Page 6 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)

MAREN

C harlie is full of surprises. If he was anyone else—meaning not my stepbrother, and also not Charlie Dalton— I’d say it was almost romantic, the way he lunged to save me.

He brusquely sets me on my feet like a misbehaving child. “Let’s get something straight,” he barks. “You don’t take a step on the property until we know it’s safe, clear?”

I ignore his tone, walking to the other side of the stairs. There is something about the house. It calls to me, pulling me inside it. From the instant it came into view, it’s felt momentous…a sort of promise that my life is about to change.

I can’t say this aloud—not to Charlie, who is inclined to ridicule me even when I am saying perfectly rational things.

But… this place . The trees hang heavy with Spanish moss, and the warm air is soft as velvet on my skin.

There’s so much noise, but none of it is manmade— a whisper against my ears rather than a bruise.

I’d almost forgotten what it could be like, out of the city.

I’d almost forgotten how much I’ve missed it.

I take a careful first step and find myself lifted by the waist and removed from the stairs entirely .

“Maren, it’s as if you didn’t hear me two seconds ago. I’m going first.” He releases an aggravated sigh as he starts to climb the stairs ahead of me. “I can already tell we’d be better off just burning the place down.”

Does he really not feel how timeless this is?

These trees, this house, this magnolia-scented heat…

all of it existed a hundred years ago. I could be Zelda Fitzgerald right now, a debutante enjoying one last dance before all the boys leave for the First World War.

I could be Daisy Buchanan, pining for Jay Gatsby.

I take a deep breath and the house says, Come, take another breath and another after that. Let me put you back together. Which is yet another thing I can’t tell Charlie. He seems like the type who’d object to a talking house.

The porch floorboards sag under my weight but don’t give way. Charlie watches, nostrils flaring, until I’m safely beside him before he pulls out a key.

The smell of mildew wafts out of the house the second he opens the door. I dismiss Harvey’s voice in my head, the one warning about the damage this will do to our future offspring, and follow Charlie into the tiled foyer.

The stale air seems to rustle, a hostess straightening her skirts as callers enter. The tiled floor is filthy, and the ancient floral wallpaper peels in curls off the plaster behind it, but I bet the sconces are original. Same with the brass chandelier overhead.

A thousand lives have been lived in this home, and at least some of them were happy. I picture a young mother here a hundred years ago while her small children run past, their laughter echoing in the halls, deepening as they grew.

I swear to God it feels as if I belong here, as if I’ve always belonged here, as if I was that mother or perhaps one of those children but I? —

“Earth to Professor Trelawney,” Charlie says, and I blink, so lost in my thoughts I almost forgot who I was with.

I bite my lip. “Wow. I thought I was the dork, but you’ve just surpassed me with the obscure Harry Potter reference.”

“I’m pretty sure the fact that you know exactly who I meant puts us on equal dork footing.”

“It was inaccurate anyway. I see myself more as a Luna Lovegood type. The blonde hair, etcetera.”

“Well played. You’re back to being the dorkiest. Now, stop daydreaming and admit what we’re both thinking: this place is a lost cause.”

I blink again, shocked. “A lost cause? No. I…” How does he not see it?

Even without this overwhelming sense that I belong here, the value of this place is obvious.

We’re standing in the foyer, and ahead of us, a grand staircase spills upward toward the second floor, twisting in two separate directions at the landing, a stained-glass window at its center.

To both our left and right are massive rooms with views out to the grassy lawn and water on the other side.

It has great bones, yes, but it also holds something else.

It’s like this…jewelry box of past lives and rich memories. Can’t he see that?

Of course he doesn’t. This is Charlie. He notices hot girls and nice cars and the gleam of Jack Daniels over ice. Here, he only sees cracked plaster and the loose wires hanging off the walls and the water-damaged ceiling. He might also be noticing the…

“Holy shit. Charlie, tell me it wasn’t your mother who put in that carpet.”

Because they didn’t even do wall-to-wall carpet at the turn of the century, which means there’s probably hardwood beneath the nasty gray shag rug in the room to our left.

“That was always there as far as I know.”

“My God. Why didn’t your mother ever pull it up?”

He shrugs as if it couldn’t possibly matter. “Maren, believe me, the carpet is the least of my concerns. Have you not noticed the fucking water damage…What the hell are you doing?”

I’ve fallen to my knees on the carpet and am digging through my purse.

I brandish a tiny pair of nail scissors, which I’m fairly certain I wasn’t supposed to have flown with, and jam it into the base of the carpet, clipping at whatever holds it together.

Under normal circumstances, I doubt manicure scissors would have worked, but the carpet is so dilapidated that it gives way with little resistance, spewing dust into the air as I slice.

“Maren, I repeat, what the fuck are you doing?”

I can’t pull it back, but I’m able to stick my finger through the hole I’ve created. “Charlie, it’s hardwood. Probably wide-plank hardwood. You could totally refinish these. I’d do a nice honey stain. It would brighten this place up a?—”

His groan stops the flow of my words. “Maren, has the mold in here already gotten to your brain? I’m not worried about refinishing the floors .

The roof is caving in and half the windows are broken.

It’s probably not even sound, and if the structural engineer weren’t already scheduled, I wouldn’t even bother hiring one. It’s just going to get torn down.”

“ No. ” I climb to my feet. “Charlie, you can’t tear it down. Please.”

His teeth sink into his lower lip as he searches for a polite way to tell me no. “Mare…we’ll see what the engineer says, but I think you’re not grasping how much work saving this place would take, if it’s even possible.”

I think he’s not grasping how much work a home like this deserves and I don’t know how to persuade him if he doesn’t see it already.

Nothing changes as we take in the rest of the house. When I gush over the real, wood-burning fireplaces, he groans over the signs that a family of birds has been entering through the chimney. When I point out the elaborate molding along the ceiling, he points out the wasp’s nest in one corner.

Charlie refuses to let me go upstairs with him, which he claims is for my safety but is more likely because he doesn’t want me falling more in love with this place than I already have.

I have to fight myself to do as I’m told because that sense I had—that the house wants me here—is even stronger now.

And it wants me upstairs , in particular.

I wait impatiently, listening to the thud of his steps above me, and the oddest sensation washes over me.

A chill, goose bumps and then…delight. A giddy thrill, the sort I haven’t felt in a decade at least. It’s the way I used to feel in high school as my friends and I got ready to meet the boys from Collegiate at the one club that would let us in.

As if something magical is about to happen—something I’ll never forget.

It eases away as he starts down the stairs, like a bashful friend darting from the room, but…something remains behind.

It feels a bit like hope.

Charlie shakes his head, his pessimism unchanged. “All six rooms are in terrible shape.”

“I don’t care,” I say on a breath. “Don’t you see what it could be? I’ll help you. We’ll bring it back.”

He tugs at his hair. Frustrated with me, no doubt, but making far more of an effort to hide it than Harvey would.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on with you here, but renovating this place will cost millions.

All my money is tied up in the stock market and that team I’m funding in San Antonio.

And we’re only here for a week. How much do you even think we’d accomplish? A job like this will take years .”

“I’ll help,” I blurt before I’ve thought it through. “And I have my trust fund. I can use that. And Henry loves you. I’m sure he’d?—”

Charlie stops me with a gentle squeeze of the bicep. “ Maren, I’m not using your trust fund, and I like Henry, but I’m sure as fuck not asking my stepmother’s ex-husband for a loan. You see how incredibly awkward that would be, don’t you?”

I guess he has a point. But I have a point, too, albeit an entirely intuitive and possibly illogical one.

This place isn’t meant to be torn down. Somehow, in the next six days, I’ve got to convince him to save it.