HANS: Alliance Series Book Four, page 2
So I said the only thing I could manage. I’m Cassie, your new neighbor.
He didn’t look happy. Not before I said it, and even less so after I said it. But he did reply, with what I’ve had to assume is his first name.
Hans.
Hans, the Scandinavian fantasy I didn’t know I had. Please, pretty please, swing me up over your shoulder and carry me off to your bedroom. We can pretend it’s a Viking encampment. You’re the main warrior dude, and I’m the princess you just stole from your enemy to claim as your own…
I turn off the water and squeeze my eyes shut as I pat my face dry with a clean towel.
Of course, none of that stuff happened. Instead of stealing and ravishing me, Hans dropped my hand, slammed his truck door, strode into his garage, and hit the button to shut the overhead door without so much as a glance over his shoulder for a second look at me.
Quite the ding to thee old self-esteem.
But after that wildly successful first meeting, I figured I’d win him over with baked goods.
And thus began our yearlong game of cat and mouse.
Though, I’m not really sure who’s who in our situation.
Because I catch glimpses of him. Hans pulling his truck straight into his garage, Hans pulling out of his garage, Hans walking back from his mailbox with strides too long and fast for me to ever accidentally meet him while heading out to check on my own mail—trust me, I’ve tried. So I know he’s still alive. And that he still lives there. But he never answers the door.
Not once.
I turn off the light and enter my bedroom.
Stripping off my shorts and underwear, I toss my bra on the floor and dig out a pair of sleep shorts.
Technically the shirt I wore over to Hans’s house is a pajama top, but with a bra, it looks like any other tank top. And it’s not like he saw me anyway.
I turn off my bedside lamp and drop into bed.
Time to scroll recipes while I wonder if Hans actually eats what I leave for him or if he just throws it all away and returns the empty container.
CHAPTER 3
Hans
When the final light in her house turns off, I wait another forty-seven minutes.
She’s always asleep within forty-five minutes, but I like to be certain.
With a groan, I push out of my chair and turn off the monitors. My knives are as sharp as they’re gonna get tonight, and I have food to retrieve.
I look through the little crescent window at the top of my front door, double-checking that no new lights are on across the street, then I open the door and scoop up the rectangular glass container before shutting and locking it again.
As always, there’s a yellow Post-it note on the top of the lid.
Chocolate chip zucchini cookies.
Even as I trace my finger over the lettering, I can feel my nose crinkling.
I’ve heard of zucchini bread, but not cookies. And the bread has me skeptical enough.
Rolling my eyes at myself, I carry the cookies into my little kitchen and set them on the counter.
After carefully setting the Post-it off to the side, the lid lifts easily, and with it comes the smell of chocolate and wet vegetables.
I sigh.
Instead of looking like normal cookies, these look like damp green hockey pucks that have lost their shape along the way. But when I lift one out, it surprisingly holds together.
It’s also heavier than I expected.
“God dammit.” I curse my growing need to consume it, even as I lift the cookie and take a bite.
My mouth pulls into a frown, but I force myself to keep chewing.
It’s… not good.
I look at the puck, seeing a little clump of unmixed flour that I’ve bitten through, and I take another bite.
The overall wetness of the cookie is off-putting. But the taste is even worse.
I shove the rest of it into my mouth.
For someone who bakes so much, Cassandra is not getting any better.
I move to my fridge and pull out a stick of butter.
It’s too hard to be spreadable, so I slice off little squares and set them on top of the second cookie, then take a large bite.
Slightly better.
Another bite, and some of the cookie juice drips onto my shirt.
“Fuck,” I grumble around my mouthful of the shredded vegetable bullshit.
After shoving the rest of the butter-topped cookie into my mouth, I rip a paper towel free from the roll sitting next to the sink and wipe at my shirt.
I eye the other four cookies still left in the container.
I don’t want to eat them.
They’re hardly edible.
But I’m curious to see how Cassandra photographed them for her food blog.
It didn’t take me long to find the blog, though I was a little surprised that she only started it after moving in next door. No matter how awful the creation is, she always makes them look appealing in the photo, but since she’s gifted me a container of every item she’s ever blogged about, I know the photos lie.
I don’t want to eat the rest.
But I have to.
After moving to the cupboard on the other side of the fridge, I open the door and take out the half-empty jar of peanut butter.
I scoop out a spoonful and do my best to spread it over the top of the third hockey puck.
It doesn’t make it better.
I grab my glass of water off the counter and chug it down, trying to loosen up the peanut and zucchini concrete sealing my jaw shut.
When I finally clear my mouth, I move back to the fridge, and this time, I take out a bottle of beer.
I crack it open and alternate between pulls from the bottle and mouthfuls of cookie until the last three are gone.
