Page 12 of Catch and Cradle

I raise my eyebrows. “The...babe cave?”

She shuffles her feet again. She’s extra cute when she’s embarrassed.

“Uh, yeah. Ha. That’s what we call our house.”

I smile at her when she looks back up at me. “I like that.”

“What?” She shrugs, and her voice gets playful. “Are you telling me you guys haven’t named your house?”

“I can’t say that we have.”

“You should consider it. I’d highly recommend the experience.”

I tilt my head. “Oh yeah? Got any suggestions?”

“Hmm.” She squints and shifts her hips back and forth as she thinks. I try not to look down at them. “How about Cap’s...shack?”

I make a sound between a laugh and a snort. Hope shakes her head.

“Okay, yeah, I’m terrible with rhymes. I’ll workshop it.”

“I don’t know if Rachelle and Bailey would be down to name the house after me.”

“I’d name a house after you.”

The silence after she speaks seems to thicken the insulation around us. Her eyes go wide as soon as the words leave her mouth, and I can see her taking rapid breaths in through her nose.

“Right. Yeah. I am being suuuuper awkward tonight. Chatty McChatterson, as Jane would say. I should stop right now.”

I want to reach out and grip her shoulder, but I keep my arms glued to my sides. “I don’t think you’re being awkward. I think you’re...”

The only thing in this whole city that could make me consider jeopardizing everything that matters to me?

I force a chuckle. “Now I’m being awkward.”

“We should make a club.” She rocks back and forth on her feet as we grin at each other. “So, uh, thanks for grabbing my phone.”

“Oh, shit. Right. Your phone. Let me get it. I left it on the porch.”

Somehow, it took me all of two minutes to completely forget the reason she’s here.

“I’ll come with you. I need to see this shack.”

We walk the few metres back to the house side by side. I can feel the heat of her arm just a few inches from mine. She stops for a second when I turn onto the pathway.

“Damn. You live here?”

The three story historic home with big bay windows, a chimney, and a giant oak tree in the yard is pretty impressive.

“Just on the top floor,” I answer. “It’s divided into a bunch of different units that all get rented out. I don’t even know how many people live in the house in total.”

“Is your room at the front?”

I stop to follow her gaze up to the roof of the house, where I can see my little window covered with the lace curtains that were already there when I moved in.

“Yeah, actually. It’s that one.” I point it out, and she nods.

“Cute.”