23. Jack
23
JACK
VENGEFUL COCK BLOCKING GHOSTS
“Y ou know, tricking me into helping you move furniture by saying you wanted to get together for beers is a dick move,” Drew grunted as he heaved the front side of the mattress up Aurora’s stupid staircase.
The plastic cover made the damn thing slippery as shit. I readjusted my grip on the bottom of the mattress and continued to heave it up to the balcony.
Drew poked his head around the mattress and glared at me. “ Seriously ? She’s one person. Does she actually need a king-size bed?”
“Pick it up and walk. I’m losing my grip again,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
“You better be getting laid for this,” Drew said. “ And I better get credit for it.”
I wasn’t getting laid, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
We eased the mattress onto the balcony and paused to take a breather as the midday heat beat down on us.
“Tell me why you’re doing this again?” Drew said as he used the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his face. “ Because no girl is worth building furniture for on your day off.”
Aurora was.
I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my shorts to check the time. She’d be back in a few hours.
We slid the mattress in the door and navigated it around the living room mess before finally getting it through the bedroom door. Thankfully , I had already gotten the bed frame built.
Aurora would be temporarily mad that I had packed up her air mattress, but one night on a real mattress and she’d change her tune.
“Damn, dude,” Drew said when we had heaved the mattress on top of the box spring. “ Did you do all this?”
I looked around at the room. It was night and day compared to what Aurora had left the night before.
The walls were painted a moody emerald color she had been eyeing at the hardware store. The second coat I did this morning was almost dry, thanks to the open windows bringing in the heat. I had bought the simple bedside table at a thrift shop down the coast and gave it a little TLC at my place. The lamp was another discount find. It had character and just needed a new shade. I'd found the rug on clearance.
The drafting table was another beast entirely.
Aurora loved to spread out as much as she could in the cramped widow’s watch to write. She would curl up on the floor and have pages, drinks, and notebooks scattered all around. When I couldn’t find a desk that was functional enough for her, I had one commissioned.
There was a benefit to small towns—everyone knew everyone. A few months ago, we responded to a structure fire that started because a local artist was burning designs into furniture. The wood-burning tool he had been using accidentally rolled across his workspace and lit his curtains on fire.
When the aftermath was cleared, Cedar Island pitched in to build him an outbuilding so he could continue making pieces.
And this was a masterpiece .
The drafting table could go from sitting to standing. The worktop could tilt up or lie flat. The legs were carved in ornate swirls. The surface had been burned with a mural of the aurora borealis. The artist had used stains to add a whisper of color against the dark wood. It was subtle and breathtaking and completely unable to fit in her little car for the drive back to Colorado .
That was the point.
If she wanted it, she had to stay. And I knew she would want it.
Aurora had been working her ass off—chipping away at the house during daylight hours, and writing like a madwoman under the moonlight. She deserved a real fucking bedroom.
Besides, if she wouldn’t come over to mine, I was going to make her think of me every time she lay down.
“Yeah. I started as soon as she left yesterday. I had the furniture waiting at my place. Just needed you to help me haul it up.”
He stabbed me in the chest with a pointed finger. “ You owe me more than a beer. I don’t do free labor.”
I laughed. “ This is payback for when you had me help you move into that shitty apartment, and then out of it a week later when it got flooded in that storm.”
“Fair,” he conceded. “ You’ve got me there.”
“Besides, this was just a mattress and box spring and a desk. I didn’t have you hauling a fridge, washer, and dryer.”
“The desk from hell,” he corrected, taking another look at the drafting desk we had set up in front of the oceanfront window. “ What does that thing weigh? A cool half-ton?”
I shrugged. “ I didn’t expect it to be so heavy, but it's solid wood.”
“And the size of a football field. Why’d you have it made so big?”
“Roar likes to spread out when she works. Other desks were too small or they looked like an office cubicle.”
Drew studied me for a minute, then cracked a grin and shook his head. “ You’re down bad, dude. You do remember she’s leaving at the end of the summer, right?” He looked around. “ This is a big investment for some pussy.”
I cut him a glare and he lifted his hands, silently letting me know he’d watch his mouth.
“I’m just saying. If you want to get laid, there are easier ways than breaking into your neighbor’s house and furnishing her bedroom when she’s not around. Where is she anyway?”
I unbagged the sheets I had picked up at the store. Rather than buying some giant, fru-fru comforter, I brought over one of the quilts from my house and the pillow she had slept on.
. . . And I may have sprayed it with my cologne.
All’s fair in love and war.
“One of her friends is on a book tour. She drove down to Wilmington to see her at one of the stops.”
That got his attention. “ The married one or the one with the cool hair?”
“The married one.” My judgmental tone was accented with a sharp look. I didn’t want him getting any ideas about Aurora’s friends.
Whitney was married, but Aurora would never forgive me if Willow’s heart was broken by association. She cared about their feelings way more than her own.
“Let me guess. Aurora doesn’t want a fling.”
I shook my head as I smoothed out the bedding. “ No , that’s actually exactly what she wants.”
“So what’s the problem?” When I didn’t say anything, Drew made the leap. “ That’s not what you want.” He blinked in disbelief. “ You actually want to date her.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” I said as I arranged the pillows at the head of the bed. “ Because she made it clear that it’s not happening.”
