or look away. Just stands there, completely unashamed, as if bluffing is beneath him and he’s simply delivering information as it was printed in his user manual.
I want to laugh. I also want to run back into my house and lock the door. And maybe also touch his arm again just to see if I imagined the warmth.
Instead, I nod. “Cool. Accountants are... important.”
“Yes. I perform audits on numerical integrity. For taxes.”
“That’s a hell of a line, Richard.”
He squints slightly, as if scanning me for subtext. “It is the truth.”
A silence stretches between us, thick with things unsaid. Behind me, Sammy presses her face to the window, her breath fogging up a little circle of glass. I don’t have to turn around to know she’s making the universal “ask him out” gesture with her fingers and eyebrows.
I clear my throat. “Well. I should probably head inside. Dinner and all.”
He nods once. “Yes. Sustenance protocol.”
I turn. Take a step.
And stop.
“Hey, Richard?”
He lifts his head like a soldier snapping to.
“Thanks. For, you know. Helping with the sprinkler.”
He tilts his head. “It was malfunctioning. It posed a potential hazard.”
“Still.”
Another long pause. Our eyes catch again, and I feel that same electric hiccup in my chest.
“Goodnight, Vanessa Malone.”
“Goodnight, Richard the Accountant.”
I step inside, and for a second—just one—I let myself lean against the closed door, heart thudding like a bass drum at a punk show. Through the curtain, I watch him return to his tools, slow and deliberate.
The man is not normal.
I don’t think I want him to be.