Chapter 5

Dean’s POV

Dad's had three different playlists going since eight a.m., and every single one of them is somehow worse than the last.

"You're going to wear out the speaker," I tell him, hauling another box marked DIANE — BOOKS up the stairs.

"I'm celebrating." He's got a hammer in one hand and a level in the other. "My future wife is moving into my house today, Dean. Let a man celebrate."

I don't have an argument for that.

Marie's in the hallway when I come back down, taping the last flap shut on a box that says KITCHEN — FRAGILE in handwriting I'd know in the dark. Dark hair pulled up messy, a few pieces stuck to her neck. Brown eyes, the kind that go almost black when she's annoyed, which is most of the time she's around me. An old t-shirt with paint on the hem, no makeup, nothing done up for anyone. She looks tired and a little sunburnt across the nose and better than anyone has a right to look hauling boxes on a Saturday.

For a second I just stand there on the stairs watching her work — the particular way she braces a box against her knee, the little furrow between her eyebrows when the tape won't tear right.

Some things don't change. That's the problem with all of this. I keep waiting for her to be a stranger and she keeps being exactly, maddeningly herself.

"You're staring," she says, without looking up.

"I'm helping."

"You're staring while I do all the work."

"I did four boxes before you got here."

"Bragging now?" She finally looks up, and there's something almost easy in it, something that wasn't there at dinner three nights ago, and I feel my whole chest do something stupid and hopeful that I immediately try to shut down.

"Dad wants the bed frame in the room next to mine put together," I say instead, safer ground. "You want to help, or you want to keep supervising?"

"I invented supervising."

"Get up, Cruz."

She rolls her eyes, but she gets up.

***

The bed frame is missing a bolt, obviously, because nothing in this house is simple today, and we end up on our knees on opposite sides of it, hunting through a bag of hardware that all looks identical.

"This one?" She holds up a bolt.

"Too short."

"You didn't even look at it."

"I looked at it."

"You looked at me."

I had, actually, and I hate that she caught it, and I busy myself with the frame instead of answering, and for a minute there's just the sound of metal on metal and Dad's terrible music drifting up through the floor.

"Remember when we built that fort in your backyard," she says, out of nowhere, "and you used, like, forty screws for something that fell over the second Luke leaned on it?"

"I remember you laughing so hard you couldn't stand up."

"You cried."

"I did not cry."

"Dean. You cried. You said, and I quote, 'I worked so hard on this.'" She's grinning now, wide and real, the kind of grin I haven't gotten pointed at me in a very long time.

"I was nine."

"You were emotionally very fragile."

"I was passionate about architecture."

She laughs, and for one unguarded second it's just us, on the floor of a room, laughing about a fort that fell down fifteen years ago, and none of the rest of it exists. Not the funeral. Not the ten seconds on her back steps. Not the wedding that's coming whether either of us is ready for it or not.

Just this. Just her laugh and a missing bolt and a version of both of us that got to be easy with each other once.

I want it so badly it scares me.

"Found it," she says, holding up the right one, and our hands brush when I take it from her — nothing, barely anything, a half-second of skin — and I watch her go very still.

I go still too.

Neither of us says anything about it. We just go back to the bed frame, careful now, not looking at each other.

***

Her phone buzzes on the floor between us. I don't mean to look, but her screen lights up right in my line of sight.

Tristan: still on for tomorrow? found a place, think you'll like it

I watch his name sit there on her screen a second too long before she notices me looking and flips the phone face-down on the carpet.

"That's rude," I say, mostly to have something to say.

"You were staring at my texts."

"You were the one who dropped your phone in my lap."

"It's not in your lap, it's on the floor. Also, semantics." But she doesn't meet my eyes when she says it, and I don't push, because pushing means talking about Tristan, and talking about Tristan means admitting I have feelings about Tristan that I have absolutely no right to have.

I tighten the last bolt harder than necessary.

"You don't have to go," I say.

"Go where?"

"Tomorrow."

She goes still again, different this time, sharper. "Why wouldn't I go?"

"I didn't say you shouldn't." I hear how it sounds the second it's out — controlling, jealous, exactly the kind of thing I have zero standing to say to her — and I backtrack fast. "Forget it. Not my business."

"No, say it." Her voice has an edge now, the good kind of edge, the kind that used to mean she actually wanted to hear the rest of a sentence. "What were you going to say, Harrison?"

I look at her. She's got sawdust on her cheek and her hair coming loose from wherever she'd pinned it up and she's looking at me like she used to look at me before everything, like whatever I say next actually matters to her, and every single word I know leaves my head at once.

"Nothing," I say. "I don't have a right to say anything."

"That's not an answer."

"I know."

She sits back on her heels, quiet for a second, looking at the half-built bed frame like it's suddenly very interesting. "Can I say something weird?"

"When has that ever stopped you?"

"Our parents are getting married." She says it flatly, like she's testing how it sounds out loud. "Which means you're going to be my stepbrother."

"I'm aware."

"Are you? Because I keep waiting for it to feel real and it just feels like a joke someone's going to explain to me eventually." She looks up at me. "Doesn't it feel insane to you? We used to build blanket forts in my room. Now we're going to have a family Thanksgiving."

"It's not that simple. Family isn't just paperwork."

"Isn't it, though? That's literally all it is." Her voice has dropped, quieter now, none of the earlier edge left in it. "One piece of paper and you're my brother. That's it. That's all it takes."

"I'm not your brother."

I watch it land on her, watch something shift behind her eyes.

"No," she says slowly. "You're not."

The house has gone quiet somewhere below us — Dad's music finally off, boxes finally still. Just us, kneeling on the floor, close enough that I can see her pulse jumping in her throat. I don't remember deciding to lean in and I'm not entirely sure she decided to either.

"Marie—"

"Don't," she says, but she doesn't move away. Her eyes drop to my mouth for half a second, involuntary, and come back up fast like she's furious with herself for it.

I don't move away either.

We're close enough now that I can feel her breath, and mine's not steady, and neither is hers, and every rational reason this is a terrible idea is somewhere very far away and getting further—

The front door slams downstairs.

"Marie? You up there? Frank's got dinner going!"

Luke's voice, cheerful and completely oblivious, cracks the moment clean in half.

Marie is on her feet before I finish processing what almost just happened, putting three full steps of distance between us, her face flushed and unreadable and refusing to look anywhere near me.

"Coming!" she calls back in her performance voice, the one I hate.

She stops in the doorway. Doesn't turn around.

"That can't happen again," she says.

Then she's gone, footsteps fast on the stairs, and I'm alone with a spare bolt in my hand and my heart going crazy.

That can't happen again.

She didn't say she didn't want it to.