Page 51 of Housesitter

“62 yards,” Kel said.

Harry snapped his fingers. “That was it,” he said. “Damn. That was the best game of the season.”

Kel nodded and rubbed his knee. He could feel the scars through the rough cotton, the way the cartilage couldn’t pull off holding everything in the right place.

“My last game,” he said.

The warm sentiment on Harry’s face curdled into discomfort as his memory caught up with his mouth. He coughed and rubbed his hand over his buzz-cut head.

“...well, um, at least nobody can say you didn’t go out on a high,” Harry said with an awkwardly knowing chuckle.

“I was drunk,” Kel corrected him. “Not high.”

He should have just laughed along, but he guessed he was a bit off his game.

Harry looked mortified, a mottled red spreading up from under the collar of his shirt. He cleared his throat and grabbed for the file on the desk, visibly glad for the excuse to change the subject. He flipped the file open and tapped it with the pen.

“The Milligan Farm,” he said. “I’m not sure exactly why you have first refusal on the property, but I’m not sure you have the capital to—”

Kel leaned forward and caught Harry’s gaze. “But I will once I inherit the Madden estate,” he pointed out. The taste in his mouth was cigars and burned wood, rich and clotted as the smoke rolled over his tongue. He could feel the rough warmth of it in his voice as he spoke. “And you’d know that better than anyone.”

Even he can’t think anyone believes that? The smoke slipped the words into Kel’s mind. It was cloying with pity. The actual words that Harry spoke were barely audible, a noncommittal mutter of ‘unable to talk about that until the estate is settled.’ He should have stuck to conning drunks out of their beer money. That’s more his level.

Look at that. There was an asshole under all that good humor and boy-next-door gloss after all.

“Come on, Harry,” Kel said easily. The smoke wriggled into Harry’s ears and caught like cobwebs in his eyelashes. “We both know that just because you’re all up in everyone’s finances in this town, you probably knew they were going to foreclose on the Mitchell house before the bailiffs did. It’s a good thing you’re above reproach, or people might have asked questions about your wife’s business partner getting in under that wire.”

The red on Harry’s throat darkened and crawled up into his cheeks. His mouth twitched as he looked down at the file.

“Actually, they did,” he said. “Ask questions. I answered them. That’s how banking works, Kel. You can’t fast-talk your way into…whatever this is.”

He waved his hand at the file.

At the same time the smoke tightened to his face, tendrils hooked around the corners of his mouth and hooked over his ears. The mask of his mouth twisted around something bitter as the smoke nudged the gossip over to Kel.

He’s just trying to get my goat. She told me she didn’t do it. She told me it was coincidence, and I told me that I believed her. I do. I will. I have to. The old man wasn’t right about her. About me. About us. She does love/want/love/stay me.

The sad thing was, she did.

Jodie might not—as witnessed by a dozen eavesdropped Zoom calls—be happy, but she did love Harry. It was a shame that the fear she didn’t was more useful than reassurance.

“That,” Kel said as he gestured to the file. “Is an opportunity with a guaranteed safety net. The sort of thing that impresses spouses, fills bank accounts, and reassures dads they don’t need to change the will.”

Amusement at the gambit crinkled Harry’s eyes. He snorted as he leaned forward over the desk and…

Tell me more, the smoke mouthed.

“Tell me more,” Harry said.

Kel hesitated as he watched the smoke thicken and curdle. He curled his fingers into his knees, remembering the there-not-there texture of the leathery black cords he’d tried to pull off Ruby’s face.

“Kel?” Harry prompted. “Tell me more.”

The smile hitched up on Kel’s face on autopilot. He shoved the doubt down—qualms were all well and good, but Ruby’s health insurance couldn’t afford them—and reached out to rest his hand on top of the proposal.

“Let me tell you how I see this working…” he said.

The smoke licked Harry’s lips, ready for the cue to say ‘yes.’