Lucas
Iwoke, rolled in blankets, twisted in on myself as if I’d tried to disappear sometime in the night.
For a few seconds, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, listening to the quiet.
No sound of anyone else in the house. I extricated one arm and glanced at my watch, six a.m. I unwound myself and sat up, spine protesting as my feet hit the floor.
The room was cold enough to snap me awake properly.
I did some stretches, swallowed a pill, grabbed my clothes, and limped out into the hall looking for the bathroom, following instinct and half-remembered extra doors from the night before.
The bathroom wasn’t fancy or new, but the sink was wiped down, the mirror clear, and the shower curtain plain and functional. I let out a breath of relief—whatever else this house was, at least I could get a shower.
I stood there for a moment, taking inventory.
“No towel,” I muttered, and opened one cupboard. Cleaning supplies. Another held spare bulbs and a battered first-aid kit with a use-by date in the nineties. The third was a big built-in that groaned when I pulled it open.
Sheets! Win! And towels stacked neatly, thick and serviceable. I picked one up and inhaled. Not fresh cotton scents like at home, but soap and something faintly utilitarian. Ranch-clean, I decided, whatever that meant.
The water pressure surprised me. Strong and steady, hot enough without coaxing. I used the shower gel I’d brought with me, citrus cutting through the lingering smell of sleep and stress, and stood there longer than I needed to, letting the water hit my shoulders until the tightness eased.
By the time I shut it off, I felt halfway human.
Yesterday, I’d been exhausted, rattled, running on adrenaline and bad decisions. Yesterday, I nearly burned the house down while making coffee.
Today would be different.
I dried off, dressed, and caught my reflection in the mirror.
Still pale. Still tired. But steadier, given that the strongest meds I had were working.
The house seemed warmer—propane-fired central heating, according to the audit list I was working my way through—I brushed my teeth, foam and mint grounding me, and paused with my hands on the sink.
Should I shave? Did I need to? This was a ranch in the middle of nowhere, who would care if I shaved?
“Of course I should,” I muttered. Why was I even thinking no? I was put-together. Presentable. That mattered. It wasn’t as if it took long, but I felt more in control.
My hair was another issue. Naturally curly, prone to doing whatever the hell it wanted if left alone.
I opened my wash bag and lined things up on the counter by habit—curl cream, a smoothing serum, something lightweight for hold.
Too much, and I’d look overdone. Too little, and it would frizz and rebel.
I worked the products through, fingers scrunching, coaxing the curls into something intentional. Controlled. Like the rest of me.
“Today, I will act rationally,” I said to my reflection. “I won’t touch anything that could explode or catch fire. I will not plug my hairdryer in.”
In hindsight, the whole incident was almost funny.
Me, half asleep, nearly burning the place down because I wanted coffee.
I could spin that if I needed to. Fake a persona that was self-deprecating, harmless, maybe even…
cute. I wasn’t above using my apparent pint-sized cuteness as a weapon if it helped.
Jesse was taller than me, all muscle and glare, but size didn’t equal leverage.
Men like him tended to think in straight lines.
I was faster in my head. Better with angles.
If I had to soften him up first, make him underestimate me, I could do that too.
Then, I would explain to Jesse—calmly, logically—why selling was the best option. For the land. For the ranch. For everyone involved. I squared my shoulders and turned off the light—why were the electrics okay up here but not in the kitchen? This house was a mess.
“Focus.”
This was a simple manipulative conversation, and I was good at those.
I’d talked around the most stubborn people to donate time and money to the charity I volunteered at, pulled reluctant boards into consensus, and convinced people with more wealth than empathy that the charity was vital.
I’d earned a career in finance without a degree, untangling numbers no one else wanted to look at, steering bad situations toward outcomes everyone could live with.
“I will stay calm. I know how to make a case. This is no different.”
I dressed in layers, shivering at first, then warming as each one went on.
Finally, I pulled on jeans and my favorite sweatshirt, the one with the charity logo, worn thin and deliberately casual.
Approachable, if I needed it to be. Cute, with sleeves a little too long, the pale pink was a good color for me.
“Let’s do this.”
I headed downstairs, no sign of Jesse. The smell of yesterday’s near-disaster still lingered faintly in the air. I made coffee myself on the stove, careful this time, humming under my breath. The mug warmed my hands. When the first sip hit, bitter and necessary, I decided to explore.
Instead of turning right at the door like I had yesterday, I went left.
The front room opened up larger than I expected, but it was hard to make out anything but the shapes of big sofas in the half-dark. I pulled back the heavy drapes.
White.
