by Nicole Deese
His stare couldn’t have been any more lifeless. “Why? Because you’re still trying to figure out ways to keep me trapped inside this house for the rest of my life?”
I clamped my back molars together and waited until the urge to fire back an equally sarcastic reply had passed. “No, that’s not what I’m trying to do at all.”
Saying nothing more to me, Brandon tucked his sketchbook into the crack of the recliner and bent to scratch Kosher’s head. “What time’s Callie coming over tonight?”
“I don’t think she’s coming over.”
He grumbled under his breath, his disappointment obvious.
This wasn’t working at all.
The dog rolled over for Brandon to rub his belly. To which he obliged.
I sighed, needing some time to regroup my strategy, and something to eat. “Why don’t you take him for a short walk around the block, and I’ll fix us something for dinner.” Since I spent my lunch examining your graffiti art.
“Shep brought pizza over. He saved you a few slices on the counter.” Brandon stood and slapped his thigh, the dog eager to follow him. And all the while, Shep remained sawing logs, dead to the world around him. Brandon went to the coatrack and then turned back. “Where’s his leash?”
“Should be in here.” I rounded the sofa and bent to retrieve it from the drawer in the coffee table. But before I could hand it off, my gaze shot back to the recliner. To the half-hidden sketchbook.
I tossed Brandon the leash, anticipating for him to remember his poorly stashed possession.
He didn’t. He was too busy wrangling the dog circling his legs, tail wagging.
“Stay still, boy,” Brandon said on a near laugh. “Just a second. We can’t go until I clip this into your collar.”
Casually, I stepped in front of the chair and blocked his view in case he happened to offer a last over-the-shoulder glance in my direction. “Remember not to walk him too fast with his splint.”
“I know, you tell me that every time.” The slam of the front door caused Shep to roll onto his side, and for a moment, I hesitated.
My fingers hovered a hairsbreadth away from the spiraled spine of Brandon’s art. And while I wished he would offer to show me his drawings himself . . . I couldn’t let this rare opportunity slide. Not when the book never left his person.
I dropped into the chair, and a cool prickly sensation filled my lungs as I flipped the thick cover open. Before I could even make it past the first page, I’d forgotten how to exhale.
There he was again.
Brandon’s robot.
The same one I’d seen just a few hours ago inside the abandoned building.
I turned to the next page and to the next, my reflexes sluggish and numb.
Each sketch featured a new location, a new prop, a new purpose . . . but the friendly-looking giant with human eyes and a kind smile was exactly as Callie had said, my son’s artistic signature. Like a comic book, or a graphic novel, the robot was on every single page.
I wanted to soak in every detail, study each picture he’d ever drawn—all the ones I’d missed in books one and two . . . only not like this.
Not this way.
I wanted to be invited in.
Before I could change my mind, I closed the book and tucked it back into the folds of the recliner.
Backing away from the living room, I tugged hard on my collar and strode down the hall into my bedroom. A steady build of memories stacked up like a tower ready to topple. I ripped off my polo and tossed it onto the bed. The same bed Brandon had climbed into night after night after we’d lost his mom. Pulse rising, I kicked my shoes into my closet. The same closet where a dozen of Brandon’s soccer trophies were stored overhead. And with shaky hands, I pried open my dresser drawer in search of a T-shirt. Only my eyes fixed on the framed picture of Brandon jumping off the high dive, his mouth forever frozen on the words, Watch me, Dad!
Chest heaving, I gripped the sides of the dresser and bowed my head in a wordless prayer.
There were no guarantees in this life—Stephanie’s death had taught me that lesson well enough. But while I’d been so busy striving for change—in my clinic, in my town, in myself—Brandon had been busy, too, growing up. And I was missing it.
I fished my phone from my pant pocket and shot Callie a text.
I’d already lost his mother. I wouldn’t lose my son, too. Whatever it took for me to understand this world he lived in, I would do it.
I just needed to be shown how.
The windows on the Taylors’ two-story house were dark—no hint of movement behind their closed curtains. But I’d try my luck anyway.
For a self-proclaimed night owl like Callie, half past ten was still considered early. I prayed that tonight she hadn’t made an exception.
Hands shoved deep into the pockets of my cargo shorts, I trekked up the shadow-draped driveway and wove a path toward the back of the property. Crickets chirped from deep within the rhododendron bushes as the soles of my shoes smashed the tallest blades of grass into the soil.
The sliver of light peeking out from the gap under her studio door provided confirmation enough.
She was still awake, still working.
I supposed the unanswered text I’d sent to her earlier this evening could have dissuaded me from showing up unannounced, but in all the hours we’d shared together these last few weeks, Callie rarely, if ever, engaged with her phone. A definite contrast to the majority of the population . . . as were most of the traits I admired about her.
Two strides out from the studio’s barn-style door, a security light flicked on from somewhere behind me.
“Chris? Is that you?” a familiar voice called into the quiet night.
Momentarily blinded, I turned, shielding my eyes with my arm and working to blink the floating black dots from my vision. “Don’t shoot, I’m unarmed.”
“Davis?” The smile in her voice drew me closer.