My stomach protests at the last bite, but I can’t waste it. It doesn’t matter how bad her creations are, my deep-seated need to consume every bit of Cassandra won’t let me throw them away. And my tastebuds won’t let me go through this torture twice. So, this has become our ritual. Cassandra leaves me something that lands somewhere on the scale of edible, and I binge eat it while standing alone in my kitchen, staring out the window over my sink and imagining I’m eating them in her house, with her next to me.
When all the awful cookies are gone, I tip the glass container over the sink, letting the little pool of green liquid drip out. Then I wash and dry it.
Once I secure the lid in place, I leave the empty container on the counter and pick up the Post-it.
I walk across the living room, turning off lights as I go, and step into my bedroom.
The bedside lamp is on, and it illuminates my actions as I pull open the top drawer of my nightstand.
Leaning down, I carefully stick the newest Post-it on top of the last one, adding it to my little stack of yellow paper squares.
One for every delivery from the girl next door.
CHAPTER 4
Cassie
“Okay, bye! Be back later!” I grin to myself as I step out the front door, locking the handle as I go.
I don’t have any pets. There’s nothing alive inside the house, but I still say goodbye to my home whenever I leave. It’s probably silly, but it makes coming back feel happier. Like the structure itself will be waiting for my return.
As I take the few steps down to the sidewalk that leads from my front door to my driveway, I glance across the street. It’s a cloudy afternoon, but I can clearly see my neighbor’s empty front step. No cookie container in sight.
I bite the corner of my lip.
So he was home, but he didn’t answer the door. Again.
Or he got home after you were there.
Or he was in the shower.
Or he came home this morning.
I pull my gaze away from Hans’s house and hurry the rest of the distance to my old sedan. The thought that Hans might be spending some of his nights at a woman’s house has crossed my mind more times than I care to admit. And even though I have zero claim over my elusive, handsome neighbor, the jealousy in my gut is real.
CHAPTER 5
Hans
Cassandra backs out of her driveway, nearly clipping her mailbox. Then she takes her time playing with the radio before she finally pulls away, turning off Holly Court and disappearing from sight.
I give her the usual eleven minutes.
She has a track record of forgetting things and coming back for them, but she never turns around if she’s more than five minutes away. So, when that eleventh minute starts, I tuck the empty container under my arm and step outside.
I don’t look around. I don’t try to sneak over. Both of those things give away the fact that you’re doing something shady. It’s always best to act like you belong.
Plus, there’s no one here to see what I’m doing anyway.
The lots on our little cul-de-sac are large, and beyond the edges of our mowed lawns is a thick forest of trees. Both leafy and evergreen. So unless someone is on one of our properties, or coming down our street, they wouldn’t see me walking between Cassandra’s house and mine.
They won’t see me now, and they haven’t seen me the dozens of other times I’ve done this.
My boots are quiet on the steps up to her front door, and I use the duplicate key in my palm to unlock the handle. When it turns and the door opens, I shake my head.
“Why have a deadbolt, Butterfly, if you’re not gonna use it?”
I set the empty dish, lid attached, on her literal welcome mat, wipe my boots off on said mat, then step over it and shut the door behind me, relocking the handle. Just because she should be gone for a while doesn’t mean I won’t leave everything how I found it.
It doesn’t take me long to do my usual rounds, but I don’t rush through them.
I tell myself it’s because I want to be thorough. That I need to make sure every window is properly locked—twice, because I may have missed it the first time.
I don’t dwell on the way I enjoy being in her space. I don’t think about the way the air feels different in here. The way it tastes different in here.
The living room doubles as Cassandra’s home office. On one side of the room, the gray couch faces a subpar TV mounted above a fireplace she never turns on because someone—me—keeps disabling the gas line because someone—her—has left it on unattended one too many times. She’s thankfully given up on calling out the repair man, because I don’t want to feel bad about her spending money on repairs when I’m only going to fuck it up again.
The other side of the living room has a bright white table tucked against the wall, topped with a small lamp, her work laptop, a ceramic cactus, and an empty floral-printed cup with a matching pink straw that looks big enough to fit half a gallon of liquid.
Walking through the kitchen, I make sure all the appliances have their cords fully plugged in and that they haven’t tangled since I checked them three days ago.
I pull the stove away from the wall, making sure the connections and valves are just as I left them. They are.
Pushing the stove back into its place, I notice the fruit bowl next to her sink is overflowing. With zucchini.
A shudder runs down my spine, and I wonder if there’s something I can do to them that would make them rot overnight so she’s not able to make anything else with them.
I slide my hand into my pocket, ready to pull my phone out so I can search to see if such a thing is possible, but I stop myself. Because if Cassandra woke up tomorrow to a bowl of rotten produce, she would feel sad.
She’d probably frown. Potentially pout. And I can’t be the cause of that.
I pull my hand free and let it linger on the railing as I climb the stairs to her second level.
This house is as old and shitty as mine, except Cassandra has actually put in effort to make her home cozy. She’s painted the walls in every room. The kitchen is a bright blue, her bathrooms are teal, and her bedroom—I step into the small space—is a gentle gray with soft pink bedding and rugs.
