Chapter 23 #2
Harper had set up this emergency meeting after seeing the termite damage.
From her blanched face, I probably hadn’t needed to give her the thorough explanation I did.
The conference room was on the list of things to be remodeled in the next phase.
For now, a weak thread of resort music bled through the door, something tropical and too cheerful by half.
The old oak table was a sea of clutter—blueprints unrolled, marked in red and highlighter, half a dozen notebooks, and my laptop open to engineering standards I hadn’t had to quote since college.
“We opened up the north corridor wall behind 1115,” Joe said to the speakerphone, jaw set like a block of concrete.
“Looks solid outside, but the studs behind… you could scrape the inside with your thumbnail. Termite tunnels everywhere, big as a pencil. Whole sill plate’s shot.
Most of the joist pockets at the base are black, mushy. ”
Harper absorbed it, lips thinning. She didn’t flinch—just nodded, eyes flicking down her notes and then over to me.
The engineer’s voice buzzed through the speaker, cool and detached. “Joe, I need you to get me detailed photos of every connection point—beam to joist, sill to foundation. Use a ruler for scale and include a coin for reference if possible.”
Joe nodded. “Chase already had me do that. I’ll send the files to you ASAP.”
“Good,” Elena replied in that calming, professional voice. “No additional demo until we understand the load transfer. Shoring goes in at six-foot intervals, each side. Do not touch any electrical until we clear the zone for safe access.”
I scribbled furiously, mentally mapping the next dozen moves. Every answer Elena gave doubled my mental workload, the kind of math you only do when something’s gone truly sideways.
Jules spoke up, “We need at least a rough shoring estimate by the end of the day, Chase. Labor hours, temporary supports, any specialty hardware—we’ve got maybe thirty grand left in the contingency and only half that isn’t already spoken for.
I need a timeline hit, worst-case scenario, for the lender package.
Does this impact the planned reopening of Room Block One? ”
I eased out a heavy sigh. “Depends on how much retrofitting we end up needing to do. My gut instinct is yes. There will be a delay. But we won’t know for sure until we get Elena’s report.”
Joe raised a brow. “I can get the shoring started as soon as we get the green light. But if any more of that wall crumbles, it could mean the whole block needs to go cold until it’s rebuilt.”
Silence hung. Full, unblinking. The fluorescent buzz and the muted rattle of a passing cleaning cart in the hallway were the only things that dared interrupt.
The engineer’s voice was sharp. “Chase, your crew has eyes on the ceiling cavity too, yes?”
“Yes. We’ll send a camera up as soon as the first shoring’s in. If we see more beam loss, you’ll have photos within the hour.”
Jules piped up again, “Chase, is this isolated, or do you see signs in adjacent rooms?”
“None yet.” I’d been over every inch of the first floor in the hours since the discovery. “We’ll know more once we map the full line. But if the rot runs all the way through…”
I trailed off, not wanting to elaborate on the consequences. Costs would skyrocket, timelines would sink, and all our pretty projections would land in the shredder.
Harper met my gaze. “Chase, I’ll trust you to take point on this. All demo halts on Block One north until Elena has signed off. You’ll update us on the budget and timeline for Jules by the end of the day. Copy?”
I swallowed, impressed as hell with her despite the circumstances. “Understood. Already working on the draft. Will loop Joe and Jules in.”
Jules sounded tired, her usual poise on edge.
“Any additional costs that’ll hit the loan, I need flagged immediately.
If this impacts our occupancy rate for more than two weeks, it changes everything about our operating capital for next quarter.
” She placed both palms against her eyes, then dropped them as if aware of what she was doing.
“I don’t see how this doesn’t blow the budget completely apart, and I’m not sure the bank will give us more money. ”
I scrawled a list, my handwriting degenerating the further my mind ran ahead. Lumber prices, custom supports, engineer fees—it was an avalanche, and we didn’t even know if the peak had broken yet.
Elena’s tone softened, maybe hearing the strain. “My junior associate is already on the way for an emergency assessment. I’ll be along soon. Let’s not panic just yet, okay?”
Harper leaned in, palms pressed to the edge of the table, eyes moving down her checklist. “Anything else we need right now?”
Nobody spoke. It felt like there should be a bell or a buzzer to signal the moment a place crosses from manageable chaos into open crisis.
“Meeting adjourned,” Harper said, softer this time.
