Chapter Twelve
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Only good choices are made in this chapter. Surely.
Fox
I’m not going to survive until Poem’s house is fixed. Not if she’s saying things like exceedingly so in regards to how attractive she finds my body. And especially not if she implies that the attraction is special, and specific, and all for me—not Wolfe.
I’ve been dreaming of her saying words like that to me for so long, but even in my dreams, I never dared to wish that her desires would differentiate between my brother and me on a physical level.
Emotionally, yes, of course. We’re much different.
Physically, though? When I say we’re identical, I mean it.
Our tattoos and our hair alone give us our differences, and both of those are things we had to curate ourselves.
But Poem doesn’t see us the same underneath those pieces of ourselves we’ve forced to stray from each other. When she looks at me, she doesn’t see him at all.
She sees me.
And, sure, she sees me as a frustrating jerk that she’s unhappily attracted to.
But.
She’s attracted to me and not Wolfe.
It’s a miracle I found the willpower to not vault over my kitchen counter, take her into my arms, and ravish her.
It’s a miracle I resisted when I rejoined her, plate empty and heart still racing.
It’s a miracle I’m resisting now, as we stand outside her house and she hypes herself up to face the damage inside.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, reminding them to keep to themselves.
“It’s probably not any worse than yesterday,” I offer, then tilt my chin toward the Big Ron’s Contracting trucks lining the driveway and the massive industrial-sized dumpster sitting against the road.
“It looks like they’ve already gotten started, so it’ll be a mess, but the good sort of mess.
The fixing sort of mess.” The getting Poem back into her house and away from my tempted hands sort of mess.
“I know,” she mumbles, mouth tilting into a frowny pout.
“I’m not super worried about the mess. Well, I kind of am, because I just had it renovated and I’m still paying that off, but I can’t do much of anything about that.
It will be what it will be, I fear, but what it will be is fine in the end if that’s my only problem. My biggest worry is the smell.”
Ah. “The windows were open all night,” I remind her. “Dad triple checked before they left, and he ran some fans while he was getting stuff sorted with Emerson and Warren. If it does smell, it won’t be too bad.” Probably. I’m not an expert on the flooding-to-bad-smell pipeline, though.
“Our house had water damage when I was a kid,” she says, startling me.
Poem never talks about her childhood. Ever.
Not to me, definitely, but not to anyone else, either.
Not even to Almond, per my sister’s concerned mutterings every few months.
Shock is not a big enough word to describe how I feel at her bringing her past up now, of all times.
I stand stock still, careful not to interrupt as she gifts me with rare bits of insight into her unknown life before she came here.
“My parents couldn’t afford—or wouldn’t afford, more likely—to get it fixed, so we had mold.
” She sneers, her little kit canines showing real violence.
“We were sick all the time, which was terrible, but it’s the smell that really sucked.
It stuck in my nostrils for months after we left.
” Her arms cross over her torso as she hugs herself. “If my house smells like that…”
“It won’t,” I assure her, resisting the urge to hide her away from memories that paint her face in derision, sorrow, and worry.
She doesn’t want my comfort. Still, I try with my words, if not my arms around her.
“Emerson and Warren know what they’re doing, and they’d never leave a job having done anything less than the best. There’s an exactly zero percent chance that they finish this job with a speck of water damage, let alone enough to grow anything hazardous to you. ”
Carefully, I lay a hand on top of her head, digging my fingers through her golden locks and down. I repeat the action, petting her until she sags, tension fading.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I don’t know why I told you that.”
“I don’t mind,” I answer in an understatement, fully aware that it wouldn’t be appropriate to blurt, I loved hearing your trauma, please share more.
She huffs, then groans, then stomps her feet. “Okay,” she says, mouth set in determination. “We’re going in.”
“Okay,” I parrot, removing my hand from her hair to squeeze her shoulder while pride zings through me. My kit, so brave, facing scary things that bring forth scary recollections, and doing it with more courage than I have in my left pinky. “We’re going in.”
She nods, squares her shoulders, and marches to the front door. I trail after her, hoping some of her hubris scatters in her wake to land on me.
When we walk inside, the air holds a blissful lack of stink. I make the grand assumption that this is due to the fact that the carpet is gone, half the subfloor is ripped up, and most of the walls are likewise missing. Relief wars with disbelief on Poem’s face.
