The Man I Could Never Have

Chapter Two: Moving In

Six weeks passed faster than I wanted them to.

Boxes. Goodbyes. A tearful hug from my mother at the airport that lasted a full minute too long.

And then, suddenly, I was standing in front of Marcus Whitfield's front door with my whole life packed into two suitcases.

The house hadn't changed.

Glass and dark wood. Too big for one man. A house that looked like it was waiting for a family that would never come.

Marcus liked it that way.

"Marriage is a trap for people who can't stand their own company," he'd announced once, three drinks into my father's anniversary party, loud enough that half the room laughed and my mother threatened to never invite him to another dinner party again.

He'd turned down two proposals that I knew about.

Thirty-eight years old, and as far as anyone could tell, Marcus Whitfield had no intention of ever settling down. Not with a house, not with a woman, not with anyone.

I used to lie awake wondering if that meant there was room for me somewhere in all that empty space he kept.

I was seventeen when I first let myself wonder that.

I was twenty-three now, standing on his doorstep, still wondering.

The door opened before I could knock.

"Reyes."

He said it the way he always did — my father's last name, but soft, like it belonged only to me. His eyes dropped to my suitcases, then came back up to my face, and for half a second something flickered there that I couldn't name.

Then it was gone, tucked away behind that easy, unbothered smile he wore like armor.

"Look at you," he said. "All grown up and moving in on me."

My heart did the thing it always did around him. The stupid, traitorous thing.

"You offered," I said. "Practically before Dad finished asking. Or so I'm told."

Something shifted in his expression. He hadn't expected me to know that.

"Did I."

It wasn't a question.

He stepped back to let me through, and I caught it then — cedar and something clean, a smell that had lived in the back of my memory for six years, ever since a parking lot and a stick shift and his hand closing over mine for one second too long.

I used to tell myself I imagined that pause.

"Guest wing's ready," he said, leading me down the hall, voice perfectly even, perfectly friendly. "Own entrance. Own space. You'll hardly know I'm here."

That's exactly what I'm afraid of, I thought.

Out loud, I said, "Thanks for letting me stay."

He stopped at the door to my new room and looked at me for a moment too long.

"You're not staying, Reyes." His voice dropped, quieter than before. "You live here now. There's a difference."

I didn't know what to do with that.

I didn't know what to do with the way my name sounded in his mouth, or the careful distance he kept between us in a hallway that was plenty wide enough for two people to stand closer.

So I did what I always did.

I smiled, and I said nothing, and I carried six years of buried feelings through his front door like they weighed nothing at all.

If only he knew how heavy they really were.