Raising an eyebrow, I placed the bag down and reached for the Velcro on the side of my vest with my free hand. I know some guys were religious about wearing theirs as soon as they put their uniform on, but I wasn’t one of them. Wearing it into work and after it depended on the day, and today I’d been in such a hurry to get her that I hadn’t taken it off before I left.
I still needed to carry it inside with me, though, and this was something she’d wisened onto a couple of days ago, so now there was a wooden bench—one of the ones people sat on to put their shoes on—next to the door that she’d said was for me to put it on. Carefully placing on it, I picked the food up and tried to smile breezily at her.
Yeah, breezy—I could do that.
“Sorry, I did knock before I came in, but you were trying to scare something into fitting.”
Nodding, she replied seriously, “I was in the zone. A bit of the baseboard came off when I touched it to look at the gap. I’ve got the glue Dad recommended, but it won’t fit back in.”
Holding a finger up, I dropped the bag on the counter in the kitchen and then came back and squatted down beside her to see what she was talking about. It took all of one second to figure out what was wrong.
Taking the piece of wood out of her hand, I nudged her aside and leaned into the area. “You’ve got it upside down. Because it’s cut at an angle on this side, if you don’t have it the right way around, it won’t fit,” I explained, pointing at one of the edges.
“Damn my life,” she huffed, moving away and giving me space to work.
Putting some glue on the back, I slotted it into place and held it for forty-five seconds like the instructions on the back said. “Are you going to redo the floors?”
“Yeah, they’re getting sanded down in three weeks, and the floor guy said he could do this burning thing that’ll fit in with the rest of the house before they’re varnished again. I want to retain the old vintage style but just freshen it up a bit.”
Slowly lifting my hand off the piece of wood, I counted to twenty before moving away completely, just in case. “He’ll probably fix that piece and any others properly, but that’ll do for now.” Then, standing up, I looked behind her at the living room. “You planning to commit the perfect murder or something?”
The whole floor was covered in plastic sheeting, which had been taped down to hold it in place.
Rubbing the back of her neck, she lifted one shoulder. “The guy said to get the walls done in there before he comes, so I just… wrapped everything up. The bags around the furniture I’m keeping are the type you put mattresses in when you move, so I figured they’d protect them, too.”
Turning around in a circle, I took in the area behind us where there was a dining room and another living room. Back in the old days, they had a formal living room and a more informal parlor, I guess, but her grandpa had made it into his man cave. The racks with old rifles on them were empty and had been taken down, but the floors hadn’t been covered yet.
“What about the rest of the place?”
Following where I was looking, she threw her arms up in the air. “I don’t know. I want to get the floors done all at once, but Pops had so much shit that I’m running out of places to store it. I can’t even lift half of it and trust me, I’ve tried. It took our dads and your grandpa two days to pull down all the wood paneling and check for damp in the walls, and it’s starting to freak me out. I just don’t know what to do with it all.”
Reaching out, I hooked my arm around her waist and pulled her into my side. “Did you think to ask the rest of us to help, Bex?”
I already knew the answer.
“No,” she sighed, “but I’ll do it. I need to get a storage unit for a little bit so I can get the house fixed up, and then I’ll sort through it while we’re putting it all back. I’ll repurpose a lot of it because I love it, but I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all right now.”
Squeezing her, I pulled my phone out and shot a text off to both of our dads asking for a hand this weekend. Then, knowing he’d have some space, I text Ren Townsend to see if we could store some of it at his place in town. They’d expanded it recently and had large garages out the back that he was looking at ideas for, so he might be okay with it.
I quickly got a yes back from all of them, and Ren was even throwing in help from his brothers.
“Let’s eat before it gets too cold, and then we can get a plan in place for all of this.” I waved my hand at the area around us.
Just as I turned to go to the kitchen, she caught my hand and tugged at it. The expression she was wearing when I looked over my shoulder made my gut hurt. It was sad, wary, relieved, but just plain lost.
“Thank you. I know I should be handling this better than I am, but changing Pops’ house and even thinking about throwing out things he touched hurts more than I can put into words, Logan.”
Squeezing her hand, I smiled sadly. “It’s going to be hard for a while, but you’ve got a lot of people behind you, Bex. You just have to let them know when you need them to hold you up.”
Blowing out a breath, she stared down at the
