Page 38 of The Goat Next Door

An hour later, the kitchen has grown cold, the orange afternoon light fading into a dull, bruised gray as the sun starts to dip behind the ridge.

A heavy knock rattles the front door.

I flinch, my heart doing a sudden, uncalled-for leap against my ribs.

“Emmy?” Brooks’s voice calls out, echoing through the empty corridor. “You in here?”

“Emmy, are you okay?” Sophie’s high-pitched voice pipes up right behind him. “It smells like old matches out here!”

I squeeze my eyes shut, letting my head drop back against the cabinet with a low groan.

“In the kitchen,” I call out. “Please don’t look at me. I am depressed.”

Brooks steps through the doorway first.

He’s wearing a dark navy flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, revealing the heavy corded muscle and the dark grease stains still faint under his skin.

His eyes scan the room, tracking from the soot-stained tomatoes to the broken green knob on the counter, and finally down to where I’m slumped on the floor like a discarded rag doll.

Sophie is right behind him, her purple glittery boots clicking against the wood, her green dinosaur sweater fully charged for the evening.

She stops, her mouth dropping open as she looks at my face. “Why are you on the floor, donut lady? Are we playing a game?”

“It’s a game called total defeat, Sophie,” I mutter, rubbing my temples. “The rules are very simple: you buy forty dollars worth of premium pasta and then the universe laughs at you.”

Brooks doesn’t laugh. He walks straight past the counter, his massive frame making the small kitchen feel even smaller, and stops right in front of the green stove.

He bends down, his knees popping softly, and examines the rusted metal post where the dial used to live. He reaches out, his thumb testing the resistance of the valve, and lets out a long, slow whistle.

“The thermocouple is completely shot,” he says, turning his head to look down at me over his shoulder. “If you had managed to spark a match in here after turning this post, you wouldn’t have just canceled dinner—you would have blown the back wall of the house straight into my pasture.”

“Great,” I say, letting out a weak, hollow laugh as I lean my head against the cabinet. “Fantastic. So my design instincts are flawless, but my mechanical intuition is a literal public safety hazard. Good to know.”

“You know,” I sigh, staring at the ceiling, “that phrase keeps coming up around me lately and honestly I’m starting to take it personally.”

Brooks straightens up, stepping away from the stove.

He looks down at me for a long moment, his eyes tracking the dark circles under my eyes, the faint redness from my frustration, and the smudge of soot on my white shirt.

He reaches down, offering me his hand. The palm is calloused, the skin warm as his fingers close securely around mine. He doesn’t pull me up hard; he just holds his hand steady, letting me use his weight to lift myself off the floorboards.

“Come on,” he says quietly. “Grab the tomatoes and the pasta. We’re going to my house.”

I blink, my hand still lingering in his for a half-second too long before I pull it back to adjust my overalls. “Your house? Brooks, I can’t just invade your domestic sanctuary. I look like I survived an industrial boiler explosion. My hair is a disaster and I have soot on my collar.”

“You look fine,” he grunts, though his eyes linger on my red lips for a fraction of a second before he reaches down and grabs the grocery bags from the counter. “Soph, go run across the lawn to the house. Get your dinosaur book ready. We’re cooking over there.”

“Yay!” Sophie shouts, already sprinting out the front door toward the house.

Brooks watches her tear across the stretch of grass between our properties with the exhausted resignation of a man who has accepted that speed limits are merely theoretical to five-year-olds.

“You know,” I say, stepping off my porch beside him, “most people would probably hesitate before inviting the woman who nearly detonated her own kitchen into another enclosed cooking environment.”

“You already blew up your stove,” Brooks says dryly, carrying the grocery bags down the porch steps. “The odds of you causing a second explosion this week are lower.”

“That feels deeply unsupported by science.”

He grunts, which I’m beginning to understand is basically his version of flirting.