I felt like I was finallyhome.
Couldthe smell of a house change simply because it became inhabited?
The rooms of the house used to smell of cedar and fire, something raw and sturdy around me, yet tonight, it smelled like linen and the pork we ate for dinner. There were bits and pieces of Frankie and the kids sprinkled around the vast home after wemade a trip to her house to get the necessities they would need to stay the night and go to school in the morning.
And I couldn’t help but finally understand the difference between a house and a home, because of them.
All three of them.
The fireplace threw a low orange glow across the beams I’d set by hand, reflecting off the polished floorboards and the dark windows.
My house. My cabin. My damn sanctuary I’d spent years building plank by plank when I thought I’d be alone forever, leaving it untouched by the warmth of a family that it had deserved.
Yet now—Frankie was curled up on the couch like she’d always belonged there, the kids sat on pillows on the floor around the coffee table playing a board game, and Eli watched on from the chair next to the couch, a soft smile on his face.
I silently crossed the room and lifted Frankie’s shoulders from the cushion, sitting down and pulling her against me as the kids laughed at Eli’s impersonation of some reindeer from a movie they knew.
Frankie smiled up at me, and I kissed her forehead before she settled her cheek on my chest to watch them again.
My knuckles still ached from gripping the steering wheel when the brakes gave out in her car last night. My chest burned from the seatbelt bruise I tried to ignore. And my gut simmered with what should have been fear from the whole ordeal, but the truth was, the only thing that rattled me over the whole thing was the look on Frankie’s face when she ran to me afterward.
Her pure fear.
Not for me—but of losing me.
That shit hit me harder than the tree did.
I hadn’t been able to stop staring at her since. Every laugh she gave the kids. Every cautious glance she threw at me and Elithroughout the day, like she was daring herself not to collapse under the weight of what the hell this was all becoming.
Last night, Eli asked the hard question—if the kids were in danger. Her answer had chilled the blood in my veins, but she pushed it aside like she always did. Like she thought she had to carry it alone.
We just had to keep showing up for her until she realized we weren’t going anywhere. Then she’d finally let us in—all the way.
Into her heart.
The kids were passedout in one of the rooms upstairs on an air mattress, even though my gut screamed at me for not having proper beds for them.
Yet.
They acted like the whole thing was the best adventure of all though, chatting on about how fun it was to sleep over, and how they wished they could do it every night.
Little did they know, that was exactly what was going to happen. I wasn’t spending a night apart from them now that I had them here. It would feel like losing part of myself if I did.
Eli was leaving for his shift at the firehouse, and I was giving him and Frankie some privacy for their goodbye on the porch. If I sat and thought about it long enough, I might start wondering why I didn’t get the least bit jealous when Frankie gave her attention to Eli, or why I wasn’t threatened when he made her the center of his world.
Maybe it was because we’d been best friends for decades, or maybe it was just because for the first time I genuinely cared forsomeone else’s needs and desires, leading me to not care how she fulfilled them, as long as she included me in the mix.
It was wild, but I was loving it.
Plus, I had her alone all night in my bed while he slept at the fire station. Clearly, I was winning.
My phone buzzed in my pocket, Lenny, the mechanic at the garage we had Frankie’s car towed to, was calling me.
“Yeah?” I muttered low, ducking into the privacy of what would one day be my office in case Frankie came back in.
“I got your girl’s SUV up on the lift,” Lenny said, voice clipped. “This wasn’t an accident, Travis. Her brake line was cut clean. It wasn’t frayed. It wasn’t rusted. It was cut with a blade or pliers. Whoever did it knew what they were doing.”
The blood roared in my ears as I forced words out, “You’re sure?”
