Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
S leep was for the weak, right? Anyway , Bryan kept telling himself so as he lay awake hour upon hour.
He’d made a terrible misstep with Grace , one he might not be able to walk back.
Tossing and turning, hard as stone, he couldn’t stop imagining various experiments they could perform, all the ways they could try to help her orgasm—though he knew she’d castrate him on the spot for daring to think it.
’Cause she was absolutely right. She wasn’t his problem to solve.
It just seemed such a very great shame for her to go through life without ever coming if she wanted to, and Christ , he wanted to try. She might not get there, but they’d have a good time.
Finally, her bedroom door opened and the loo door closed, and he waited to see if she’d react to the state of it. When she returned to her own room without comment and shut herself inside with her laptop, he rose and dressed and set to work.
He and Lùc had already done most of the prep: tearing out a linen closet to make more space at the entrance and ripping up the old lino flooring to get at the pipes and lay additional heating coils. Then came the tricky part, where they’d cut a hole, all the way through the outer stone wall, and inserted steel beams to add in a window. Shockingly , the neighbors hadn’t flayed him alive for it immediately, but the added light was really going to open up the tiny room.
Now it was time for the most difficult part yet: rerouting pipes. Bryan was no plumber, but he’d learned a bit operating the still at Ardbeg , and a bit more chasing leaks around his Islay flat. Hopefully it would be enough.
By the time Lùcas arrived, Bryan had torn out the remaining shower tiles and split the incoming water pipes. He’d also rerouted the drains to carry greywater outside to the site of his future reclamation garden. His cousin’s eyes bugged out at the spiderweb of piping, and Bryan didn’t blame him. He wasn’t completely confident he wouldn’t flood the whole house the minute he turned the water back on.
“Was your da able to order it?” Bryan asked.
“Didn’t have to. For some reason he had one in stock. He’ll bring it tomorrow.”
Bryan blinked at that. “ We can go get it.”
Lùcas shrugged. “ Said he’d deliver it. I think he wants to help. Or at least get an eyeful,” he amended.
“Best get ready for him, then,” Bryan said, with a choked laugh.
They affixed new hexagonal tiles in shades of honeyed cream down the walls and along the floor, working in companionable silence to convert the tiny, tired old bathroom into a fresh, more open, more beautiful space. Instinctively , Lùcas seemed to know better than to bring up what happened yesterday, and before long they were finished, except for the part that would cover the piping.
“Now what?” Lùc asked.
“It’ll be an arse ache to have to tear it out if we needed to access the pipes again,” Bryan worried.
His cousin nodded. The argument made perfect sense. The part Bryan wasn’t saying out loud was his fear they’d have to do just that, and sooner rather than later, thanks to his plumbing skills.
“You could just hide it?” the boy suggested—the artist was a visionary, it seemed. “ But actually, I meant now what do we do if anyone needs to pish?”
Bryan’s stomach sank. Of course the tile would take hours to cure before anyone could walk on it. He could go in the backyard if he had to but… “ She’ll have to go next door,” he grumbled. She would probably join Wesley in a hotel by teatime.
He taped a note to the door suggesting the library, the pub, or the neighbor’s if Grace needed the facilities, and they went outside to build a low sort of cabinet which could be set over the new piping for easy access. Bonus , it could also double as a tiny bench or stool. Then Lùcas helped him set up the rows of planters which would triple filter the bath water before cycling it back inside to flush the toilet.
With that done, there was nothing to do but wait, so Bryan made them sandwiches and they sat out on the porch watching the last of the storm clouds blow away. Lùcas showed him some ideas he’d had for whisky labels and distillery logos, some of them incorporating the bee from Bryan’s own tattoo.
“These are incredible, Lùc , really.”
His cousin didn’t stop beaming the rest of the afternoon.
* * *
Grace seemed determined to keep her distance, so Bryan followed her lead. After Lùcas left, he took out his tablet and spent the better part of the evening spinning his wheels trying to compose a speech.
After the scene at the ceilidh, he was more than a little worried the town would tar and feather him alongside his investor, who was coming here in the hope of meeting villagers as excited about the project as they were. If Bryan was going to win Jules over, he would need to win his neighbors over, too.
It was nauseating to contemplate, but he knew it was true. He needed to open the house to the whole island, perhaps share his business plan and explain how he’d preserve what each of them cherished most about Barra , just as his father’s Bàgh a’ Chiùil festival had done.
To that end, he was planning a reception where he would try to speak from the heart, to say all the things Grace had been able to put into words which he had not. If only he were as good at it as she was.
The next afternoon, once Bryan had finished installing the new shower glass, he was hanging shelves, recovered and refinished from the old linen closet, when Lùcas arrived with his father and the pièce de résistance: a beautiful, gleaming slipper bath. Lùcas had measured well. It would fit perfectly under the new window between the shower and the opposite wall.
