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The house sat silent for eight months though, and he was about ready to pay up on the bet he clearly lost.
Then, two weeks after Camilla left for her vacation, a company had shown up with massive dumpsters and gutted the place. Renzo had watched from the porch, and for eight straight days, they hauled out trash, bathroom fixtures, toilets, three fridges, two stoves, and a fucking partridge in a pear tree.
Now, there was a car parked out front. A very expensive car. A fucking Bugatti, if his eyes weren’t deceiving him. The only other person he knew who was rich enough to breathe near a car like that was Oliver’s boyfriend, Victor, but he had chosen a sensible Range Rover for him and Oliver to drive around in.
He definitely wanted to know how Bugatti Man had gotten involved with the piece-of-shit house and the worthless land it was built on, but he most definitely wasn’t going to walk over there and ask.
Rolling his shoulders several times, Renzo curled his gloved fingers around the ax and felt an immediate tug in his tendons when he hoisted it up onto his shoulder. The air was frigid but felt oddly nice now that he was building up a nice sweat. He was going to pay for it later, of course. It was probably his sign he should spend more time on his upper body in the gym, but when he did sneak in sessions at the one on campus, he couldn’t bring himself to do more than plop his ass on the stationary bike and ride to the sound of an audiobook.
Which reminded him…
He dug into his pocket and pulled out his earbuds, slipping one into his right ear before hitting Play. The dulcet sounds of the narrator hit his brain in all the right ways, and he found it was a lot easier to ignore the impending need for an Epsom salt bath as he got lost in romance.
Everyone always assumed he spent his free time in his labs or concocting experiments in his kitchen—which he had done once upon a time when he was younger and fancied himself some sort of alchemist. But while Renzo was passionate about his job—and about teaching students that chemistry was more than just dry old nerds with nothing better to do than toy around with explosive liquids—he was more complicated than that.
Or, at least, he wanted to be.
He kept to himself a little more often now—after his ex. After John had used all his pop psychology and therapy speak to strip Renzo down until he was a mess of raw, exposed nerves. It might have been easier to deal with the fallout of his split if his ex had been bad at his job, but he wasn’t.
John had a way of being able to cut to the quick after a ten-minute conversation. Renzo used to admire that about him. There was something dangerous about a man who could read someone like a driver’s manual with just a few sentences and subconscious twitches, and that had been hot.
Until it wasn’t.
Until Renzo was on the receiving end, and the one thing John hadn’t taught him to do was how to fix himself once he’d been broken into a thousand tiny pieces.
There had been a long while Renzo wasn’t sure he’d ever recover from the marriage. In fact, it wasn’t until Matty and Camilla showed up at his place and forced him to shower and eat something other than takeout that he realized John wasn’t worth losing himself over.
So he read romances now, knowing full well he probably wouldn’t ever be able to trust anyone the way he once had—and knowing full well he’d be damn lucky if he found a man willing to put up with the fact that he was now weird and neurotic and afraid of intimacy and vulnerability of any kind.
But he would rather die alone than give someone the ability to ruin him like John had, ever again.
Renzo’s gaze cut to the small pile of split wood, and he counted pieces. Just a few more would get Matty through the week, and he could give his shoulders a rest before he had to start all over again. Swiping the back of his glove over his forehead, he contemplated giving up and starting again later when his gaze cut across the field. He did a quick double take when he realized someone was standing on the porch watching him, and he didn’t know how to feel.
From that far off, and without his decent glasses on, all Renzo could make out was a tall man with dark hair wearing a light suit jacket that was in no way suitable for their winter. The man’s posture gave the impression of someone totally unbothered, and he must have seen Renzo watching, but he didn’t look away.
Not that Renzo could bring himself to give a shit. Let the man stare. He was probably going through something, considering the tragedy that had happened inside that house. Maybe she was a family member. He doubted she had kids, considering no one had ever come to visit her, but maybe she was a quirky aunt or much, much older sister?
Either way, grief was grief, and Renzo wasn’t going to impose himself upon a man dealing with that mess.
He felt a bead of sweat drip down his temple, and suddenly, the sun was too hot, and the heat from his coat was unbearable. Renzo set his ax down and unzipped it, and the cool air immediately felt good against his overworked upper half. He took a breath, then pulled his sweater off his head too. There was a stain on his white T-shirt, but he couldn’t really bring himself to care. Not when his pits were all dark with sweat. He lifted the hem of his shirt and swiped it over his face.
Across the distance, he heard a dull thud and looked up to see the man fumbling with a coffee cup Renzo hadn’t noticed before. It was at his feet now, and the light wood showed off a dark stain.
Renzo smirked.
He sure as shit wasn’t going to walk over and say hi now, but he preened a little that someone was appreciating the abs he’d carefully built on those stationary bikes. Biting his lip, he turned back to the wood, and by the time he finished what was left of his small pile, the strange Bugatti driver had gone back into the creepy, condemned house.
* * *
“Wakey wakey,” Renzo called as he plated Matty’s breakfast—french toast, two sausage links, one slice of bacon, and half a banana.
One of the things he appreciated about his brother was that he was a creature of habit. His routine was simple and didn’t test Renzo’s limited cooking skills.
Baking was one thing. Baking was chemistry, and he could create a cake with the perfect acidity and moisture while still feeling as light as a cloud. But put a steak in front of him, and there was at least a seventy-percent chance it would turn into a hockey puck by the time he was done with it.
His french toast looked edible though, and his sister always had microwaved meats readily available. Renzo could at least follow timing directions on a package, even if he had once burned a pot of water.
He set everything up on the breakfast bar, then snagged one of the jars of peaches his sister had preserved and cracked the top.
