28. Ivy #2
He pauses. Something moves through his expression that’s older than the weeks we’ve spent together. It goes all the way back. “I bought it in her memory. I told myself someday, when things settled down, I would live here. When the work was done. When I’d earned it.”
He looks at me. “I never moved in. It never felt right without her.”
I don’t speak. I’m not sure I can.
“I’m not asking you to be her,” he carefully explains. “I told you that on the jet, and I meant it. But this house was built around the idea of a life I wanted to share with someone, and you’re that someone. Whatever name you go by.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a key, then holds it out to me in his open palm.
I look at it. A simple brass key, nothing special. The kind that opens a million doors in a million houses. But it isn’t a million doors. It’s this door. This porch and this swing, this yard with the trees that throw shade on the windows and would look so pretty with snow on the bare branches.
I take the key, wrap my fingers around it, and feel not just what it is but everything it stands for before we get out of the car.
We go inside together. He lets me lead, which I appreciate, because I need to move through the space the way I move through every new space—carefully, on my own terms. The front door opens into a hallway with hardwood floors that creak softly under our feet.
A living room to the left has a fireplace and built-in bookshelves.
The dining room on the right is empty, waiting for the sort of dinner we just shared at Liam’s.
The kitchen is at the back of the house. It has a window over the sink. I stand there for a long time, looking through that window at the dark yard. The oak tree is a shadow against the sky. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barks once and goes quiet.
The house is empty. No furniture or curtains; no evidence of a life being lived here. There’s nothing but potential and possibility. Like a blank page waiting for someone to write on it. For the first time in my life, the person holding the pen is me.
Nick is leaning against the doorframe behind me. Watching, waiting. He’s always been willing to wait, which I’m sure can’t be easy for a man like him. I don’t know if I fully appreciated it until now.
“It’s perfect,” I decide, and I mean it in a way that goes beyond the house itself.
It’s perfect because he kept it. He bought a house for a ghost and held onto it for years and never moved in because he was waiting for something he couldn’t name.
He’s handing me a key now and asking me to fill these rooms with him, not as the girl he lost but as the woman he found.
“With one condition,” I add.
I turn to face him, leaning back against the counter with my arms folded. His eyebrow lifts. “A condition?”
“Non-negotiable.”
“All right. Let’s hear it.”
“We need to get a dog.”
The surprise on his face lasts about half a second before it turns into something I don’t see from him nearly often enough: a full, real grin. It changes his whole face and makes him look, just for a second or two, like the boy from my dream. The one who met me on the dock.
“A dog,” he repeats.
“A big one. With a yard like this, it would be criminal not to.”
He pushes off the doorframe and crosses the kitchen until he’s standing in front of me. His hands settle on the counter on either side of me before he leans in close, his forehead almost touching mine. “We can get a dog.”
“A rescue.”
“A rescue,” he agrees.
“And I’m naming it.”
“I wouldn’t dare interfere.”
I look up at him, at those pale blue eyes that have seen the worst of me and the best of me and everything in between, and I feel something I don’t have a practiced response for.
There’s no protocol here, no contingency plan.
It’s just warmth that spreads outward from the center of my chest, filling the empty rooms of this house the way I intend to fill them for real.
“Thank you,” I whisper. Not just for the house. For the key. For the years he held onto something. For coming for me when I walked away, and for giving me space when I needed it.
He leans down to kiss me. Slow, unhurried, the way you kiss someone when you know there’s no rush. For the first time in either of our lives, there’s nowhere else to be.
When he pulls back, I rest my head against his chest and listen to his heartbeat. Steady and sure. “I have one more condition,” I murmur against his shirt.
“I thought it was non-negotiable. Singular.”
“I’m adding another one.”
“Of course you are.”
I pull back enough to look up at him. “You will never use that syringe on me again.”
He considers this, narrowing his eyes. “What if you walk away again?”
“Then you chase me like a normal person.”
This time, his grin is softer but just as real. “Deal.”
I take his hand and lead him through the empty house, room by room. As we walk, I start to see it. Not memories. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But something just as valuable. A future. Ours. Built from scratch in this beautiful, empty house, which we’ll fill together.
It’s the most ordinary thing I can imagine, and I’ve never wanted anything more.