“I hope I’m not violating curfew by showing up so late.”
Callie’s shapely silhouette came into view a stone’s throw from the studio, and I quickened my stride.
“No, not at all,” she said. “I was actually just on my way back in after changing out of my shorts. The studio gets chilly in the evenings.” The light overhead spilled over three narrow steps leading to where she stood, but my gaze pulled south to her patterned pants. The shrink-wrapped fit left little to the imagination. “Are those unicorns?” I asked.
She kicked out a leg and rocked her ankle side to side. “I thought they were pretty cute.”
“I don’t disagree.” I scanned the minuscule platform where she stood and realized with sudden clarity exactly what these small porch steps led up to. “Wait—this is your little house, isn’t it?”
“My Tiny House.” She laughed. “And yep. Here she is. Did you come for your tour?”
“Does this tour involve turning in a tight circle?”
“Pretty much. But you might find that one rotation isn’t enough to get the full scope of the place.”
“Then I better promise not to blink.” I stepped onto the porch and followed her through the narrow opening where she waved her hand over a metal sensor, causing a low-beam light to illuminate the space.
“You didn’t tell me I was in for a magic show.”
She turned and stretched her arm past my shoulder to close the door at my back. Her scent, as distinctly female as it was fruit-infused, filled my senses. We were nearly chest to chest when her eyes paused on mine. “It’s solar powered.”
“What is?”
“The whole house. The lights can take a bit to warm up, so I go without them whenever I can—doesn’t make much sense to turn them on when I’m running back and forth to the studio in the evenings.”
“Sure.” Only my mind wasn’t following her words as much as they were following the way her lips curved around each syllable she spoke. How had I never noticed the perfect peaks of her top lip?
“Okay, so
.” She clasped her hands and spun around, her ponytail swishing across my cheek like a phantom touch. “This is what I refer to as the everything room.”
“An appropriate name.” Seeing as every square inch of her 222-square-foot home was visible from the front door.
Callie swept her arm wide, in a showmanship arc. “And this is where you start the slow turn.”
“Right here?” I teased. “Or should I stand where you are now?”
Her eyes sparkled as she made a twirling motion with her finger. “Where you are will work just fine.”
“As long as you’re sure I won’t miss anything.”
Callie’s airy laugh triggered the same awestruck sensation as watching a group of balloons ascend into the sky.
With a measured shuffle of our feet, we started the turn in sync with one another.
The kitchen to our right comprised a countertop the size of a standard cutting board, two wooden shelves, two wall cabinets—one labeled “Pantry”—and a storage area tucked underneath a sink that couldn’t possibly hold anything larger than a head of lettuce.
On our continued rotation, I noted the seamless transition between the kitchen and the dining/desk/office area, which curved around to her compact sofa and chair set on our left.
“Considering the tight floor plan, the space seems quite efficient,” I said.
“That is such a man comment. Of course you would notice the efficiency first.”
“And what exactly did you notice first?”
With a flirtatious smirk, she glanced over her shoulder and pointed at the skylight in the open loft. Above her bed.
Somehow I’d managed to miss that remarkable detail.
“Go ahead,” she encouraged. “Take a look for yourself. It’s why I finally forked out the cash to buy this place.”
Bracing a hand to her hip, I slid past her to climb the five-rung ladder up to her loft—to Callie’s personal front-row seat to the stars.
“You can’t possibly see anything in that position,” she commented while I craned my neck toward the skylight from the top of the ladder. “Go ahead, stretch out and put your head on the pillow. You have to get the full effect. It’s magical.”
As I rotated to lie flat on the mattress, allowing my head to settle back onto her perfume-scented pillow, something told me the full effect was more than I was prepared to handle. I felt each step she climbed, each inch of space she filled, as she neared the edge of the bed.
My body hummed at her nearness.
“The Big and Little Dipper are front and center. See?” She stretched tall, twisting her torso so it hovered mere inches from my own and using her pointer finger to map the heavens. But my gaze followed the slender path of her arm, taking in the pale satin of her skin and the faint dusting of freckles scattered from wrist to elbow.
“Yeah, I see.”
“I took an astronomy class once a few years back and learned all about the constellations . . .”
Yet try as I might to focus on the constellations she named, one after another, my thoughts drifted somewhere else entirely. There wasn’t a chance in this life that I could focus on the beauty of the stars and ignore the beauty of the woman beside me. I hadn’t been in such an intimate setting in . . . a very long time. Urgency stirred within me, pushing a rising truth to the surface: I wanted more than Callie’s help with my son.
I wanted her.
So I let my fingers trail the length of her forearm, her skin so much softer than I’d imagined it. The touch caused her voice to falter mid–astronomy lesson.
Her gaze collided with mine. “Uh . . . we should probably head out to the studio.”
Before I could respond, she released her grip on the ladder and slid to the floor in one fluid motion.
I waited a beat, and then another, long enough to tame the adrenaline pumping through my blood. The plunge back into reality was hardly a pleasant one. But it was the right one. The firm foundation beneath my feet would ground me in more ways than one.
At least temporarily.
