Amelia nods.
Then she looks at me.
I don’t know why that look hits harder than it should. Maybe because she is asking without asking. Maybe because the house is mine, and she has spent too long learning men make rules about rooms and doors and air.
I step away from the porch, leaving the path open. “Door ain’t going to bite.”
Her mouth curves faintly. “That your version of welcome?”
“Best I got.”
She walks past me.
I smell lavender from Sophie’s borrowed soap, road dust, coffee, and something that is just her. Warm skin. Worry. Woman.
My body notices.
I tell it to shut the hell up. It doesn’t. Amelia is far too beautiful for me not to think of her that way.
Inside, my house looks worse than I remember.
It always does when another person sees it.
The living room has a brown leather couch with a rip along one cushion I fixed with black tape, a recliner that has seen better decades, a scarred coffee table, and a television mounted slightly crooked on the wall because I hung it after three beers and refused to redo it on principle. There are boots by the door, motorcycle magazines on the table, a stack of mail I have been ignoring, and one framed picture of the club from years back shoved on a side shelf.
The kitchen opens off the living room. Dishes in the sink. Coffee pot stained. One pan on the stove. Fridge mostly empty except for condiments, beer, bacon, and questionable cheese.
I see it through Amelia’s eyes and suddenly hate every inch.
Not because I care what women think of my house.
I don’t.
I care because August walks in and immediately says, “It smells like garbage.”
Wildcat’s voice carries from outside. “Told you.”
I shout, “Fix the truck.”
Amelia’s eyes are moving over everything. Not judging. That might be worse. She takes in the taped couch, the crooked TV, the lack of curtains on one window, the boots, the empty spaces where a normal person might have pictures, plants, soft things.
“It’s nice,” she says.
I stare at her.
She winces. “That sounded fake.”
“It was so fake it insulted the walls.”
A laugh slips out of her.
There.
That laugh again.
Small and tired and dangerous as hell.
“It’s not bad,” she corrects.