Page 40 of Made for Mayhem

Ty paused a step below me, sunlight slanting across his face. Something about the way he looked at me made my chest tighten. It wasn’t pity or smugness. Just that quiet steadiness and concern that both grounded me and made me want to throw something at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I laughed, sharp and too loud. “Oh, sure. Everything’s great. I have no house, no job, a sister that”—I swallowed down the word I couldn’t say—“and I just found out I’m co-parenting with you.”

His mouth twitched as if he was trying not to smile. “So I’m number four then? Lucky number?”

I rolled my eyes and took a breath that didn’t do a damn thing to calm me down. “Did you know my sister’s house was uninhabitable?”

“I’ve been inside your sister’s house less than a handful of times.”

I frowned, even more confused why my sister had named him in her Will. “So how does this even work? I live next door in the construction zone? See Junie every other weekend? On the third Thursday of the month?”

Ty sighed, then brushed a hand across his mustache. “You live with me.”

My head jerked back. “What?”

His gaze stayed fixed on the mountains, like it was easier to look at the horizon than at me. “You stay in the guest room, and we just… figure it out. That’s what Junie will want.”

“I’m not living with you,” I argued, because my brain was already flashing red warning lights. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” he asked, finally looking at me.

I made a helpless noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Because it’s—you’re”—I gestured at him—“you.”

He raised a brow. “Me.”

“Yes, you. The guy with the house and the savings account and the whole good-citizen thing. You look like you’re an advertisement for responsible adults, while I look like I crawled out of a Goodwill bin.”

Ty said nothing. He just stood there, steady as ever. Which, frankly, annoyed me.

I threw up my hands. “What happened to doing things for yourself, Huddy? That was the plan, right? But now you have a savior complex, rescuing injured puppies, one-eyed llamas, and jobless, homeless, pathetic aunts.”

He came up one step, then another, closing the distance until my breath caught in my throat. I had to tip my chin up to meet his eyes, the world shrinking around us.

The sun was at his back, warm light catching in his hair, framing him like some kind of maddening, golden-hour cowboy fantasy. He was close enough that I could smell the faint trace of soap on his skin, the clean heat of him curling around the edges of my nerves.

“You’re not pathetic, Daisy.” His voice dropped low, quiet enough that the words landed like a hand against my sternum. “I just spent an hour in a courthouse discovering how resilient you are with every piece of your story that unfolded. And yet, you haven’t let even one aspect of your struggles dim your light. Who better to teach Junie how to dance in the rain?”

My breath hitched.

Everything around me faded in the distance until all I could feel was him. His height, his warmth, his stupid, quiet steadiness pressing in on me.

Too close. Too much. And yet I didn’t step back.

This was the problem. Three years ago, our connection was instant. Undeniable chemistry that went beyond physical attraction. Every time I remembered him, it wasn’t how hot he was, although that didn’t hurt either. But it was everything else I couldn’t forget.

Maybe it was because that silly game of Truth or Dare had us laying our insecurities out to dry, baring the parts we’d shown no one else. Or maybe it was something else entirely.

No matter what it was, time hadn’t done a damn thing to lessen it.

I was too drawn to him, and this living arrangement would be six weeks of complicated I wasn’t prepared for.

“You’re awfully poetic for a guy who wears cowboy boots to court.”

He smirked, slow and infuriating, then leaned forward to whisper in my ear, “Don’t tell anyone.”

I let out a snort I didn’t mean to. And just like that, the weight pressing down on my chest lightened.