She stops just inside the door, jaw dropping as she hurriedly steps to the side to allow room for Emerson Wright, one half of the town’s favorite—and only—contractor duo, to carry a hunk of carpet outside. He smiles as his six-foot-one-trillion-inches self passes, bidding us good morning.
“Morning,” Poem answers weakly as her head swivels to the destruction of her home. “Gracious, this is…”
“Progress,” I finish for her. “And excellent progress, at that. They’re moving quickly.”
“It’s not the demo that’s the slow part,” Emerson comments as he rejoins us inside.
“It’s letting everything dry once we have as much out as we can get, then seeing if we need to go back in with heavier equipment to get hard-to-reach and slow-to-dry spots out as well.
” His eyes narrow on the walls. “It’s hard to know for sure how things will dry, but you got the water off before things got too bad, so we’re hopeful we won’t have to do anything too extensive—or costly. ”
Poem blinks. “Emerson, I don’t have floors. What could possibly be considered extensive if not the full removal of floors?”
He opens his mouth to answer, but I put my hand up, stopping him. “Do not give her a laundry list of things to anxiously worry about,” I order. “Especially when they’re unlikely to be a problem.”
Grinning, he nods his acquiescence.
Poem protests. “I think I deserve to know what I might be dealing with.”
“Sure,” I agree. “Except he just said that he doesn’t know for sure what you might be dealing with because he doesn’t know for sure how the house will dry. What’s the point in psyching yourself out with a bunch of maybes and what ifs?”
“Does there have to be a point?” she returns. “Maybe I like laundry lists of things to anxiously worry about.”
My eyes roll. “Worry about stuff you know for a fact requires worrying, then. Like your pajama situation or how we’re wasting time arguing when we still have to go to the store after this.”
I translate the cute little scrunch of her nose to mean, Wow, yes, what logic you have there, Fox. I will follow it immediately.
She turns to Emerson. “Is there a safe way for me to access my bedroom?” she asks. “I need to get more clothes if I’m going to survive the winter.”
A line forms between his brows. “It’s July.”
“Exactly,” she agrees, throwing a glare my way.
His face clears. “Ah,” he says. “You guys are flirting again.”
Discomfort hits my chest like an arrow. “We’re not flirting,” I assert.
“We don’t flirt.” I wouldn’t flirt. Not with anyone, but especially not with Poem.
Not now, before I’ve reformed myself into a stable, upstanding man.
I don’t have the right to flirt with pretty women who deserve the world.
I haven’t earned it yet, and I haven’t absorbed nearly enough of Poem’s shed hubris to think I could do it anyway.
Emerson’s eyes land heavy on mine, and Poem’s fairly dig a hole through the side of my face.
“Why are you snapping at him?” she asks. “And lying while you do it?”
My head whips down, agitation slicing a path through my nerves. “We don’t flirt,” I bark.
Pale gray doll eyes shine up at me, hurt. “We don’t?” she asks, then casts her gaze down to my arm. Her index finger lands feather-light on my tattoo, tracing the ink across my forearm. “But just this morning I was telling you how hot you are. You don’t consider that to be flirting?”
I rip my arm away from her siren touch, hissing as my face burns. “We both know that wasn’t flirting.”
Her lip juts as her hand drops. “You’re being so mean to me,” she accuses.
“Right,” I grunt. “I am being mean to you.”
“Seems like flirting to me,” Emerson observes. “And I’d love for you to be doing it off site, if at all possible. I can’t let you go through when the floor is like this, but if you tell me what you need, I can go get it.”
Poem blanches, dropping her bid to put me into an early grave. “I can’t get through at all?” she asks. “What if I wear a hardhat and promise to be very, very careful?”
He shakes his head. “Even then, it’s a liability issue as much as it is a safety issue. I can’t risk my business any more than I can risk injuring you.”
Her attention shifts to the stairs, sitting a mere ten feet away on the other side of a chasm where her floor used to rest.
“Maybe you can make me a list?” he suggests. “I don’t mind going up for you.”
“No,” she replies firmly. “That’s not… I need clothes and stuff, and I like you, but I don’t like you enough to invite you to dig through my drawers.”