Joe gathered his things, legal pad under arm, mouth pressed flat. The look he shot me was absolute, wordless commiseration. He clapped my shoulder, hard enough that I felt it even after he left the room.
Jules lingered, or maybe just hesitated. “Harper, Chase, keep me in the loop. Anything, even a hunch, I need it.”
“You’ll have it,” Harper replied. “Thanks, Jules.”
Then the accountant left too. Suddenly, the room felt twice as large, twice as empty. Harper rubbed at the crease between her brows, shoulders slumping for the first time all day.
My laptop screen reflected the overhead glare.
In the glass, I caught the lines carved deeper than usual at the corners of Harper’s mouth, the telltale tightness of someone holding it together for everyone else.
The way she fielded questions, never let a detail fall, never once let panic into her voice.
Even now, with our history crackling in the air and half the future of the Coleridge legacy shaking overhead, she held the line.
Damn, she was good.
There were moments I envied it, her ability to dig in and manage disaster after disaster, the way she radiated command and reassurance even when I knew—when I could feel—it was costing her something.
I thought of myself, spinning between site visits and late nights, always a half-step from unraveling.
With Harper, there was no unraveling. Just motion.
Always forward. Even now, crisis mode slipping away, she looked almost luminous. Tired, but absolutely in her element.
“Never a dull moment.” I straightened my chaos of papers into some semblance of order. “We should start charging extra for the thrill factor.”
She laughed, a bright sound that finally cracked the tension in the room. “Maybe we can call it an adventure package.”
I smiled, and the weight shifted just enough to breathe again. She caught my eye and held it, something soft and familiar warming the space between us.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said.
Her confidence nudged at the knot in my chest. “I know. It’s just… a lot.”
She nodded, moving closer. There was something reassuring in the way she stood so close, like all those walls weren’t crumbling. “You’re doing everything you can, Chase. We’ll get through this.”
“I hope you still feel that way when we’re replacing half the building.”
She swallowed audibly and raised her chin as if readying herself for bad news. “Do you blame me?”
I cocked my head, dumbfounded. “Why would I blame you for termite damage?”
She laughed, but it came out shaky. “Well, if not blame, then you owe me a ‘I told you so’. This is exactly what you warned me about when we agreed to do the room block floor by floor.”
I mustered a smile and couldn’t resist running a knuckle down the smooth skin of her arm. “You just said it. We agreed. Blame never even entered my mind, so put it out of yours, okay?”
“I am sorry, though.”
“So am I. These things happen. Now we have to figure out where to go from here.”
I reached for a scattered folder just as she did. Our hands met atop the faded architectural rendering, fingers brushing in a potent tangle of intent and accident.
We both froze.
Time caught its breath.
Her eyes, dark as wet earth, met mine. Something hungry, raw, and familiar flared up in the space between us.
The conference room vanished, and there was only the shock of her skin on mine and a cascade of memories I couldn’t bury.
The soft exhale of her breath, the faint tremble in my own hand.
For half a heartbeat, the rest of it—shoring, schedules, the imminent doom—fell away.
I dropped my eyes to her mouth and saw, crystal clear, the way her lips tasted, how her lips always curled up at the corners when she wasn’t on guard.
The pull was tidal. I leaned in before I even registered it. Her hand turned up under mine, just barely, in an unspoken question I ached to answer.
Then everything snapped back, hard. I blinked, mind slamming on the brakes so sharply it almost hurt. The resort was falling apart. Literally. My new business was riding the edge of a landslide.
What the hell am I doing?
I jerked my hand away, too quickly. Cleared my throat, the sound coming out rough and awkward, echoing off the glass and fake wood. “I need to get the shoring estimate to Joe. I’ll text the framing crew, too.”
She didn’t chase me with her eyes. Didn’t smile. Just pulled the structural drawing toward herself, looking suddenly as tired as I felt. “Yeah, there are a billion things to do. At least. Thank you, Chase.”
I scooped up my laptop and the sheaf of half-ruined plans and headed for the door, the strain in my shoulders radiating all the way down my spine. Halfway out, I turned for one last look at her—alone at the table, surrounded by the detritus of another day saved, but not won.
God, I wanted to work things out with her. But how could we when I couldn’t straighten out the thoughts in my own head? When the roof was literally threatening to collapse above us?
The light outside the conference room looked different than when I’d come in, dark and murky by comparison. Somehow, everything I wanted was another cracked beam. Still standing, just barely, beneath the weight of what might come next.