We all watch as the car drives off. It’s only then that I inhale and exhale, allowing my body to relax before I turn around.
“Now that the beige brigade is gone,” Nan says, walking to me first. She looks me in the eyes—all the amusement she carries with her all day is gone. Just for a moment. “I’m fucking proud of you, my girl. And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, Millie is too.”
And then she side steps me, getting into the golf cart and driving away.
Tucker stands back, unmoving. As if he can feel me looking at him, he lifts his head, and an unreadable expression crosses his face. Anguish? I can’t tell, but it makes my stomach flip.
I don’t move. I can’t. Fear locks me in place.
Was this—my parents—too much for him?
Tucker takes slow, tentative steps toward me until stopping right in front of me. Heat creeps up my neck, bracing myself for what he’s about to say.
“I—”
He holds up a hand to stop what I was about to say, but still doesn’t say anything. Staring at him, I can see everything he wants to say, but can’t, flashing through his mind.
“A lot of people think a home is composed of walls and a roof where you live. A structure that you fill with belongings and memories,” he says, pausing, his words sounding so familiar. “But it’s more than that.”
“Tucker,” I breathe out.
“It’s who’s inside those walls. It’s a place where you’re seen without needing to explain yourself. A place where you can breathe and your flaws don’t need to be hidden. It’s a place you don’t have to pretend…”
“You can just be,” I finish for him.
His words still land the way they did the first time he said them, back in San Francisco. I remember them vividly because they resonated with me.
“Where you feel whole,” he adds the last part. “And I’ve learned over the last few weeks thatyouare what makes me feel whole.” He reaches up, swiping a thumb across my cheek at thetear I didn’t even feel escape. “I’ve spent years being the comic relief and the guy who filled any gap of silence with laughter just so no one would see the cracks. But not you. You saw everything. Even before I let you in, you saw it all.”
He takes my face in his hands, angling my head up to meet his, and I melt into his touch. My eyes try to close, but the intensity of his stare keeps them open, looking at him and hearing every word he says.
“And now you’ve seen all of me.”
A smile curves on his lips, and a light laugh escapes. “You know, this place…was my dream home.” I tilt my head to the side in confusion. He looks from me to the house and back to me. “I used to come here to this house, and think. It was my escape and place to hide when I didn’t know how to be anything else.”
I don’t say anything, because I can’t.
He releases his hands from my face, turning around to face the house. He takes a few steps to the side yard, and I follow like a magnet pulling me with him. When he stops, I do too, facing the same way he is, and take in the vast mountainscape painted in my own backyard.
“I used to come here and tell myself that one day I’d have this place. And if I didn’t, I’d build something on this street close enough, so I always had this view. Because this house…it was nearly identical to the one I lived in as a child.”
My body tenses, and I feel the pain of his past for him all over again.
“It’s what always drew me here. The memories, even painful, feel different on this property. I like to think it has to do with the wide open view of the stars at night. Like my mom, dad, and brother were looking down on me. But I never fully knew what kept drawing me to this house. Even falling apart, it was waiting for someone to remember it mattered.”
My heart beats so wildly in my chest.
“I spent years imagining what it would look like if someoneloved it enough to bring it back.” He swallows hard, looking at me. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it became a thing for me. A secret goal. Like if I could fixthis, then I could fix myself. But then you showed up.” He smiles, but his voice breaks off. “You walked in with your ridiculous optimism and your blueprints of ideas. And you didn’t just renovate it. You wanted to save it and make it shine again.”
Hearing my words repeated back to me makes my heart skip ten beats.
Tucker reaches for me again, and this time my hands find his hips, gripping the hem of his T-shirt in my hands like I don’t want him to move.
“I didn’t know what to do with that,” he admits. “With you. With the way you looked at me like I wasn’t just hired help.” He huffs out a laugh. “I mean, for a while you looked at me like you wanted to strangle me.”
I feel my cheeks turn pink, and I try to avert my gaze with embarrassment, but he stops me. Holding me steady. Not letting me look anywhere but at him.
“But eventually, through the facade we put on for the camera, you started to look at me like I matter.”
