She stares at it for a beat, then sighs, slaps her palm into mine, and lets me pull her up. “Fine.”
“Good. Because you need a serious dose of Vitamin D.”
Her mouth drops open and she slaps my shoulder, hard. “Ugh. Pervert.” (At least she didn’t slap my face this time.)
“I meant sunshine.” I deadpan. “But honestly, you could use a solid dicking.”
The glare she aims my way is lethal.
“What? It’s medical advice. Builds bone density.”
She glares, but her lip betrays her, twitching like it might smirk. “Kick rocks, Leo.”
Now that’s an idea. I clap once. “Perfect. Let’s go hiking.”
The look of terror on her at the word ‘hiking’ is priceless.
“Relax,” I tell her, turning and strolling out of the copy room. “I’m not marching you up Everest. Just a short trail, trees, air, sunshine. It’s more of a walk. It’ll be fun. I promise.”
Tori follows, begrudgingly, muttering something about preferring a lobotomy while she packs up her laptop and gathers the rest of her belongings. But when I step out of my office, jacket on and truck keys in hand, she follows without argument.
Small victories.
By the timewe swing into her apartment complex and I watch her step out of her car, I can see the fight has gone out of her shoulders. She still looks tired, but not curled-up-on-the-floor tired. She disappears inside while I wait in the parking lot, tapping my steering wheel in rhythm to nothing. When she comes back, she’s traded her slacks for jeans and swapped her flats for sturdy shoes. The purple knit sweater stays, sleeves shoved to her elbows.
“You sure that’s warm enough?” I ask when she climbs into the passenger seat of my truck.
“It’s practically tropical compared to Moraine,” she says, tugging at the hem. “Besides, this isn’t a hike, it’s a walk. Your words.”
“True,” I concede. “But it’s a scenic walk. With incline.”
“Then I’ll just roll downhill when I get tired.” She shuts the door, seatbelt snapping into place. “Problem solved.”
Her sarcasm is adorable, and much preferred to the agony and rage that tinged her words just an hour ago. Less fury, more teasing. I’ll take it.
We make one last stop on the way out of town—this one at my place. She goes quiet when I pull into the driveway of a small cottage-style house—the kind with a peaked roof, a modest front porch, and enough shrubs out front to look like I might actually care about landscaping.
“This is… your house?” she asks, climbing out slowly, like we are most certainly in the wrong place.
“Last I checked,” I say, jogging up the front steps to unlock the front door.
“I guess I’ve always pictured you in an apartment,” she shrugs. “Something more bachelor-pad-like, with bare walls, a futon, and maybe a sad fern you keep forgetting to water.”
I snort. “That was my life for a while, yeah. Stephanie and I always lived in apartments. She could never settle on a house—every one we looked at had some flaw that made it unworthy. The kitchen wasn’t big enough. The neighborhood wasn’t polishedenough. The paint color wasn’t trendy enough. Nothing ever cleared her bar for perfection, so we just… stayed in limbo. Apartment after apartment, always temporary, never rooted.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“Oh yes,” I nod. “It was. After the divorce, I couldn’t stand that feeling anymore. Everything else in my life was falling apart—my marriage, my routine, my sense of what the hell I was even doing. I needed something solid. Something I could point to and say, This is mine.”
I open the door and step inside, motioning for her to follow. I spread my arms as if to say, ta-da!
“So I bought this place. It’s not big, it’s not flashy, but it’s a house. Comfortable, manageable, and completely mine. No memories of anyone else. No leases or landlords. No shared walls with weird ass people I don’t know. Just me deciding how it looks, how it feels, how it stands.”
I gesture around the cozy living room: books stacked on built-in shelves, a real couch with real throw pillows, a guitar leaning against the corner. It’s not flashy, but it’s lived-in. Warm.
“Whatcha think?” I ask, studying her expression as she takes in my space. My home.
Tori nods, eyes softening. She gets it. Of course she does.
