Lucas was late.

Alaina glanced at the time displayed on her phone. He’d said noon and it was already five past. She let out an impatient sigh and hopped off the couch, being careful not to disturb the piles of paperwork surrounding her. She padded into the kitchen of her tiny bungalow and warmed her coffee in the microwave.

She’d originally just been a coffee-in-the-morning person, but as her workdays stretched longer and as fall morphed into winter, she’d slowly upped her consumption. Besides water, it was pretty much the only thing she drank most days.

The microwave beeped and she removed the now-steaming mug, heading back into the living room just as the doorbell rang.

Alaina set her mug down on the coffee table before opening the door. Lucas was there, his hands shoved in his coat pockets, his breath blowing clouds of white smoke.

She held the door open and waved him inside. He bent down and untied his boots, then set them to the side, next to the pairs of shoes she kept by the door. She tried not to stare at his shoes, at how much bigger they were compared to her size 5 pairs. It was a little disconcerting seeing his parked next to hers; any man’s, really. Men didn’t come to her house.

“You’re late,” she told him.

He gave her an impish grin, and she hated that she noticed how charming it made him look.

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding apologetic at all. “Got stuck at the tracks.”

Alaina faintly remembered the whistle of a train horn and grudgingly realized he was probably telling the truth, but still. She allotted for those types of delays: for trains barreling through on the north-south lines, for hitting all the stoplights in town, for slick road conditions.

“Are we going to stand and talk, or should I sit down?” His smile was even more disarming this time.

She felt a blush rise in her cheeks. “Of course.” There was something about Lucas McGowan that caught her off-guard, that made her feel a little less confident, a little less sure of herself.

She didn’t know if she liked it.

“Can I get you some coffee?” She tried to remember if there was any left in the pot or if she’d have to make more.

But Lucas shook his head. “I’m good, thanks.”

Alaina picked up the papers she’d left on the couch, stacking them neatly before setting them on the table next to her coffee. She picked up the mug and sat down, then nodded for Lucas to take a seat beside her.

He lowered himself onto the couch, his leg almost touching hers. His close proximity made Alaina’s heart thump erratically. She knew he wasn’t purposely sitting close to her or trying to invade her personal space. It truly was a small couch, almost a love seat really. She’d chosen smaller furniture to fit the scale of the room, and it had never been an issue before. But now, with this hulk of a man sitting next to her—he’s not that big, you’re just small, she had to remind herself—it felt as though it had been sized for a Barbie doll. She could feel the warmth emanating from his body, could smell the woodsy scent of his aftershave. She swallowed. Hard.

She shifted, as subtly as possible, pressing her left side against the armrest, feeling a stab of disappointment when she could no longer feel his heat.

“So, you visited my mother.”

Lucas gave a slight nod, but his attention wasn’t on her. His gaze traveled the room, his eyes resting momentarily on photos and artwork as he did his assessment.

“This is a nice home you have,” he commented.

Alaina knew it was. It was the first house she ever bought, and she’d poured hours of blood, sweat and tears into this tiny little home.

“How did you find this place?” he asked.

“It’s not exactly hidden,” she said dryly.

He grinned, his brown eyes refocusing on her. His grin was charming, his eyes warm, and her heart started thumping again.

“That’s not what I meant,” he told her. “I mean how did you come to be here? It feels like such a lucky find.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” she remarked.

But as soon as she said it, Alaina realized that wasn’t entirely true. Luck had played a small role. She’d had the cash on hand to buy it when it came up for sale, and she’d made the decision that she was going to embark on this adventure, to see if she could make a go of it, right before the house was listed. Luck had probably played a part in the timing of things, but not in the finished result. That had all been hard work.

She stood up and marched over to a small credenza pushed against the interior wall of the living room. The wall was painted a buttery yellow, and even after all these years, it still made her feel warm inside, made her feel as though the sun was inside her home. There were a few framed photographs displayed on the credenza and she grabbed one of them, a small 4x6, and brought it over to Lucas. She handed it to him.

“What’s this?” he asked with a frown.

“This house,” she said.

The picture was one of hundreds she’d taken after she’d bought the bungalow. She’d documented every inch of the exterior and interior. This particular photo was the “before” documentation of the room they were sitting in. Every room in the house—the living room, the kitchen, the two bedrooms and the bathroom—had a framed “before” photo somewhere in their respective rooms. A reminder of what had once been, a visual history of how far the house had come. How far Alaina had come.

“Holy shit,” Lucas breathed. “This is the same room we’re sitting in right now?”

He glanced around, and she knew what he was doing: looking for the features of this room, trying to find evidence of them in the photo in his hands.

He wouldn’t find much. The windows were in the same location, but everything else was different. Alaina’s own eyes focused on the picture, too, but she didn’t need to look at it to remember what had been here; she’d committed it to memory years ago. Wallpaper-covered walls, dingy rust-colored carpet, a wall that separated the living area from the kitchen, making the space feel even smaller—claustrophobic, even. Dark wood trim around the windows with matching baseboards that made the room dark and dreary.

Lucas looked from the photo to the room he was in. The differences were stark. Buttery walls, shiny wood floors the color of maple syrup, white wood trim on the walls and windows.

“What happened to the wall?” he asked.

“I knocked it out.”

His eyebrows lifted, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t because he doubted her statement but because he was impressed. “Really?”

She nodded. “It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t a load-bearing wall, so that helped.”

