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“And we’re starting with this place.” He lifted his arms, motioning around my kitchen.
“Explain,” I finally just demanded.
“You grew up here, didn’t you?” he guessed. “Between these very walls?”
The seemingly innocuous question felt eerily like a trap, so I was slow to answer, “Yeah. Why?”
“There’s still a plaque over there about raising and feeding two boys. And the enormous ceramic fork and spoon hanging over here…” He sent me a dry glance. “No self-respecting bachelor would decorate with that. You didn’t do jack shit to remodel after your parents died, did you?”
The question made me distinctly uncomfortable. “Only because…” I was going to argue that I’d done it for Duke. I hadn’t wanted to change up the life he’d always known too much when it suddenly became just the two of us. But even I realized Beau would somehow crush that excuse to pieces.
“This place still feels like theirs,” he answered softly. Then he blew out a long breath and nodded. “I get it. I doubt I’d be able to change a thing if I were in your shoes. But damn, man, I bet your living room’s still littered with family pictures your mom put up, isn’t it? Portraits of you and your brother from kindergarten to senior year.”
I scowled. “So what?”
“So…” Beau shot back. “You’re not living in a home here anymore. This place has become a freaking mausoleum, a shrine to everyone you lost. I got that reverent, funeral-home feeling pebbling my skin the moment I stepped inside.”
I choked out a sound of appalled shock at his bold statement, and he winced and lifted both hands, pulling back slightly. “Man, I’m sorry. I know I’m being blunter than I should be, but I gotta work fast here, and I need your help. I think this idea I have brewing will benefit both you and Lucy?”
“Lucy?” I echoed, frowning at him. “What about her?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “She’s having money issues, so she came up with this idiotic plan to rent out her detached garage to earn some extra cash. She’s already got the place set up and ready to go, and she’s going to start putting out ads on Monday.”
I immediately backed away. “Hey, I already offered her money. She refused it. Maybe she didn’t tell you, but that is the very thing that started the problems we’re having now.”
“But this wouldn’t be a handout,” Beau argued.
“Neither was the money I wanted to give her. It was supposed to be an inheritance from Duke for Ava.”
“But this renter,” Beau stressed, gritting his teeth in frustration and leaning forward. “Whoever it might be, will be without a bathroom and kitchen, so they’ll have to have access to the main house in order to take over her back bath and share her kitchen.”
I immediately frowned. “That sounds…” Unsafe was the first word to come to mind, quickly followed by risky.
But, “Insane!” is what Beau cried. “It’s fucking insane. Everyone is warning her against this, and she’s just being stupidly stubborn and independent about it.”
Wincing because I’d gotten a taste of that stubborn, independent side of Lucy myself, I tried to think of someone trustworthy and safe that I knew who could rent from her.
“No one in the family is currently looking for housing either,” Beau was ranting on. “Otherwise, they’d snag up the place in a heartbeat. I just really, really don’t want some unknown, single pervert having a key to my sister’s place. To our niece’s place,” he stressed, looking at me as if he expected me to do something about it.
My stomach knotted because I didn’t particularly want just anyone to come and go as they pleased from her home, either, someone who could just walk down her hall from the kitchen in the middle of the night and enter the room where she slept. Who could—
Jesus. We absolutely could not let her do this.
“I mean, I’d feel a hell of a lot better
if she was renting to someone I knew,” Beau said, watching me intently. “You know?”
I squinted, not catching on to the nonverbal cues I sensed he was lobbing my way. So I just came right out and asked, “What do you need me to do here?”
“I need you to get the fuck out of this place because it’s suffocating you from the inside out, make a decent profit from it, and then start over fresh, renting from my sister, so you can finally focus on you and what you need out of your life. That’s what I need you to do.”
When he lifted his eyebrows meaningfully, awaiting my answer, I blinked. “Let me get this straight. You think I should sell the only home I’ve ever known, with four bedrooms, two baths, and its own attached garage—all of which is fully paid for, by the way—so I can move into a small garage apartment with no kitchen or bathroom and pay rent?”
Beau paused for a moment to consider what I’d just said. Then he nodded. “Yeah… That pretty much sums it up, yep.” Then he looked me in the eye and said, “I think it’d help Lucy a lot.”
I stared back, knowing I was already in. Even though this meant I’d have to face her again with that awkward kiss still between us, and I’d probably be seeing her a lot. But anything to help her out was a yes from me.
Besides, Beau was right. This place was beginning to suffocate me. I’d always revere these hallowed walls and remember them fondly as the home where I’d been raised and loved. But I did need to start a new chapter in my life, and an interim apartment like Lucy’s garage might actually be the best fresh start I could get.
