“Then,” he kisses my temple, “we will go to my place, and I will make you coffee.”
“Okay, then let me get ready.”
Grabbing a towel from the hook, I leave him in the bed. Even though it no longer feels like just a bed, it now feels like mine. Just like this apartment, and Tanner, and this town are all starting to feel like mine. Like home.
“Stop.” I laugh as he tries to step into the shower with me. “I need an actual shower.”
“Why?” he groans into my neck, and I think the feel of his mustache brushing my skin might do me in.
“Because of you. I’m sweaty and you made a mess.”
He pulls back to meet my eyes. “That is one of the hottest things you have ever said.”
“Go.” I push him and he obeys, searching through the pile of clothes on the floor for his own.
Once we’re dressed and the fish is fed, we are heading to his house.
“Shouldn’t we stop by and get your truck from Rhett and Lauren’s?” I ask and he shakes his head, looking unbelievably hot driving my minivan. One hand tapping the steering wheel, the other squeezing my upper thigh.
“Nah, I’ll just tell him you drove me home after Winnie left.”
As we drive by Dollie’s house, we see her outside watering her flowers. She waves when she realizes it’s Tanner driving the minivan and her cheeks round even more with a smile when she sees me in the passenger seat.
“She and her husband owned this entire hill at one point,” he tells me and gives her a wave out the window.
“And she’s been selling it off?”
“Yes and no. She said her son isn’t involved anymore to take care of it. I’m the only one she has sold anything to so far.”
“Does she have any other family?”
“Her husband died a while ago, and she’s only ever mentionedher son a couple of times. I know she has a sister out in Milwaukee.”
We pull up in front of his house, and it feels as much like home as it did the first time.
“I’ll start the coffee if you want to go shower,” I tell him with a squeeze of a hand.
He smiles and kisses my forehead before skipping up the steps.
In the kitchen I shuffle around and set the pot to start, crack the window over the sink, then place a few pieces into the almost finished puzzle. Once the coffee is finally done, I pour us both a cup and look through the drawers for a spoon to stir in a little sugar when I find the stack of photos I saw the other day.
Most of them are like the ones on the mantel, but one of the photos has a young boy who must be Tanner, sitting on a man’s lap. The man is frail and thin with a few freckles and a dimple in his cheek. He looks like Tanner, in fact, a lot like Tanner. Before I can slip the photo back in the drawer, the floor creaks behind me.
“Sorry.” I look up at Tanner watching me from the doorway. “I didn’t mean to snoop.”
“No apologizing,” he says.
I show him the picture in my hand. “You look just like this man. But this isn’t Dan.”
Tanner lets out a sigh. One that feels like it has been sitting in his lungs for a while.
“It’s not Dan,” he says. “But it is my dad.”
I blink at the picture then up at him. “What?”
“Daniel Auclair isn’t my biological father.” He chews on the inside of his cheek, his eyes almost glazed over as he stares down at the photo in my hands.
“When you said it was just your mom and you?—”
