Someone in the past twenty years had painted my car a matte black. The paint job and the lingering specter of death that hung around it all the time led me to name it The Grim Reaper, which made my dad upset since it had been his car, then my sister’s. But it was mine now. A boxy 1997 Chevy station wagon. It even looked like a hearse.

“Come on, baby,” I begged as it choked and sputtered. I had this complicated ritual to get old Grimmy started. “Come on,” I cooed, tapping the accelerator halfway down three times before flicking into neutral at the same time I turned the key.

My classmate, when she saw this ridiculous dance I performed every time I started my car, had laughed and rolled her eyes, but it hadn’t failed me, until now.

“Fuck you, come on,” I whined. But Grim sensed fear. You had to have a firm hand, and a calm heart. He could look deep inside of you like some oracle of your purest intentions. Sometimes he decided you just didn’t really need to run to the grocery store.

Thankfully, this morning Grim smiled upon me and deemed my need to leave worthy enough to choke to life. I revved his engine precisely two more times to make sure he wasn’t joking around with me, then pulled out of the driveway.

After the triumph of getting Grim started, it almost seemed criminal that I had to turn him off again so soon. I pulled into the Kings’ driveway and contemplated leaving him running, but I couldn’t afford the gas. Not until I got my first King-sized paycheck.

I stopped and grinned to myself as I headed to the back door of the Kings’ house. That was a good one, but there weren’t many people who shared my love of a good pun. My friends online might, but no one in person. I’d have to remember it and tell it to Abby next time I talked to her. Which might not be for another few weeks.

I entered through the back door. Mrs. King had given me a key, and Duke, their old dog, only raised his head a curious inch before flopping back down again. “Some watchdog,” I snorted. Then I looked around. “Gabe?” I called. “It’s Everly. You ready?”

I had only ever been inside the King house when there were people all around. They’d always thrown barbecues when the boys got home from a tour—even in the dead of winter—and as their neighbors we had an open invitation. But the house had always been full of noise and the clatter of people as curious as I was about the brothers and our town’s claim to fame. I’d never been in here when it was silent.

Mrs. King had held her job as a part-time library clerk since before I was born, gamely smiling and answering questions about her sons before directing people to the non-fiction section. That’s where she was now. And I knew that Mr. King helped out at Andolino’s Garage whenever they had a particularly finicky car come through. Claire worked for a developer in Reckless Falls, I knew that. But I had no idea where Finn, or Beau or, yeah, Jonah might be. I hadn’t expected to be alone when I came by to pick up Gabe and take him to his physical therapy appointment. I had to trust that one of them had told him I was coming in the first place.

The silence was thick. I felt strangely like a prowler and had to resist the urge to turn around and head right back out of the door again.

“Gabe?” I called, more forcefully now. I poked my head into the living room, stepping around the inert, snoring Labrador that lay like a rug in the middle of the room. Back in the sunroom, I could see the sheets were thrown back on the empty hospital bed. I’d have to change those when I got back.

“Gabe?” I said again, spinning in a slow circle in the center of the living room. The house was so quiet I could only hear little sounds. Background noises. The muffled tick of a clock somewhere. The whoosh of the heat in the vents. The faint patter of rain on the windows.

And from above me, a thump and a muffled cry.

I was running even before I registered where the sound was coming from. I took the stairs two at a time, landing in the unfamiliar upstairs. “Hello?” I called, throwing open each door in turn. Empty bedrooms and overstuffed closets were all I could find until I threw open the last door in the hallway.

It thudded into something hard and unyielding.

“Motherfucker!” Gabe cried.

The hard and unyielding object had been his head.

I clapped my hand to my mouth, dropped down to a crouch, and reached through the gap to the other side of the door. “Shit, did you fall?” I worried, reaching out and trying to find a pulse at his neck out of instinct.

He batted my hand away with an angry growl. “Who the hell are you? What are you fucking—ow!” he cried again as I tried to slide into the bathroom, only to thump the corner of the door into his head again.

“It’s okay,” I reassured him. “I’m your nurse and—“

I slid all the way into the bathroom and trailed off, my words dying in my throat.

There, sprawled flat across the bathroom floor, was all six feet and many extra inches of naked and vulnerable yet still strangely frightening Gabe King. Scars and tattoos decorated his torso like a roadmap, twining in a network of pathways leading down to...

I tried to jump back but my heel hit something and I sat down heavily—

On the open toilet.

“Fuck!” I cried, leaping back up again. I was too late. My ass now sported a perfect “o” of toilet water.

“Ow!” Gabe grimaced as I jostled into him. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Lost my balance.” I did not tell him that the sight of his cock had made me literally fall over. I was a nurse. Cocks shouldn’t get me flustered. I took a deep breath and looked at it again to desensitize myself and promptly got doubly flustered. “Were you bathing alone?” I demanded, trying to mask my agitation with irritation. The toilet water was gradually seeping into my underwear. Thank god it had been flushed. “What the hell were you thinking?”

He grimaced and hauled himself up onto his good elbow, then pinned me with eyes that were way too green and familiar. “I was thinking,” he said, through gritted teeth, “that my brother hired a nurse from next door to pick me up for PT and I didn’t want to smell like a wet gym sock when she arrived. Guess it’s my good breeding and all,” he said pointedly. “You mind grabbing me a fucking towel?” he asked as I wrested my eyes away from his fairly impressive penis once more.

“Oh, yeah.” Some fucking professional I was. Burning up with shame, I grabbed a fluffy towel from the rack and draped it over his groin. He let out a sigh of either relief or exasperation, I couldn’t tell, and pushed himself higher on his elbow. “Here, I’ll help you.”

“Please,” he scoffed, waving me away.

“You have two broken ankles and five broken ribs,” I reminded him. “Let me get behind you.”

“You can’t lift me. Look at you.”

“I’m five foot nine.”

“And a hundred pounds soaking wet.”

I was a sturdy one hundred and sixty pounds and I’d thrown shot-put in high school. “You’d make a terrible guess-my-weight guy at the county fair,” I chuckled. “Stick with your day job.” I wedged myself between the door and his head. “Lift your head for me?”

“You’re not going to be able to lift me.”

“How about you shut up and let me try?”

He twisted his head to look at me. “You say you’re my nurse? Thought they were supposed to have nice bedside manners and shit.”

“I’m not actually a full-fledged nurse yet,” I snapped. And then I slipped my arms under his back and hauled stubborn, naked Gabe King to his feet.