Chapter 6
chapter
six
Oliver
She takes seventeen minutes.
I know because I track the time. Not on purpose, but rather because the old clock on Mimz’s mantle ticks loud enough to hear from three rooms away, and there’s nothing else to do but sit here and listen to it while my life rearranges itself in real time.
Seventeen minutes of the clock ticking. Of the ceiling fan clicking on every third rotation because Pops has been meaning to fix the balance on it for two years. Of the coffeepot in the kitchen, making that low, sighing gurgle it does when it’s been sitting on the warmer too long.
Seventeen minutes to think about the fact that the woman I’ve replayed in my mind more times than I’d ever admit to another living soul is currently thirty feet away from me, behind a door, in my grandparents’ house.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and scrub both hands down my face.
Think, Oliver.
The facts are simple. My grandparents hired a live-in aide. That aide happens to be the same woman I slept with in my truck three months ago at Seven Mile Dam while rain hammered the windshield, and she wore my hat, and I forgot every rule I’ve ever set for myself.
Those are the facts.
I hear the door open. Footsteps in the hallway, lighter now, still bare, padding across the old hardwood.
That third board from the kitchen groans, and I hear her pause on it for half a second like she’s used to the sound of it, like it’s familiar, and something about that detail irritates me in a way I can’t fully explain.
She’s settled here. She knows which boards creak.
She rounds the corner into the living room, and I get my first real look at her. Not the ambush version—the half-drowned, towel-clutching, wide-eyed version from twenty minutes ago. This is the put-together version. Or her version of put together, anyway.
She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts that end mid-thigh, showing off the ink on her right leg—flowers, I can see now.
Brightly colored and beautifully detailed, they wind up from her ankle past her knee and disappear under the frayed hem.
A black tank top that’s loose enough to be casual but fitted enough that I can see the shape of her underneath.
Her hair is still damp, but she’s twisted it up into some kind of knot held in place with what looks like a pencil. The diamond in her nose winks at me.
She’s barefoot. The dark polish on her toenails is chipped.
She’s carrying two mugs of coffee.
She holds one out to me without a word.
I take it. Our fingers brush. Neither of us acknowledges it.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t read into it,” she says. “I was already in the kitchen getting mine.”
She drops into the armchair across from me—Mimz’s chair, the floral one with the afghan draped over the back—and tucks one foot underneath her. She wraps both hands around her mug and looks at me over the rim.
Those pale green eyes. I’ve wondered since that night if they were as crystalline green as I remembered. Now I know, and I wish I didn’t, because they’re the kind of green that’s hard to look away from. Light and clear and sharp, like sea glass held up to the sun.
“So,” she says.
“So.”
A beat.
“This is weird,” she says.
“Yep.”
“Like, astronomically weird.”
“I’m aware.”
She takes a sip of her coffee. Sets it down on the side table. Picks it back up. Sets it down again. She’s nervous. Trying not to show it. Doing a decent job, but I’ve spent my life reading animals that can’t talk. I know what caution and unease look like when it’s trying to hold still.
“Okay,” she says. “Cards on the table. I didn’t know.
I didn’t know you were their grandson. I didn’t know you lived here.
I didn’t know any of this. I answered a job listing nearly a month and a half ago, interviewed with your grandmother, who is—for the record—the most charming woman I’ve ever met in my life, and she hired me on the spot.
I moved in two weeks later.” She pauses. “That’s the whole story.”
I study her. She meets my gaze without wavering. No fidgeting, no looking away. Just those green eyes, steady and clear, daring me to call her a liar.
“Mimz hired you on the spot,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“For a job that doesn’t really need to exist.”
Something shifts in her expression. A flicker of… not hurt, exactly, but something. Something like recognition. Like she’s already thought about this herself and arrived at the same uncomfortable conclusion.
“I know what it looks like,” she says carefully.
“What does it look like?”
“Like two very kind people saw a girl who needed help and invented a reason to give it to her.” She says it plainly, without self-pity, the way she’d said foster care that night at the bar.
Just a fact. Something she’s learned to hold without letting it weigh her down.
“I’m not naive. I know they don’t need a live-in aide.
Your grandmother can outpace me on the stairs.
Your grandfather fixed the garbage disposal last week with a butter knife and a YouTube video. ”
Despite myself, the corner of my mouth twitches. That sounds exactly like Pops.
“But the job is real,” she continues. “My skills are real. I do real work. I manage their medications, I handle their appointments, I keep the house running when they want to go off and do things like spontaneous Caribbean cruises.” She gestures vaguely. “I earn my keep, Oliver.”
It’s the first time she’s used my name.
It lands differently than I expected. Not like a weapon. Like a key turning in a lock, opening a door that was already unlocked.
“I didn’t say you didn’t,” I say.
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking a lot of things.”
“I bet.” She reaches for her coffee again. This time, she actually drinks it. “Your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
“Cards on the table. You said this is your grandparents’ house. Fine. But you walked in with a key and a chip on your shoulder at eight in the morning. So what’s your story?”
I lean back against the couch. Run my tongue along the inside of my cheek.
“I need to stay here for a while,” I say. “My living situation... changed.”
Her eyebrows lift. “Changed how?”
“My brother got married.”
