10. Bennett
Chapter ten
Bennett
The ladder creaks under my grip as I keep it steady, watching Edda climb toward the broken gutter three stories up.
She did not ask me to do this. She walked out of the Catskills house at seven this morning with a toolbox under her arm and started scaling the exterior before I finished my coffee.
I followed because the alternative was standing at the window, pretending I was not tracking every movement she made against the gray November sky.
“Hand me the snips,” she calls down.
I find them in the open toolbox at my feet and pass them up without comment.
Her fingers close around the handle, brushing mine for half a second, brief enough that I could pretend it did not happen.
She is already back to work, cutting into rusted metal that has probably been failing since before I bought this property.
The wind picks up, tugging at the ladder as I adjust my grip on the rungs.
Below me, she works with steady precision, shoulders shifting under a worn flannel shirt that has seen better days but still fits her like she refuses to give anything up that still works.
The faded cap with the frayed brim stays low over her eyes.
She never replaces it. I have noticed. More than I should.
Her movements are efficient in a way that pulls my attention and keeps it there. Not loud. Not deliberate. Just certain.
I have been clearing my schedule for weeks. Not for the project. Not for the heritage review. For her. For any space she occupies without even trying.
“You are staring,” she says without looking up.
“I am stabilizing the ladder.”
“You are staring while stabilizing the ladder.”
There is no point denying it. Not anymore. She caught me the night at the hotel suite, and again after that, in moments I should have controlled better. The problem is not that she notices. The problem is that it changes nothing about how I look at her.
Something in my chest shifts every time she calls it out. Not pain. Not relief. Something in between that refuses definition and refuses distance.
I should look away. I do not.
She works for another twenty minutes without speaking.
I stay on the ladder, hands locked around the rails.
Wind pushes through the yard carrying pine, cold earth, and the faint promise of rain drifting in from the west. My fingers have gone numb, but I keep that to myself.
If I mention it, she will tell me to go inside. I am not going inside.
"Pliers," she says.
I pass them up. Our fingers brush, brief and unavoidable. She does not react, but her movement stills for a fraction before she turns back to the gutter.
By the time she climbs down, the sky has deepened into a heavier gray. My coffee sits forgotten on the porch railing, long and cold.
She wipes her hands on her jeans, studying her work. A fresh strip of metal sits clean against the old gutter line. "That will hold through winter. Longer if you actually get someone to inspect it before spring."
“I’ll make a note.”
“You won’t. You’ll forget and then pay someone three times what it costs to fix it yourself.”
She is right. I will forget. Not because I am careless, but because my attention refuses to stay where it should.
I am not thinking about gutters. I am thinking about the way her hands move when she works.
The way she never asks permission before fixing things that are mine.
The way she has been occupying every corner of my attention since the night she walked into my office and told me I was wrong.
I reach for the coffee mug on the porch railing. It is exactly as cold as I expected.
Before I can lift it, she takes it from my hand.
“I’ll make more.”
She is already walking toward the house. I watch her go. I do not follow right away because I need a moment to steady myself, to remember how to breathe in a way that feels normal. Also, because I am watching the way she moves through my space, as she belongs in it without asking for permission.
She does not knock. She does not hesitate at doorways. She opens cabinets without asking and finds the coffee filters on the first try, like she has been making coffee in this kitchen for years instead of days.
I step inside and close the door behind me. The house holds that expensive kind of silence, insulated from everything outside. From the kitchen comes the steady run of water, the soft click of the burner igniting, and her humming, low and absentminded, a tune I do not recognize.
"You are doing it again," she says without turning around when I reach the doorway.
"Doing what?"
"The thing where you watch me like I am a contract you are trying to memorize."
I lean into the frame, arms crossing without much thought. "Maybe you are."
She snorts. Not careful. Not restrained. The kind of sound that suggests she has never wasted energy on being agreeable. Something warm shifts low in my chest, inconvenient and immediate, and I let it sit there instead of naming it.
