“I told you I played sports. And I loved construction. But my real talent came in the form of spelling bees.” He pulled out a stack of plaques, certificates, and trophies. “I took first place at a national competition.” His face held a bit of harnessed pride as he set everything at my feet. “I liked words. Dissecting them. Studying their origin. A full year of Latin. My mom used to say I’d never find a woman who really appreciated my word-loving soul. And she was so disappointed in me when I let that love of words die, when I found my new favorite words like…” he smirked “…well, most of them were and still are four-letter words. Sometimes simplicity is best. So gone were the days of winklepicker shoes and ulotrichous women. I gravitated toward fuck, fucker, and fucking. It helped me fit in.”

His gaze seemed to be focused on the past or maybe whatever was still in the box. “Who would have ever imagined that a girl … a young woman ten years younger than me would breeze into my life. Beautiful? Yes. Quirky? Absolutely. Innocent? Painfully so. But also a cruciverbalist.” Shaking his head, gazing in the box, and irony curling his lips, he pulled out tablets and notebooks, tossing them at my feet with the spelling bee awards.

I bent down and picked one up. Inside, it was filled with hand drawn crossword puzzles.

“Cruciferous …” I whispered, easing my head side to side. He pretended to not know what a cruciverbalist was. Fisher did play me, just not in the way I thought.

“An eighteen-year-old cruciverbalist. Really, what were the chances?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I glanced up at him.

He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. “I don’t know. I think I was in shock. And maybe a little awe was involved. A suffocating dose of confusion. A little anger at the timing, at your age. At the fact that you’re Rory’s daughter.”

I thumbed through more pages of his notebook. “Do you love me, Fisher?” My gaze remained on the notebook, my voice steady, almost passive as if I was asking him about the weather or his day.

“Reese, it doesn’t matter.”

My head inched side to side. “You mean it doesn’t change anything. And maybe you’re right. But …” I lifted my gaze. “It matters.”