Chapter Twenty
CALLIE
Davis hadn’t said much as he entered my cluttered studio, but his simmering gaze was far from silent, the same way it had been minutes ago inside my house. I turned my back to him, working to douse the memory of him lying in my bed with thoughts of polar plunges in the dead of winter. The intensity that had sparked and sizzled between us had awoken something deeper than attraction and more electric than chemistry. Something I would have eagerly explored if he were anybody other than Davis.
Yet I doubted the feeling would exist without him.
Every cell in my body seemed aware of him—how he watched me as he roamed freely inside my work space, touching each one of my treasures with a casual familiarity that seemed to blast through the ten-foot barrier I’d erected between us.
My desire to go to him fought against every ounce of reasoning and restraint I could muster. But no matter how he made me feel, and no matter what yearning he stirred inside me, I couldn’t act on my feelings for him. Besides, he was too intelligent not to realize I was the opposite of everything he needed.
And yet, here he was anyway, causing me to second-guess the vagabond lifestyle I’d chosen.
The bigger, more aggressive argument inside me also knew that if I went to him now—while his wanting eyes searched my face—and told him how wrong we were for each other . . . the odds would not be in my favor.
But maybe they never had been.
Hoping to busy my hands and rein in my thoughts, I shoved a pile of my latest scribbles into the corner of my workstation.
“I hope you’re not cleaning on my account.” He picked up the small ceramic gnome I’d purchased at a farmers’ market in Eugene and turned it over in his hands. “I was hoping to glean some insight from an artist’s mind. It’s probably better if you keep everything authentic around here.”
But keeping it authentic—my studio, my mind, my heart—was a dangerous request at present. For the first time in my life, I wished for my sister’s compulsive nature. She was a pro at cutting the tension with busywork. I searched for something—anything—in the room to keep my hands occupied.
There. The mixed colored pencils. I’d sort them.
I sidestepped another possible seismic stare-down with Davis and faced a row of mason jars, each filled to capacity with a rainbow of colored pencils. “What happened after you left the laundromat this afternoon? Did you contact the sheriff’s office?” As if perfectly content to watch me color coordinate, Davis pulled out a metal stool from under the worktable to observe.
“I spoke to Sheriff Granger, yes. The laundromat recently sold to an investment property group. They’re replacing the locks tomorrow, but they aren’t going to press charges as long as the trespassing stops.”
I nodded, grouping the reds together and placing them into an empty mason jar. “And Brandon? How did that talk go?”
“Today didn’t feel like the right time to discuss it with him.”
“Really?” I asked, tossing him a questioning glance.
His tone changed to something definitive. Resolute. “I decided to cut my hours down for the remainder of the summer. Considerably. Julie’s looking to build her clientele, and I’m, well, I’m looking to off-load some of my mine. Brandon needs me. I’m going down to three days a week until September 1.”
“Oh, Davis.” Elation rose within me. “That’s . . . that’s so great. Have you told him yet?”
“I plan to in the morning.”
Imagining what it would have felt like to have my own father make such a sacrifice, I beamed at him. “Then let’s make sure we make the most of the next six weeks or so.”
He studied me, a slow smile appearing on his ridiculously attractive face. “You keep saying that, you know.”
“Saying what?”
“Let’s. As in let us. You said it earlier today at the laundromat, too.”
Had I really? I wasn’t usually so careless wit
h my vocabulary. Let’s. We. Us. Those were all word choices for the chronically committed. Not for me. “Well, uh, like I told you before, I’m willing to help Brandon however I can.”
But we both knew helping Brandon was only half of the equation.
He made a quizzical sound in the back of his throat and then slid his hand across the tabletop, pinching the top sketch on my reject pile between his fingers. “What is—is this for the bakery?”
“No, that’s for the trash can.” I reached to remove the pile from the table, but he moved faster, swiping the whole stack into his hand.
“Really, don’t bother with those. They’re no good.”
Pointless words really, as he continued to thumb through each one. “What are you talking about? These are incredible. This one with the baker’s off-kilter crown and her toppling pastry platter is my favorite. It seems right for that old building.”
His flattery burrowed deep. “Really? You think so? I didn’t know if it was too . . . whimsical?” I’d sketched that one just minutes before Davis showed up.
He stared at me. “The whimsy is what makes it such a perfect fit.”
The dryness of my throat made it difficult to swallow.
As he flipped over the last sketch, his face changed entirely. “This one definitely isn’t for the bakery—unless Mabel is going to be serving children books with her cupcakes.”
“Uh, no. It’s not. That was a trial sketch for Penny at the library. I submitted a few ideas to her last week.”
His imploring gaze made my leg muscles weaken. “She hired you?”
“Sort of.” Only I wasn’t charging her.
“What does sort of mean exactly?”
I glanced around the room. “I only work there in my off-hours.”
“You’re doing it for free, then.”
“I’m happy to do it.” Though I tried to shrug off the intensity of his gaze, I couldn’t escape it. My mind worked to close the loop, to bring us back to the real reason we were here together tonight. Brandon. Art. Connection. “But I was thinking about something earlier tonight . . . ,” I started.
Davis waited, watching me silently.