“Congratulations to him.”
“He didn’t tell anyone.”
“Ah.”
“And his new wife moved in.”
“Into your place.”
“It was his place. I was staying there while I—” I stop. This is more than I intended to say. “It doesn’t matter. Point is, Mimz and Pops told me I could stay here whenever I needed to. I’ve had a key since I was sixteen.”
She processes this. I watch her do it—watch the calculations happening behind those glass-green eyes. She’s quick, I’ll give her that. She was quick that night too. Every response a half-step ahead of where I expected it to be.
“So you’re not just visiting,” she says slowly.
“No.”
“You’re moving in.”
“It’s my grandparents’ house.”
“It’s where I live.”
We stare at each other.
“This is a three-bedroom house,” she says.
“I know. I grew up spending every summer here.”
“So you know there’s only one bathroom besides mine.”
“The one in the hall. Yes.”
“And that the other bedroom is also their office and only has a twin-sized trundle bed?”
I nod.
“And the kitchen is—”
“Small. I know.”
“And you’re—” She gestures at me. All of me. Up and down. “—not small.”
I almost smile. Almost. “I’ve been told.”
She presses her lips together. “This is going to be a problem.”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
“Oliver.” She says my name again, and this time it sounds like a warning. “You and I have—history. We have a very specific, very memorable, very naked history. And now you’re telling me we’re going to be roommates? In your grandparents’ house? With shared walls?”
“I’m telling you I need a place to stay, and this is where I’m staying.”
“And I’m telling you that I live here and I’m not leaving.”
“No one asked you to leave.”
“Yet.”
The word hangs there. One syllable, loaded with something I recognize because I’ve heard it before. She didn’t talk about her past much that night, but she mentioned moving around as a kid. She’d used the word “temporary” more than once.
She’s waiting for me to take this from her.
She’s been waiting for someone to take it from her since she got here.
Something in my chest tightens. The same something that tightened that night when she told me about the star tattoo, and I understood, without her saying it, what it meant to her.
“I’m not asking you to leave, Cora.”
She looks at me. Searches my face. Whatever she finds there makes her exhale—slow, controlled, through her nose.
“Okay,” she says quietly.
“Just tell me one thing,” I say.
“What’s that?”
“Tell me it’s not about the money.”
She frowns and looks genuinely confused. “What money?”
“If you’ve been in Saddle Creek for more than an hour, it’s likely you’ve heard the Blankenship name tossed around. That and the West family. That’s both sides of my family. We pretty much own eighty percent of the county.”
She licks her lips. “So you’re rich? Is that what you’re telling me?”
It sounds so obnoxious when she says it like that. But when you grow up with money, you learn pretty quickly that people don’t always want to be with you because of your stellar personality.
Finally, she shakes her head. “I didn’t know about the money. I don’t care about the money. Do you want me to sign something that says as much?”
I shake my head.
“Then I guess we’re doing this.”
“Guess we are.”
Another beat. This one is different. Less combative. More like two people standing at the edge of something, looking down, trying to decide if they’re going to jump or walk away.
We jumped once before. I remember exactly how that went.
“Ground rules,” she says.
“Fine.”
“What happened between us—that night—it stays in the past. It doesn’t exist in this house.”
“Agreed.” The word comes out easier than it should.
“We’re housemates. That’s it. Polite, civilized, fully clothed housemates.”
“Fully clothed,” I repeat. “Noted.”
“And no one—no one—needs to know about our... prior acquaintance.”
Prior acquaintance. That’s one way to describe it. Another way would be the most unforgettable night of my life, but I keep that behind my teeth where it belongs.
“Fine by me,” I say.
She nods. Sticks out her hand. “Deal?”
I look at her hand. The short, dark-painted nails. The star tattoo on her wrist.
The last time she offered me her hand, we ended up on a dance floor that led to a truck that led to three months of her living rent-free in my head.
I take it. Her palm is warm and small and steady.
“Deal,” I say.
She shakes once. Firm. Professional.
Then she pulls her hand back, picks up her coffee, and stands.
“I’m going to reorganize the pantry,” she says. “Your grandfather organizes by height, and it’s a crime against God.”
“He’s been doing that for thirty years.”
“Then it’s been a crime for thirty years.” She heads toward the kitchen. Pauses in the doorway. Looks back over her shoulder. “Welcome home, Oliver.”
Then she’s gone.
I sit on the couch and stare at the hallway she disappeared into.
Welcome home.
Like she belongs here.
Like I’m the visitor.
I pull out my phone. Open the group chat. Stare at the messages. My eyes snag on Payton’s question.
Payton: Is she pretty?
Me: Irrelevant.
I close the chat.
Pretty isn’t the right word anyway.
The right word is mischief.
The right word is mine.
I close my eyes and correct myself immediately. She’s not mine. She’s my grandparents’ aide. She’s a woman I slept with once. She’s a stranger with a pencil in her hair and chipped nail polish and a past she holds like a closed fist.
She’s not mine.
But there’s something she hasn’t told me yet. I felt it in the air between us—the same way I can feel a storm building before the sky changes color. Something unsaid, sitting just below the surface of every word she chose and every pause she took.
Something important.
And I’m going to find out what it is.
Whether I’m ready for it or not.