The glare hit me full in the face, snow piled high and fresh, blinding enough that I swore and squinted. More snow.
“What the fuck!”
The shout came from behind me. I whirled so fast that coffee sloshed over the rim of the mug and splashed straight down the front of my sweatshirt.
Jesse Knox was sitting bolt upright on the biggest sofa I’ve ever seen.
The evidence was everywhere that he’d been sleeping there. A rumpled quilt half-slid to the floor. Boxes stacked against the wall. A makeshift table pulled close, cluttered with mugs, papers, and—my brain stalled—was that lube?
And in the middle of it all, Jesse.
Bare chest. Mussed hair. Lean muscle pulled tight over bone.
There was dirt smudged along his jaw and at his temple, and the lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper than they should have been for a man his age.
Hell, he was only a couple of years older than me, if I remembered right.
He looked even more weatherbeaten and worn down than when I saw him yesterday, exhaustion sitting on him as heavily as the anger.
One arm braced behind him as he leaned forward, eyes locked on me, an expression of pure fury and shock rolled into one.
For a second, neither of us moved. I was standing there, dripping coffee, heart pounding.
He looked like he’d woken ready to fight.
The silence stretched, electric and awful.
Jesse broke it first.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, hauling himself to his feet and dragging the quilt with him. His gaze flicked over the room, then back to me, taking in the coffee, the sweatshirt, the glare through the window.
“Why are you sleeping in here?” I stopped, clearly losing the thread.
“That’s none of your business!” Jesse snapped.
I went on the defensive instantly, words tumbling out before I’d thought them through.
“It’s a family room,” I said, a little too fast. “I wasn’t exactly expecting you to be using it as a bedroom.
I mean, I just came down for coffee, and then I was exploring, and—” I stopped, because he was still glaring, and the harder he stared, the more my mouth kept running.
“It’s not like there was a sign on the door.
This is my house, too. I can go where I want. ”
The second the words were out, I winced internally. Fuck. I sounded like a spoiled brat.
So much for a cute charm offensive.
Jesse’s jaw tightened. “It’s only three-quarters yours,” he grumbled, sweeping an arm around the room, taking in the sofa, the boxes, the table, all of it. “This?” He jabbed a finger at the space between us. “This is my quarter.”
“That’s not how this works,” I shot back automatically, even as my confidence wobbled. “You can’t just divide up rooms like territory and—”
“Get the fuck out!” he snapped, and God help me, but the way he stood there was intimidating, bare-chested in jersey boxers, all muscle and coiled tension, dark hair a mess, his face twisted into a snarl, was sexy.
An unhelpful flicker of awareness hit me, and I shut it down just as fast. I pulled a tactical retreat and shut the door behind me.
I scrubbed at the coffee mark on my sweatshirt in the kitchen sink until the pink was only faintly darker than before, then gave up.
It would do. I poured myself more coffee, my hands steadier now, and went hunting for food.
The cupboards yielded cereal. Sugary, brightly colored cereal. Captain Crunch.
Not my usual egg white omelet.
I managed one spoonful, milk going flat-sweet in my mouth, and decided that was enough self-punishment for one morning. With coffee in hand, and still no sign of Jesse, I headed back upstairs. Why the hell wasn’t he using a bedroom up here?
There were doors on the opposite side of the landing I hadn’t explored yet. Three of them. I opened the first. Empty. A spare room stripped back to nothing but bare walls and a thin layer of dust.
The second wasn’t being used as a bedroom. Storage, maybe. Old shelves, a chair pushed to the wall, the faint outline of where boxes had sat for a long time.
The third door stuck slightly before it opened.
Cold air spilled out, stale and unmoving, as if the room hadn’t been disturbed in months. The bed was made but not neatly, sheets rumpled as if someone had climbed out and never come back. A thin film of dust dulled every surface.
I stood there, somehow knowing this had been my grandfather’s room.
A heavy dresser stood against one wall, its top holding a watch, a pair of reading glasses, and a stack of ranching magazines. Clothes hung untouched in the wide closet, sensible and dated. On the bedside table sat a book facedown, the spine cracked.
It looked like a life paused, not ended.
I waited for grief, but I hadn’t known Walter Barrett.
All I had were my father’s stories, every one of them edged with bitterness, years of resentment dripping into me until the name Walter Barrett felt heavy and wrong.
I’d learned to be numb about him by default because it wasn’t as if he’d come and found me and saved me.
I can’t let anger slip into a sense of loss.
“You didn’t fucking care, old man,” I snapped, then slammed the door closed, breath catching in my chest.
No one had fucking cared.