“So, what are you doing all this for?”
I grabbed the empty shopping bags and discarded packaging. “ Because I made it clear that I’d respect her position. I never said I’d make it easy for her to hold that position.”
“You’re telling me that you actually want to go steady with a woman, and she doesn’t want to go steady with you?” Drew tossed his head back and laughed. “ The fucking irony.”
“Thank you for rubbing it in,” I clipped. “ You can go next door and grab a beer from my fridge.”
“You’re serious?” Drew crossed his arms over his chest. “ Because I’ve known you for fifteen years and you haven’t wanted a girl since Lucas died and your folks moved.” He looked at me warily. “ And you meet the long-lost Whitlock and suddenly you’re over the loss?”
“I think the idea that anyone gets over a loss is a lie. You just get used to the pain. It becomes the new normal. It scabs and scars, but it never disappears. You live with the ache. Then you start to forget it’s there most of the time.” I sighed. “ So , no. I’m not over it. But she makes it hurt a little less. I like being around her. She’s so fucking smart and insightful. She’s a workhorse. Stubborn as hell. It’d be annoying if it wasn’t so damn cute.”
Drew shoved his hands in his pockets. “ You always did like a challenge. Just don’t fuck it up or the dead aunt might haunt you for the rest of your life. That’d be kinda hard to explain to your next girlfriend. ‘ Sorry , Ashley . The ghost of my ex’s great-aunt who lived next door keeps throwing lamps across the room and slamming doors because she’s pissed I broke her niece's heart. Maybe we should sleep at your place or she’ll drop the ceiling fan on us.’” He scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “ Yeah . I’d be careful. There’s no telling what a vengeful cock blocking ghost can do.”
Drew’s antics made me think back to the water heater situation. Had it actually gone out, then mysteriously worked the next day? Or did Aurora lie about it breaking because she wanted an excuse to come over?
How much did she actually not want this, and how much was she fighting how badly she did want it?
There was only one way to find out.
Drew was long gone, and the sun had almost set by the time Aurora’s car sputtered into the driveway. I really needed to get that bucket of bolts looked at, but I knew she’d pitch a fit about it.
Frankly, I wasn’t sure how she made it all the way to Wilmington and back.
I had thought about waiting her out at my place, but two things would happen. One , she would see the room without me. Two , she might not come over. She was about to find out that I had broken into the house yet again, but I decided to keep the ruse up a little longer and sit outside on the stairs.
“You’re like a puppy who waits at the door for its human to come back,” Aurora said when she climbed out of the car.
“So you’re a dog person. Noted .”
She popped her hands on her hips and thought for a moment. “ Actually , I’m a cat person. Cats are way better.”
I scoffed. “ In what world are cats better?”
“Cats are independent. They’re clean. They’re not deliriously needy and clingy. They respect your space and expect theirs to be respected in return. Sure , a dog will love you unconditionally, but it will also make you love it unconditionally when it swallows your underwear and you just have to wait for it to make a grand exit.”
Before she could grab her overnight bag out of the backseat, I beat her to it. “ True , but I’ve never had to rescue a dog from a tree. Cats are assholes.”
She smirked. “ Maybe that’s why I get along with them.”
“How was the trip?”
“Annoyingly long,” she groused as she trudged up the stairs. “ The speed limit is stupidly slow on the coast. It took forever.”
I chuckled. “ I meant, how was visiting Whitney ?”
“Oh.” She paused on the top step. “ It was good. We went out to dinner last night when I got into the city. The event was today. She had a ton of people show up to see her so it was a little chaotic. I hung out with Miles most of the time and the three of us grabbed a bite afterward.”
“Do you miss them?” I asked as I opened the door for her. She didn’t even question why it was unlocked. She had left it that way.
Aurora shrugged. “ We never saw each other in-person a lot even before I quit. Long -distance friendship and all that.” She paused as soon as she set foot inside. “ Why does it smell like paint in here?”
“I have a surprise for you,” I said as I set her bags in the living room.
Aurora froze. “ What did you do?”
Instead of telling her, I put my hand on her back and led her to the bedroom door. She turned the knob, waltzed right in, then stopped dead in her tracks.
“Jack . . .” It was that same breathy whisper she had breathed when we had fucked.
I stood behind her and smoothed my hands up and down her arms. “ You needed a bed. A real one.”
She let out a gasp of disbelief. “ This isn’t just a bed. It’s a whole bedroom. And the walls . . .”
The emerald green was a risky move. Her plan for the rest of the house was builder’s beige—something inoffensive that would resell easily. But her reaction was all the confirmation I needed.
“I can’t believe you did this in one night. This would have taken me a week at least.”
“Drew helped. And I had things ready to go at my place. I started as soon as you left.”
“Remind me to send Drew a thank-you note,” she muttered under her breath. “ You had all this at your house? How did I not know?”
“Because you’ve been avoiding my house.”
Her cheeks flushed crimson red. Aurora moseyed over to the drafting table to avoid the subject.
“What do you think?” I asked as I stood behind her and watched as she smoothed her hands over the burned mural that was sealed across the top of the desk.
She pressed her fingertips to her lips, shaking her head. “ It’s . . . it’s incredible. Where the hell did you find it?”
“I had it made for you.”
She spun like a whirlwind. “ You . . . You what ?”