Page 51 of Carrick
“You’re not what I expected,” she said.
I looked up. “What did you expect?”
“More walls. More cold. Less… jokes.”
“I’m a mystery,” I said, deadpan.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re a contradiction. The guy who can break a man’s ribs and also knows all the Catan expansion rules by heart.”
“I contain multitudes,” I said, aiming for something light.
She shook her head, but she was smiling now. Really smiling. And it hit me again, low and solid, the way it always did. I wanted more of that. More of her. That unguarded laugh. The softness beneath all her sharp edges. The way she looked at me like she saw everything and didn’t flinch.
“I’ll see you upstairs,” she said, voice quiet now. Almost careful.
“You will.”
She moved past me, slow and deliberate, the brush of her fingers at my waist unmistakable—no accident, no hesitation. A promise, unspoken and electric. When the basement settled behind her, silence blooming soft and golden in her wake, I felt it rise—an unguarded smile tugging at my mouth. The kind that slips in before you’re ready, before you even realize it’s there.
And for once, I didn’t push it down. I let it stay.
11
Carrick
It was supposedto be a simple list. Fix the eastern perimeter sensor. Replace the bent hinge on the feed room door. Oil the barn gate. Run diagnostics on the comm tower batteries. Basic maintenance shit.
But every time I crossed something off, two more things showed up like magic. Apparently, when you vanish on back-to-back undercover ops for six months, the world keeps turning—and screws keep loosening. Nothing catastrophic, just enough to be off. Bolts working loose. Fences leaning. Circuits flickering like they were sulking. And it itched.
I hated when things didn’t run the way they were supposed to. Machines. Systems. People. Myself.
After two hours in the sun patching a crack in the solar conduit, I sat back and slammed the toolbox shut—harder than I needed to—then wiped my arm across my forehead. Sweat clung under my shirt, shoulders sore in that good, earned kind of way. It should’ve been satisfying.
Would’ve been. If she wasn’t in my head.
Bellamy.
Every damn second of quiet lately, she filled.
Her laugh. The way she treated board games like blood sport. The way she leaned in at the table, like we were already something. The shape her lips made when she teased me. And last night—when her fingers brushed my waist during cleanup and didn’t move away. That hadn’t been an accident. Not with her.
I didn’t act on it. Because she’d looked happy. And I didn’t want to break that. Not yet.
Still, the tension sat behind my ribs like a wire pulled tight. Whatever was happening, it was tugging at parts of me I hadn’t touched in a long time.
I’d just reached for the wrench to start the next job when I heard boots crunching gravel behind me.
And then?—
“Need a hand, foreman?”
I turned—and forgot how to breathe.
Bellamy stood just a few feet away, sunlight haloed around her like some kind of cosmic omen. And she was wearing my old work overalls.
Not just wearing them—owningthem.
They were rolled at the ankles to accommodate her smaller frame, but somehow that just made it worse. Better. The top was knotted at her waist, cinched over a thin, sweat-dampened gray tank that clung to every distracting inch of her. Her hair was pulled up in some sort of chaotic knot, with a few curls clinging to the back of her neck. She had grease on her cheek and dirt on her boots and looked like sin in steel toes.
