“That makes no sense.”
“Our friendship has transcended sense.”
They laughed, then cried harder, and Cupcake—Lily’s feral little queen of judgment—sat on an open suitcase and glared at all of us like the move was a personal offense against feline stability.
When I carried boxes down to the truck, Cupcake hissed at me from Lily’s arms.
Lily watched me like a tiny Idaho parole officer with glasses and said, “If you hurt her, I know where hospitals store scalpels.”
I told her I believed her.
I did.
I moved out of the place I had shared with Georgia before Destiny came.
Not because Destiny asked.
She didn’t.
That was why I did it.
The apartment still had too much of the life I had almost built with another woman. Clean white plates Georgia had picked. A blue throw blanket her mother had sent. A dent in the wall from a shelf I had hung crooked while Georgia laughed at me from the couch. It wasn’t haunted exactly, but it belonged to a version of me who had tried to make a promise out of cowardice, and I would not ask Destiny to step into that. Georgia had already taken what was hers. The rest went into boxes, donations, storage, or trash. I rented a smaller place closer to job sites and slept on a mattress on the floor for two weeks because Nate said furniture was “emotionally advanced” and I was “still remedial.”
Destiny and I dated like people trying to learn a language we should have known years ago.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Dinner after her shifts when she smelled like antiseptic and coffee. Morning walks on the beach when I had been up since dawn checking crews and she had not slept at all. Tacos eaten on the hood of my truck. Her laughing when I bought Lily a cat tree for Cupcake’s visits and Cupcake chose the cardboard box instead, then acted like the box had always been the intended gift. Me learning not to reach for Destiny every time I wanted to. Her learning that wanting me did not mean she had to surrender anything. We kissed. A lot. Sometimes until my hands shook. Sometimes until she had to press her forehead to my chest and whisper, “Not yet,” like she was reminding both of us.
So I waited.
Not nobly.
Not easily.
I waited like a starving man in front of a locked bakery with the key burning a hole in his pocket.
But I waited.
Because this time, when Destiny let me in, I wanted every part of her to know she had opened the door herself.
The house started as a job.
That was the lie I told myself for about nine minutes.
Small coastal bungalow in a neighborhood where old stucco houses sat between new money renovations and stubborn retirees who refused to sell. It had bad plumbing, cracked tile, a sagging porch, and a view of the ocean only if you stood on the upstairs landing, leaned left, and believed in miracles. The previous owner had let the yard go wild. The kitchen was a crime scene from 1987. The bathroom tile looked like a seasick flamingo had designed it.
I loved it immediately.
Callum walked through it with me the first time, boots crunching over broken grout, expression unreadable.
“You buying it for the company?” he asked.
“Investment property.”
“Bullshit.”
