Page 208 of Wild Card 13

Lucy froze.

Dottie turned in a circle twice, scratched one paw against the throw pillow, and collapsed with a satisfied grunt.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Honestly, I respect a woman who knows what she wants.”

“She is not usually that rude.” Lucy laughed. Not the kind of laugh I wanted to earn and keep in a jar like a lunatic. But real enough that it moved through the room and changed the temperature of the place.

I had owned this house for years. Had brought in furniture, changed light fixtures, argued with contractors, bought a grill too large for any reasonable household of one, installed shelves I had not filled, and paid a guy an obscene amount of money to make sure the fireplace could turn on with one button because apparently money made laziness elegant.

None of it had ever made the house feel as alive as Lucy laughing at her dog on my couch.

I crossed to the fireplace control before I could stand there staring at her like an idiot. The gas caught with a soft click and a low rush, flames climbing behind the glass. Warm orange light spread across the stone and flickered over Lucy’s face.

She looked back toward the lake. “It’s beautiful,” she said quietly.

My hand stilled on the switch. I had heard people say that before. Teammates. My mom. Real estate agents. Some guy from the team’s finance office who came by once to drop something off and spent ten minutes talking about property value until I nearly walked into the lake on purpose.

From Lucy, the words landed differently.

“Yeah,” I said, because anything else would have given too much away.

She stepped closer to the windows, leaving space between herself and the glass. No fingerprints. No touch. Just looking.

I watched her reflection instead of her back. It felt less obvious and somehow worse. In the glass, her face softened around the edges, curiosity slipping through the cracks exhaustion had made in her armor. She was still in office clothes, but the night had undone her a little. Sweater sleeves pushed to her forearms. Trousers creased from too many hours sitting at a desk. One earring missing. Glasses catching firelight.

She looked like she had been fighting all day and had set down the sword only because her hand hurt.

“The lake freezes dark out here,” she said.

“Yeah. Wind hits this side pretty hard, so the snow doesn’t sit clean for long.”

“You can see the whole bend.”

“In summer, it’s better.” I shoved my hands into my pockets because they had started wanting things they had no business wanting. “Dock goes out from the left side. There’s a firepit closer to the water. Chairs. Grill.”

“Of course there’s a grill.”

“I’m from Minnesota. It came with my birth certificate.”

She glanced back at me, and that little almost-smile appeared again. “You grill in January, don’t you?”

“That feels like an accusation.”

“It is.”

“I grill responsibly in January.”

“There is no responsible way to grill in January.”

“That’s what people without vision say.”

Her smile held for one second too long, then slipped into something quieter as she looked around the living room again.

I felt it when she noticed the mantel.

Not because she said anything. Lucy was too careful for that. But her gaze paused, caught on the only framed picture in the room that was not some generic lake photograph a designer had convinced me to buy because apparently walls needed “texture.”

Northbend High. Section championship. A pile of teenage boys in navy and white, grinning like we had invented joy. The plaque front and center. Coach Whittaker standing behind us with a look on his face that suggested he had aged ten years in one season. Mase making some stupid hand sign. Simon crying and pretending he wasn’t.