"I'm not a contract, Thornhill. Contracts don't fix your gutters."
"Mine do. It's in the maintenance clause."
She turns to look at me, something flickering across her face I can't quite place. Not quite amusement. Not quite irritation either. Something more measured. Sharper, in a way that feels intentional. "You're impossible."
"So I've been told."
The coffee maker clicks and starts its slow drip, filling the silence between us.
She turns back to it and reaches for two mugs. Sugar goes into hers without hesitation. Mine stays black. She doesn't ask. She doesn't need to.
That should not register the way it does.
She hands me my mug. I take it, and her fingers brush mine again. Longer this time. Not accidental.
Her gaze holds mine instead of sliding away. Just a beat too long to be casual, just short of something she would name.
And I realize I am tracking the space between us more carefully than I should be.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“The gutter.”
“You held the ladder.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
She shrugs and carries her coffee to the window, eyes settling on the property I bought three years ago and have only stepped onto maybe six times. The land stretches out toward the treeline, and beyond it, the mountains are half-swallowed by low cloud.
“It’s a nice place,” she says. “You should use it more.”
“I don’t have time.”
“You have time. You just don’t take it.”
I don’t argue because she’s right. Also, because I’m watching the way the gray light catches the freckles along her jaw, the ones she doesn’t know I’ve counted more than once.
She turns slightly. “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Whatever you’re doing with your face right now.”
“I’m drinking coffee.”
“You’re thinking something you’re not saying. You’ve been doing it all morning.”
I take a slow sip. It’s exactly the temperature I prefer, which means she let it sit for thirty seconds before handing it to me. Which means she was paying attention to how I take it, even when I was pretending I wasn’t paying attention at all.
“I’ve been clearing my schedule,” I say.
“I know. Marcus told me.”
Of course he did. Marcus has been watching all of this like a man who understands exactly how bad it could get, yet cannot quite stop himself from tracking every move anyway.
“I’ve been clearing it for the project,” I say, the excuse slipping out too easily. It is not true, and she knows it.
She sets her mug down with a soft clink against the counter.
“Bennett.”
Hearing my name in her voice lands harder than it should. She almost never uses it. When she is irritated, it is Thornhill. When she is distant, it is nothing at all. But Bennett is different. Bennett is deliberate. Intimate in a way she probably does not mean it to be.
It pulls me straight back to the hotel suite. To her mouth. To the dark and the way she said it then, as it belonged there.
“I’m not running this anymore,” I say.
She stills immediately.
“Running what?”
"The arrangement. The schedule. Whatever this is." I set my mug down beside hers, the ceramic edges brushing lightly, an accidental closeness that feels anything but accidental.
"I’ve been telling myself I’m managing a project. Coordinating appearances, tracking timelines. But that stopped being true somewhere around week three. I just didn’t admit it."
She does not move. Her hands hang at her sides, and I notice the calluses on her palms again, proof of a life built through effort I have never had to understand, never had to survive in the same way.
"What are you doing instead?" she asks.
"Watching you work. Making time I do not make for anyone else. Showing up at site walkthroughs I have no reason to attend." I let the words settle between us, then add quietly, "Wanting to be wherever you are."
Her jaw tightens. Just slightly, but I catch it. The tiny shift tells me I finally said something that got past her defenses.
"That's not a contract clause," she says.
"No. It isn't."
The coffee maker clicks off. Rain taps softly against the windows, slow and uneven at first.
"You said you missed things," she says, quieter now. "Back in your office. I handed you a folder, and you admitted I was right."
"I did."
Her eyes stay on mine. Steady. Waiting.
"What did you miss?"
I slide a hand into my jacket pocket. My fingers close around the medal instantly, worn smooth in places from years of handling it without thinking.
I set it carefully on the counter between us.
Edda's gaze drops to it.
I watch her face instead.
"My mother gave me this the day before she died," I say. "I've carried it for eleven years. Never showed it to anyone."
Edda doesn't reach for it.
