Page 53 of Rosie and the Beast Next Door

“Did it work?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you still want to get together with Maxamillion?” he asked.

A flare of irritation shot through me. “You know it’s just Max. And yes.”

“Then it didn’t work,” he replied.

I rapped my knuckles against the wall. “Hey.” But I also laughed. Quietly so hopefully he didn’t hear.

I heard him walk away, and I went back to painting my princess octopus, a smile on my face the entire time.

Walking on the floatingdock always made me feel homesick. I’d lived in my houseboat for three years, and it had taken me months to get used to not getting rocked gently to sleep.

Dad’s envelope of cash was in my back pocket. I’d quietly pulled it off the market when I’d gotten Dylan’s rent money. Which meant Dad could stay there a few more months without causing too much stress.

I walked up the stairs of my blue and white boat and knocked on the door. Sometimes Dad answered, and sometimes he didn’t. I didn’t know what he did when he wasn’t on the boat. He needed to lie low in town, and he didn’t have a vehicle, but about half the time when I stopped by, he was gone.

When he answered, his warm smile removed any reservations I might have had about letting him live here.

“Come in,” he said. My houseboat smelled different—like smoke, pine, and popcorn. It pinged a long-forgotten memory of my parents’ bedroom when I was a little girl. “I just made caramel corn. Want some?”

“Sure.” I’d never had any of dad’s special caramel corn that I could remember. Haydn made it at the cabin when we did our movie nights. I snagged a few pieces. They were soggier than Haydn’s and tasted more buttery, but I reveled in every taste. Who would have thought, just one year ago, I’d be sitting here,with my dad, casually eating popcorn.

My brothers would never forgive him for abandoning us when things got tough, but I was too young to remember him and too young to feel any resentment. I didn’t want to have to hide Dad, but I needed time to convince my brothers that having him back in our lives would be a good thing.

I hadn’t started yet, though. It wasn’t that I was afraid, per se … It was that I hadn’t come up with a brilliant plan to break the news. Something like this couldn’t be settled with just a conversation. It needed schemes and steps, literary inspiration, maybe costumes, and I wasreallyhoping it wouldn’t require another fake relationship, but I also wasn’t entirely against it. If I was lucky,Shrubs of Fogwould hold the answer to telling my brothers about Dad, since I had to read it anyway. If I was really,reallylucky, that answer would be in the first two pages, so I didn’t have to keep reading.

I wanted to love Dad and have a relationship with him without feeling disloyal to my brothers. And I hadn’t been able to figure that out yet.

“How’s life treating you?” Dad’s weather-worn face looked tired, but he smiled as he scooped some popcorn into a bowl for himself. A steaming mug of tea sat on the table.

“Pretty good. Our softball team’s doing well. And business has been steady at the shop.”

Dad sipped his tea and let out a satisfied sigh. “That’s fantastic. You know, it’s hard being cooped up in here all the time.”

Guilt gnawed at me. I handed him the envelope of money I’d brought. “Here are my tips.”

His smile was sad. “Thank you, darlin’. It’s more expensive to live here than I remembered.”

We chatted a few more minutes about the shop, and then I stood to leave. I needed to get ready for work. Dad pulled me into a hug, and I almost didn’t know what to do. People hugged their dads all the time. It was normal. I’d just never hugged my dad before—that I could remember. Surely young me had curled up in his arms between trips. But then I’d become the sour lemon, and he’d left, and that had been the end of fatherly hugs.

Maybe it was working. I was changing my dad’s perception of me. He was wanting to stay here and love me.

I left the boat floating on clouds. And slammed right into Bennett.

He took my arms and looked me over. Deep grooves of concern lined his eyes. “What are you doing down here?”

“Just checking on the boat.”

“I can do that for you. There’s no reason for you to have to come all the way down here, when I’m here every day.”

“I want to do it,” I said quickly. Bennett showing up at my boat unexpectedly would definitely be a huge complication. I looked at him more closely. He was always exhausted after a several-dayfishing trip, but this exhaustion looked deeper. Similar to how he’d looked in the months after Lily broke up with him. “What’s wrong?”

His eyes shifted to the side. “I don’t know how to tell you this—”

“Something happened to your boat.” My heart raced with possibilities, none of them good.

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