I inhale, and that rare feeling of calmness settles over my shoulders.
Her bed isn’t made; it never is.
I flip on the light in her attached windowless bathroom and glance around, making sure nothing has been left on.
The mirror is still slightly steamy—accounting for her wet hair when she left the house—and the mix of shampoo, body lotion, and hair products makes me want to roll around on her shaggy bathroom rug.
But I don’t.
That would be weird.
Turning the light off, I move back into the bedroom.
The window faces the street, and through her open curtains, I can see the front of my house. But there’s a tall tree in Cassandra’s yard, meaning she doesn’t have a good view of my front door, which I use to my advantage, ensuring she can’t see me retrieving the offerings she leaves for me on my front step. I’m rarely off on my calculations, but if she were to stand right here, forty-eight minutes after turning off her bedroom light at night, she wouldn’t get a clear view of me opening my front door.
Still facing the window, I walk back—two steps, three—until I bump into her bed.
Then I sit.
This is her side of the bed. Doesn’t take a genius, or an obsessed stalker, to figure that out.
I pretend it’s morning. That she’s just woken and sat up, and I look out through the window.
This is her view.
My home.
Me.
I take a deep breath and scoot over an inch, then another.
Is this exactly where she would be sitting?
Slowly, I reach down and unlace my boots, then pull them off one at a time.
Then I lift my feet onto the bed.
I’ve never done this before.
Never crossed this line.
So I’ve touched her bed before, run my hands over the cool cotton sheets, but that’s nothing.
I lie back.
The mattress is okay. Not good enough for my Cassandra. But it’s comfortable.
I settle my head on her pillow.
It’s too soft. Too girly.
I look up at her ceiling. At the sparkly mini chandelier she installed over her bed.
This is the last thing she sees each night.
I close my eyes and pretend.
Just for two seconds, I pretend she’s here with me.
My eyes snap open.
A vehicle is approaching.
I sit straight up, disoriented in a place that borders on familiar and wrong.
The lighting has changed.
The shadows have shifted.
I look at the clock on the nightstand.
“Fuck me.”
I swing my feet over the edge of the bed and slide them into my boots, lacing them quickly.
“Did you seriously fall a-fucking-sleep in Cassandra’s house?” I’m so mad at myself. I can’t believe I fucked up this badly.
Not that it’s any real wonder. The stomachache I got from those mushy-ass cookies kept me up half the night.
Eyeing the rumpled bedding at my side, I run my palm over it once more before I stand, the cotton cool under my touch.
I stay far enough back from the window so I’m not visible to anyone below, but from this angle, I can still see out. And Cassandra’s car slows to a stop in the driveway, yards from where I’m standing.
“Shit.”
Her garage is attached to the side of her house, connecting through the small laundry room off the kitchen, which is right below me. The overhead garage door works, I’ve checked, but unless it’s snowing, Cassandra always chooses to park outside. For a reason only known to her.
I could sprint. I could get down the stairs, turn at the base of the staircase, duck into the laundry room, and slip into the garage, pulling the door closed at the same moment she slams the front door behind her. Then I could exit through the window in the back of the garage or wait for her to fall asleep and then go back through the laundry room, into the kitchen, and out the door that leads into the backyard.
I could do all of that. But that would require me to have moved by now, which I haven’t. And I don’t.
Cassandra steps out of her car, and my heart races for a reason other than the threat of getting caught. My heart is racing because she’s close. So close.
She has an iced coffee in one hand and a Target bag in the other, and she uses her perfect hip to shove the car door shut.
A little midday shopping trip, playing hooky from work?
The angle blocks me from seeing the expression on her face, but her body language telegraphs the fact that she’s trying to hurry. Either she really has to pee, or she’s trying not to be late for a work call.
I honestly don’t know if she would run upstairs to use the bathroom attached to her bedroom or if she’d use the other one downstairs. But I’ve watched her through the living room windows enough to know that it’s not unusual for her to have a virtual work meeting at any time of the day, so I’m hoping that’s what she’s in a hurry for.
As she moves beneath the bedroom window to the front door, I slowly unlock the window latch. Thankfully, I test these often enough, so it’s used to moving and does so silently.
Slowing my breath, I listen, and when I hear the front door open, I start to slide the window up.
By the time the front door slams shut, I’ve slid the windowpane all the way up.
The screens are still blessedly not in place. Cassandra removed them this spring to clean, but they’re still piled up in the corner of her garage, not installed.
I lift my left leg up and over the sill.
“I’m home! I’m home!” Her voice echoes up the stairwell, and I freeze.
Is she telling the empty house that she’s home, or does she somehow know I’m here?
I hear the crinkle of her dropping the shopping bag onto the floor, then the squeak of wheels on hardwood, and I picture her dropping into her little office chair.
So, a work meeting.
Half in, half out of her window, I stand motionless.
