“Welcome to Blackwood.”
* * *
The walk back was quick and full of fancy. In her imaginings, Blackwood became not just a pit stop for Uma, but a real home. She’d find a lovely little cottage to rent, work weddings on the weekends, and the rest of the time, shoot photo after photo of everything. Those pictures would be shown in Rory’s bar but also elsewhere.
She was so caught up in the infinite possibilities of her new, beautiful life that she hardly noticed where she was going. She’d made it halfway to Ivan’s workshop before realizing she’d bypassed her boss’s place altogether. Fueled on pipe dreams and instinct alone, her subconscious had led her not to her temporary residence but straight to the neighbor’s. Okay, so she might have had a crush. She’d admit that. But the man probably had girls all over town.
Uma decided then and there that she couldn’t care less. Rather than hesitation and self-doubt—which was pretty much her constant MO—she made the firm, albeit tipsy decision to forge ahead.
Which was how she found herself, at crazy o’clock on a Sunday morning, doing the most spontaneous thing she’d ever done: knocking at a near-stranger’s door.
A dim light shone through the workshop window, and she might have imagined the warmth of the wood beneath her knuckles. After a few seconds, the door swung in, and Uma took an involuntary step back.
It was too late to run, too late to turn around. With a certainty she hadn’t known in months, maybe years, she knew what she wanted was right there, in the flesh.
15
He was beautiful.
Still big, still intimidating, but half-naked and sleepy, Ivan looked soft, approachable. His groggy face was hard to read, one squinty eye open, the other crinkled shut.
“Hey, Uma. What’re you doin’?” His voice was beyond gravelly, into some deeper key that wouldn’t have been audible more than a couple of feet away.
“I came to see you.”
“Yeah?”
“You weren’t here earlier.”
“Got a standin’ date Saturday night—with my nephew.”
“Oh.” That was a relief. All that jealousy for nothing. “Can I come in?”
It was almost insulting how long it took him to decide, but he eventually turned and preceded her into the room, pulling up the form-fitting boxer briefs that had ridden low on his haunches. Squeak, asleep in front of the fire, barely lifted her head in acknowledgment of the new arrival. It smelled different tonight. No longer a workshop, it had that slightly musky, sleeping-man scent. The one you don’t notice when you wake up to it but have to air out if you reenter a bedroom. It softened the usual fire and brimstone of the place.
Uma’s eyes scanned his shadowed shape, and the wordvoyeurpopped into her head. Rory was right. It made so much sense. She’d always spent time with people who had to be the center of attention—her mother growing up, then all those drama department friends in school whose friendships hadn’t withstood Joey, and then Joey himself. It was a rare moment of insight to realize what a parasitic relationship she’d had with those people. All of them. No, not parasitic—symbiotic. They’d craved the attention, and she’d thrived off giving it to them.
This man, self-sufficient to the extreme, didn’t want anything from her. Or at least nothing complicated.
“You need a bed to crash?”
“Did you mean it when you said you’d do whatever I wanted you to do?”
A brief hesitation, then a slightly breathless, “Yeah.” Another pause. “You drunk?”
She shook her head, and it was as clear as a bell. Clear and calm and supremely focused. “I drank enough to give me courage, but the walk home sobered me up.”
“Where’d you walk from?”
“The Nook,” she answered, recalling Rory’s words about this little section of town.Cell Block Eight.“You went to prison.” It was more of a question than an accusation.
He tensed up at that but didn’t deny it.
“Why? What’d you do?”
“Beat someone up.”
“What for?”