He laughs, taking no offense, then shrugs. “I get that, but if you change your mind, just let me know. I have a sister. A woman’s drawers are not so titillating to me.”
“I appreciate that,” she says, reaching for nonchalance. “And yet, still no. I’ll just buy extras of the stuff I want. What’s another several hundred dollars when I’m already dishing out so many?”
He winces. “Seriously, I can grab whatever you need.”
“Ah, but my pride,” she sighs.
“What if we go in from outside?” I suggest, glancing at the ladders leaning against the dumpster by the road. “Through the window?”
Two heads turn, but only one of them considers my suggestion.
“In what way would that possibly solve the safety or liability issue?” Emerson asks, frowning. “I can’t have her up one of my ladders on the side of the house. Are you nuts?”
“I have a ladder in the shed,” Poem says. “Surely there’s no liability problems if the homeowner gets on her own ladder and starts climbing it, right?”
“You heard me say ‘safety,’ too, right? As in, I care about keeping you safe?”
She waves away his worry. “I bring that ladder out every spring to clean the gutters. It’s perfectly safe. Sturdy. Nothing to worry about.”
In the spirit of saving several hundred of Poem’s dollars, I do not mention that when she pulls the ladder out every spring to clean the gutters, I am the one who goes up it and does the cleaning.
I do concur about the safety of the ladder, though, to ease Emerson’s mind.
“Very sturdy,” I assure him. “And I’ll be with her. ”
“Exactly!” she declares. “Fox will be with me. You think Fox would let me get hurt? On the very same day that I declared my undying love for the beauty of his outer shell?” She tsks. “Don’t insult the man.”
Well. That’s. One way to say it, I suppose.
Emerson’s hands go up. “Okay,” he capitulates. “It’s your house and your ladder. But if you get hurt, I want it on the record that I have nothing to do with it, and that I advised against this plan.” He glances at me. “Particularly if anyone specific should ask.”
“Sure,” she agrees readily. “Get me a pen. I’ll put it in writing.”
He does, and she does, signing her declaration of Emerson’s innocence with a flourish.
“Since it’s been well and established that you have nothing to do with anything,” I start, rocking back on my heels. “Do you think that you could go upstairs and make sure her window’s unlocked? And, preferably, open?”
He snorts, eyes rolling, but agrees. “I’ll put some rope in the bedroom, too,” he offers. “Because that is where I’m storing it, not because it would be a handy way to lower things down.”
“Of course, of course.” Poem nods. “I heard all contractors store their rope in their clients’ bedrooms. It’s a prime storage area.”
The corners of his deep brown eyes wrinkle. “You’re a bit of a menace, you know that?”
Poem beams. “Thank you!”
“And where’s my compliment?” I ask, frowning.
“I gave you several compliments this morning,” Poem reminds me. “When we were flirting.”
“Those weren’t compliments, and it wasn’t flirting,” I retort. “Plus, they didn’t come from Emerson.”
“What do you care about getting praise from Emerson?”
“I don’t,” I answer. “I just don’t want the special attention going to your head.
You’d never shut up about it.” And, much as I like Emerson, I do not want to listen to Poem waxing poetic about him boosting her ego.
Unless, of course, it’s followed up with discourse about how he joins the ranks of men she’s not attracted to, resting beside my dear brother.
“You don’t think I deserve special attention?” she pouts. “You don’t like when I talk?”
My eye twitches. “Nevermind,” I tell Emerson. “We’ll be around back in five. That give you enough time?”
He nods, lips curved in amusement. “Plenty of time for me to do nothing out of the ordinary at all, you handsome, intelligent, wonderful man.”
Ah.
My lips thin. “Double nevermind,” I decide. “I didn’t need the compliments.”
They laugh as I shake away the sensation of Emerson’s words, pinpricks of distress leaving a sting on my skin. I wait for their laughter to fizzle out to request an audible agreement that he will not be complimenting me out loud to my face ever again.
Thankfully, he agrees.
Suitably assured that he will never make such a poor decision, we leave him to make only perfectly reasonable ones instead.
Five minutes later, Poem slips into the house after one of his reasonable decisions provides her with the perfect avenue for retrieving her things.
Twenty minutes after that, I regret every decision made today, reasonable and unreasonable alike.