She just looks at it resting in my palm, her expression careful in a way that feels more dangerous than shock.
"Why now?"
"Because you're the first person who's ever made me want to."
The words settle between us, heavy enough that I almost take them back.
I hold her gaze anyway.
"And I'm running out of ways to pretend that doesn't mean something."
Rain lashes harder against the roof. Against the windows. Against the gutter she fixed an hour ago.
Edda still stares at the medal, her face unreadable except for the flicker of something raw beneath it. Fear, maybe. Or recognition.
Then she takes it.
Not delicately. Not reverently.
The same way she grabbed the pliers on the ladder earlier, steady and certain.
She folds my fingers back around the medal and presses my fist closed.
"Keep it," she says softly. "I don't need you giving me pieces of yourself like payment."
"I'm not giving it to you."
Her eyes lift to mine. "Then what are you doing?"
"Letting you see it."
Her hand stays over mine.
I can feel the quick rhythm of her pulse where her wrist brushes mine, uneven enough to betray her.
"You know what the problem is?" she says quietly.
"What?"
"You're starting to forget this is supposed to be fake."
"No."
"What are you running from?"
I turn my hand, threading my fingers through hers, the medal trapped between our palms. "I don't know. That's the problem. I have contingencies for everything, and you're the only thing I can't account for."
She lets out a quiet laugh. Not amused. More like she recognizes something she never wanted said out loud.
"You're an idiot."
"Probably."
"You bought half the city, and you still can't figure out what you want from a woman who fixes bicycles?"
"I know exactly what I want."
I draw her hand toward me, barely enough to make her move. But she does. One step, and suddenly she's close enough that I catch the faint scent of rain and coffee clinging to her sweater.
"I want to stop pretending this is about permits or heritage reviews or consulting contracts." My thumb brushes the side of her hand before I can stop it. "I want to stop inventing reasons to be around you. I want to stop lying to myself every time I show up at your shop."
Her breath catches softly, almost too quiet to hear.
She's close enough now that I can see the tiny scar on her chin, the one from falling off her bike at fourteen. She told me that story in a diner three weeks ago, thinking I wasn't listening.
I was.
"What do you want?" I ask.
She doesn't answer right away. Her gaze drops to our hands, to the medal pressed between them, then flicks toward the rain streaking down the windows behind me.
For a second, I think she's going to say something dangerous.
Instead, she slips her hand from mine and steps back.
"I want to finish my coffee," she says lightly. Too lightly. "Then I want you to explain why you've been staring at me like that for the last five minutes."
She lifts her mug and takes a slow sip, watching me over the rim.
I pick up my mug, take a sip, and watch her walk away from me.
"Because I don't know how to stop," I say.
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
She sets her mug on the counter with a quiet click. Then she crosses the kitchen slowly, like she's giving me every chance to move first.
I don't.
She stops close enough that I catch rainwater in her hair, coffee on her breath, the heat of her through my shirt.
"Then stop trying to have answers," she says softly. "You're terrible at them."
A laugh almost slips out of me. It surprises me enough that I don't see her move until her hand hooks into my collar and her mouth is on mine.
It isn't polished like the hotel suite. No expensive wine, no staged perfection, no audience waiting for us downstairs.
Just her.
My back hits the counter hard enough to rattle something beside the sink. Her fingers tighten in my shirt. Rain taps steadily against the roof while she kisses me like she's trying to drag me out of my own head.
And God, she does.
Schedules disappear first. Contracts next. Numbers, calls, obligations. All of it goes under the press of her mouth and the sharp pull of breath when she finally breaks away.
"That," she says, still close enough that her lips brush mine when she speaks. "That's what I want."
I look at her.
Her cap is gone somewhere behind her. Her mouth is swollen from kissing me. Her eyes stay locked on mine, steady and challenging, like she's daring me to retreat back behind the version of myself I wear everywhere else.
I don't think I can.
"Then take it," I say quietly.
Something flickers across her face before she kisses me again.