This is his smell.
Stop smiling, Rose!
“You like that, huh?” He steps around me and closes the door, his shoulder brushing mine as he walks. “This place was a dump when I bought it. The ceiling was falling in, and the floors were covered with the world’s ugliest linoleum. I started pulling things up, hauling things out, and discovered the treasure underneath. Some dumb dingus sold this place for a steal. Now it’s all mine.”
“Lucky it didn’t cost much, since you only make pennies.” Pleasure ripples through my blood as he comes to a stop right in front of me. “It smells like you in here.”
“Yeah? I figured I must smell like antiseptic soap most of the time.”
“No.” I lean forward and stop with my nose about six inches from his chest. I don’t touch. I don’t dare. But I inhale and pull away with a goofy grin. “The antiseptic detracts from the real you at the hospital. But I caught it a few times when the breeze was just right. Or when my room door had been closed a while, and you were hanging around long enough.”
He tips his nose to the sky and sniffs the air. “It’s not a bad smell, right?”
“No. I like it. You smell earthy and real. Like you mess around in the dirt a lot. Or you work with wood sometimes.”
“I do. Sometimes.”
“Really?”
“Mm. I have a lathe, and I’ve tried making a few things over the years, but I mostly spend my time cutting straight lines.” He wraps his arm around mine and ambles through the living room toward the hall. “You’ll see the deck out back in a minute. I started it in the summer, but work keeps me busy, and my friends had a baby. Life got in the way and slowed me down. Now that winter’s here, I can’t be bothered going out in the cold after work. But I’ll get there.” He draws me into the hall, where a wide doorway leads into the kitchen and a massive bouquet of flowers explodes from a vase on a counter.
The bright blooms draw my focus. They spark something in the back of my mind. But he continues his tour before I can latch on, leading me deeper into the house. “Bathroom’s just here.” He taps a door with the toe of his shoe and pushes it wide enough to show glistening white tiles and a rich black bathtub. Black vanity. Black framed mirror.
“Oh, my goodness.” My breath catches as I stare straight through the room and out into the snow-covered backyard, because the entire far wall is glass. “Ollie?—”
“There’s only one bathroom in this house, so we’ll have to share. But don’t worry about the window; it’s one-way.”
“It’s amazing.” I don’t cross the threshold. I don’t dare impose without a strict invitation. But I press my hand to the doorframe and lean in, all to get a look at the showerhead nestled in the ceiling, and the wide shower stall large enough for… well, six or seven or more. “You did all this work yourself?”
He scoffs. “I helped. I follow instructions. Mostly, my friends—Chris and Tommy—provide the brute strength and enough common sense not to get us killed, and our other friend, Cliff, takes care of the more complicated stuff. He’s a perfectionist. And lucky for me—” He flashes a wide smile in my peripherals. “He works for pennies, too. Come on.” He tugs me away and leads me along the hall to the next door, tapping it open to reveal a room with hardwood flooring, a single bed nestled under a massivewindow, and the same stunning view as the bathroom. “My sister sleeps here sometimes when she stays over, but this can be your room until we get things figured out.” He steps in ahead of me and slides a mirrored door aside to reveal a closet half full ofthings. Boardgames. Textbooks. Thick snow jackets. “The drawers are empty for now. But we’ll get you some more stuff.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I’ll get you more stuff,” he insists, the warmth in his eyes transforming to something else entirely. A command, heated enough to make my stomach jump. “The window is one-way in here, as well. In fact, they all are, so you don’t have to worry about people peeking in. Even if it’s dark outside, no one would see you.”
“Could they see my shape?” I look down at the heavy jacket puffing me out to twice my natural size. “Like, would someone outside know a person was passing in front of the window?”
“Yeah.” He wanders back in my direction, through the door, and into the hall. Grabbing my hand without missing a beat, he leads me to the next door. But this time, he hesitates. He slows himself down and contemplates long enough to put a line of sweat on my spine.
Frowning, he opens the door and reveals a room of dark, rich wood. Built-in shelves span one wall, with a flat screen TV mounted in the middle, and books—so,somany books—stacked into every tiny gap available. A king-size bed takes up a massive portion of floor space, with a deep green blanket bundled in the middle, the pillows lying askew.
Nervous, he releases me and hurriedly makes the bed, yanking the covers up and righting the pillows. “I usually do this every morning before work. But you caught me on a lazy day. I was rushing out and forgot.”
“Your room is beautiful.” I shouldn’t follow him in. God knows, intruding on this man’s private bedroom is just another thing on a long list of bad things I’ve done to Ollie since we met—starting with forcing him to become emotionally invested in my medical care—but I can’t help that my feet lead me to the overflowing bookshelves. I can’t stop the way my eyes scour title after title, or how I stroke the spines with the tip of my finger. “You read a lot, huh?”
He scoffs, shaking his head in my peripherals. “I read a normal amount. Less these days than I used to.”
I zero in on a familiar title and narrow my eyes. “Gone with the Wind.” I pull it from the shelf and turn it over in my hands. “But the spine hasn’t even been cracked. It looks brand new.” I peek across at him. “You haven’t read it?”
Guilt flashes in his eyes, but he’s quick to lower his gaze, and thoughhe’s careful, he peels the book from my grasp and puts it back where it began. “I haven’t read a lot of them. Alana bought a struggling bookstore in a small town where most of her clientele came to gossip and swipe the free coffee, not buy books from the woman they didn’t even like.”
“So you… You buy books you won’t even read from her shop? Why?”
“I’ll get to them eventually, and in the meantime, she needs to sell enough to make owning the shop worthwhile. If business slowed down too much, she’d feel like a failure.” He shrugs. “I don’t want her to feel like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because she deserves better. And because I owe her so much more.” He studies the wall of books for a beat, smiling at whatever private thought passes through his mind, then he grabs my sleeve and leads me back into the hall. “Third bedroom is just for storage. Don’t go in there unless you want a nose full of dust.”
