“What do I tell her?”
“Ummm. I don’t know. Ignoring it sounds good.”
He snorted. “See how persistent they are? It’s amazing I’ve gone this long, and you’re the only person who’s noticed I live here.”
“Well, maybe if you’d towed one of their cars, they would have followed you and found out as well.”
“Ha ha.”
They worked side by side in silence, getting into a good rhythm. Eliana forced herself to slow down and give careful thought to every single box, and even still, she was going through them at a rate of three boxes for every one he went through.
They paused at one point to reorganize their piles and bag up the trash. “We’re going to need to use my car for this,” she said. “I don’t think your motorcycle can handle it.”
He sighed. “Maybe at night. So no one sees.”
“Are you ashamed of me?” she teased, putting a hand over her heart.
He gave her some hard side-eye, which made her laugh. Why in the world was it so rewarding to get a reaction out of him? “Or else someone might offer to help,” he said. “If they come inside …”
“It’s clear you’re living here,” she finished.
They took a break for lunch—Eliana insisted it was her turn to make a meal, and she put together two pretty good-looking turkey sandwiches—and dove back in for more work. Part of Eliana knew she needed to step away and work on her book. Her deadline loomed, and nothing but time in front of the computer was going to get this book done.
But they’d talked about her chapter. That was basically writing. She worried if she left Asher, he might get mired in his sadness. As it was, when they got quiet for a time, she’d look up and see him frowning again. She liked that she was able to distract him and help him do this. It made her feel like less of a bad person for forcing him to let her live with him.
She could feel herself spiraling into stress and needed to get her mind off of it. “I saw another tattoo on your ribs.”
He merely hmmmed as he flipped through dozens of cassette tapes. He held one up for her to see. “Bruce Springsteen.”
“Nice.” She dragged another box toward her. This one had been at the bottom of the stack, in the corner of the room. It was heavier than any of the others.It’s probably filled with leftover bricks from an old landscaping job. Or half-empty cartons of paint.
Asher’s grandpa had been a borderline hoarder.
“About that tattoo …”
“Celine Dion,” he said, holding up another one. “I don’t even know how you could play a cassette tape anymore.”
“Some older cars still have players. What’s your tattoo?”
He bit his lower lip but didn’t look up from the tapes. “Why do you want to know?”
She huffed. “I just do.” Hadn’t he ever heard of getting to know someone?
He grunted. Fine. She didn’t care that much anyway. Despite how much her brain kept flying back to that sliver of golden skin at his ribs.
She cut open her box with a little more gusto than required and opened it up with a cough as the dust puffed up. This one had a plastic file bin inside of it. One of those ones that her parents used to keep important papers and bills in.
She shimmied it out of the box and pulled off the lid to look inside. Her brows furrowed as she slid her finger over each of the file folder labels.
They were all names of people who lived in The Palms. There had to be dozens of files in here. She opened one, and her brows furrowed as she read. Her heart racing, she pulled out another and another. “Asher, come look at this right now.”
Chapter 13
AttheurgencyinEliana’s voice, Asher looked up from the Billy Joel cassette tape. “What’s wrong?” He moved closer to Eliana. They’d cleared up enough boxes for there to be a path between them.
“Your grandpa has dirt on almost everyone in The Palms.”
“No way.” It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her, but she must have been misinterpreting something. Why in the world would his grandpa have dirt on people?