He chuckled. “If you say so.” He handed the picture back to her. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed.”

“Thanks,” she told him, accepting the frame and setting it on the coffee table. “And I would know.”

His smile widened and he just shook his head in response.

She picked up her coffee and took a sip, but it had already grown lukewarm.

“So you did all the work yourself? Getting the house to look like this?”

“Not all by myself,” Alaina admitted. “I hired a few contractors for the work I didn’t know how to do. Electrical and plumbing, mostly. But everything else I pretty much did on my own.”

“Wow.” Lucas’s eyes were huge. “And you’ve lived here ever since.”

“No.”

“No?”

Alaina shook her head. “I sold it.”

His brow wrinkled. “I’m not following.”

“I bought the house eight years ago, pretty much right after I graduated high school. It was a foreclosure and I got it for peanuts. Took me six months to fix it up, and then I sold it for triple what I paid.”

“Triple?”

She nodded. “Used those proceeds to buy another foreclosure. Fixed it up and sold that one. And so on and so on.”

“You flip houses.” It wasn’t a question but a statement.

Alaina nodded. “Eight years now.”

He let out a low whistle. “And you make good money doing that?”

She smiled. “Better than good.”

His brow furrowed again, and he said, “If this was your first house, how did you end up back here?”

“It was about a year ago,” she said. “The owners had to sell. Job transfer. I saw it pop up on the property listings and I immediately put in an offer.”

“Why?” Lucas asked. “I mean, if you make good money, you could probably afford something bigger, right?”

Alaina shrugged. “Sure. But I don’t need bigger. It’s just me.”

There was another reason, too. Another reason she’d paid the full asking price for the little bungalow she now called home. It was the first house she’d flipped. It had been a huge, monumental risk, buying this house and sinking her entire savings into fixing it up. Her parents had practically disowned her for doing so. Her father had called her foolish and immature, told her she was chasing a pipe dream and she’d live to regret it. Told her not to come running back to them when she ran out of money and found herself without an education and without a place to live.

She’d proved them wrong. And she wanted to be in the house that had started it all, wanted a constant reminder that she’d succeeded despite the odds and despite the fact that not a single person had believed she could pull it off.

She swallowed.

That wasn’t entirely true.

There had been one person who had trusted her instincts, who knew she would do what she’d set out to accomplish.

Noah.

Alaina cleared her throat. “Look, I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but we should probably get back to the topic at hand.”

Lucas nodded, his expression sobering a little.

“You went to the house, spoke to my mother,” Alaina prompted.

Her gut tightened as she waited for Lucas to begin. He’d called her an hour ago, asked if he could come by to chat with her about his visit to her parents’ house, and she’d immediately agreed. But she’d wondered why he’d wanted to do it in person, why he couldn’t have shared over the phone. She’d tried to put it out of her mind, had buried herself in work instead—as evidenced by the sheer volume of paperwork now stacked on the coffee table—and it had worked.

But now he was there, and she had to steel herself for what he was about to tell her.

Lucas sat forward on the couch, cradling his hands. “She wasn’t very forthcoming.”

This wasn’t a surprise to Alaina.

“I asked her a couple of questions about Noah. His mood, if she’d noticed any signs of depression.”

“And?”

“And nothing.”

Lucas was frank, which she appreciated. As hard as things might be to hear, Alaina preferred honesty to beating around the bush.

“She’s in denial, which is to be expected at this stage of the grief process,” he said.

Alaina could only nod. “So it was a bust, then.” She didn’t bother trying to hide her disappointment.

“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” His eyes were on hers, unwavering. “I asked if I could see his room.”

Alaina stiffened, waiting for him to continue. An image of Noah’s room popped into her head and she tried to squelch it. She didn’t want to see it, because she knew what else she would visualize. Her brother, his neck tethered to a rope secured to his closet door, his feet within an inch of the floor. Safety—life—literally an inch away. She hadn’t found him, but she’d read the police file and the autopsy report. She knew where he’d been found; how he’d been found. And every time she thought of that house, that room, it was the only thing she pictured.

“You look a lot alike.” Lucas’s voice was soft. “You and Noah.”

She nodded. Her eyes were moist. “Except he was almost a foot taller.”

“Sure.” Lucas offered a gentle smile. “But your hair color, your eyes.” His expression was startlingly tender. “The shape of your lips, your face.”

His words washed over her. He’d noticed the shape of her lips? Without even thinking about it, she touched her finger to her mouth. His eyes followed her movement and his own lips seemed to part in response.

Her heart was galloping now. She might’ve sat there forever, her eyes locked on his, if he hadn’t broken the spell.

“The resemblance really is amazing.” His voice was a husky whisper.

Alaina nodded, as much to acknowledge his words as to clear her head. She knew this. Their baby photos were eerily similar; in fact, photos of the two of them in gender-neutral clothes were often the source of good-natured debate in their house as to what child was in the photograph.

Lucas cleared his throat. “I was only downstairs for a few minutes,” he said. “I told your mom I wouldn’t disturb anything.”

He hesitated.

“But?” She sensed there was something more.

Lucas reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. It looked as though it had been balled up previously, but it was now folded into a square.

Lucas unfolded the sheet and handed it to her.

“There were a couple more,” he said quietly. “All related.”

Alaina’s hand shook as she read the five words written on the paper.

Five words written in her dead brother’s handwriting.

I know what you did.