The House Next Door

I'm thirty-five years old, freshly divorced, and I just moved back into my childhood home next door to the boy I used to babysit.

Except Liam Chen isn't a boy anymore.

He's twenty-three. A grad student in engineering. Six-foot-two of lean muscle, sharp cheekbones, and dark eyes that see far too much. And he's living in his parents' house while they're on a two-year teaching sabbatical in Singapore.

The last time I saw Liam, he was seventeen—all gangly limbs and nervous energy, buried in textbooks and building robots in his garage. I was twenty-nine, newly married, convinced I had my whole life figured out.

Now I'm thirty-five, single, and starting over in the house I grew up in after my marriage imploded spectacularly. My ex-husband left me for his twenty-four-year-old assistant. The cliché would be funny if it didn't still sting.

And Liam? Liam is somehow both familiar and completely foreign. Still brilliant, still intense, but now there's a confidence to him that wasn't there before. A way of looking at me that makes me hyperaware of every year between us.

Twelve years. It shouldn't matter. We're both adults. But it does matter, because I knew him when he was a child. Because our parents were best friends. Because I'm supposed to see him as the kid next door, not as the man who makes my heart race every time I catch him watching me over the fence that separates our yards.

I'm here to heal. To rebuild. To figure out who I am outside of a failed marriage.

Falling for my neighbor—my much younger, off-limits neighbor—is absolutely not part of the plan.

But when has my heart ever cared about plans?

---

The house looked exactly the same.

Same red brick facade, same white shutters, same maple tree in the front yard that I'd climbed as a kid. Even the porch swing was still there, weathered but sturdy, swaying slightly in the breeze.

"You sure about this?" My best friend Rachel helped me carry the last box from the moving truck. "Moving back to your childhood home feels very... symbolic."

"I prefer 'economically sensible.' Rent-free while I figure out my next move beats paying for an apartment in the city." I set the box down in the living room, surveying the familiar space with mixed emotions. "Besides, Mom and Dad are thrilled to have someone maintaining the place while they're traveling."

"They couldn't have sold it?"

"Empty nest syndrome combined with Gen X refusal to let go of real estate? They'll never sell." I smiled despite the heaviness in my chest. "This house has too many memories."

"Good ones?"

"Mostly." I looked out the window at the house next door—the Chen family home, identical to this one in layout but painted a soft grey instead of brick. "I j...