A wave of pleasure settled low in Bryan’s belly.
Uncle Dàibhidh had indeed come for an eyeful as Lùc had predicted, but he looked around in seeming awe of what his son and nephew had accomplished. He patted Lùc’s shoulder, nodding, and the boy flushed with delight.
Once the tub was settled into place, Uncle Dàibhidh clapped Bryan on the back too and said, “ Sure and your grandad wouldn’t have turned up his nose at a soak in this masterpiece.”
A knot in Bryan’s chest loosened as his throat grew tight. “ Do you mind having a look at the pipes?” Bryan rasped, swallowing his nerves.
His uncle was only too delighted to offer an opinion, and aside from tightening a few fittings, he pronounced everything in perfect order, the water ready to be turned back on. Bryan allowed him to do the honors, and thankfully nothing flooded except his pride.
* * *
The day wore on, and Bryan grew more and more restless over Grace’s complete absence. He hadn’t seen her emerge for food or water—indeed he’d be convinced she’d slipped out without saying goodbye except he could hear the rapid clacking of her keyboard. He knew better than to interrupt, so he tried again to work on his speech, but he simply couldn’t focus.
It wasn’t healthy for her to stay locked up in there so long.
Of course, he was eager to show her the new tub, and it was long past time to switch the power over to run off the fully charged solar battery. Jules would arrive in a matter of days, and if anything went wrong with the cutover, Bryan would need time to keep his head and get on with fixing it before they arrived. For some reason he didn’t want to face that moment of truth alone.
After a bit of pacing and wringing his hands, he tapped on her door. When she didn’t answer, he peeked inside.
How far gone was he that wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with Mind if I check you out?, purple leggings, and a bun so messy a bird could nest in it, she was the most appealing person he’d ever seen, hunched over her laptop with a pen between her teeth?
He swallowed. “ Rios ?”
“One sec.”
“Sorry to bother?—”
“You’re not,” she interrupted.
“I need to cut over to the solar power.”
“Awesome,” she replied, about as interested as if he’d told her he’d seen a seagull outside.
“Okay then…”
He wanted her to ask what all the noise next door had been about, but the headphones charging at her elbow had probably blocked most of it.
“Congrats,” she murmured in a way that sounded more dismissive than congratulatory.
He lingered in the doorway. Was she listening to him at all, or responding without hearing? In his imagination, she would have joined him as he switched over to the battery and then shared a celebratory dram, maybe even a hug, but those were purely selfish desires when clearly she was in the zone.
“I’ll just do it now then.”
“Sounds good,” she said, not looking up from her typing.
“The lights will go out. The Wi - Fi too.”
“Uh huh.”
It was his fault, of course, for interrupting her when she was working. Her deadline was looming for this book, another award winner, no doubt. Of course this wasn’t the most important part of her day. Maybe she still hoped he’d make good on their deal—cut the power over and then just fade away, leaving the house to her. Why else would she have put up with him so long? But there was still the cistern to install, completing his water reclamation circle, along with a few other odds and ends.
With something awfully like regret, he closed her door and headed to the fuse box inside his bedroom closet. It took only a moment to shut down power to the house and route everything over to the new solar battery. The lights were back on in a few minutes. So far so good.
And then Grace howled, “ Are you fucking kidding me?” and his stomach sank.
When he peeked in her room, she was slumped over the laptop with her head in her hands.
“What is it?” he asked cautiously.
“You!” she rounded on him. “ What did you do?”
“I—”
“Did you accidentally blow a fuse or something?”
“I—”
“I’ve lost everything!”
“What?”
She gestured at her laptop, hands splayed like she wanted to strangle something. “ Days ’ worth of work! The entire last third is just…” She made a poof gesture.
Bryan blinked, not quite understanding. “ But … but it’s a laptop.”
“A laptop that needs power! No power, no save. The Wi - Fi connection’s been janky, and apparently that little surge wiped out three days of autosave. Or maybe autosave is broken too, I don’t know. This thing is such a piece of shit.”
She hadn’t pressed save for three days?
“I warned you I was about to?—”
“What? When ?”
“Just a minute ago. You said ‘awesome.’ You said ‘congratulations.’”
She stared at the ceiling as though thinking back over the last few minutes and then she moaned.
“Don’t laptops run on b-battery? Isn’t that the whole allure of a laptop?”
“Don’t laptop shame me! It’s old. It doesn’t hold a charge anymore.”
“I’m sorry, Rios ,” he said, feeling proud of himself for not adding why would you write so much without making a backup?
She hung her head. “ I’m sure my editor will be glad to hear it.”
Her sigh was so deep it broke his heart a little. He knew she hadn’t been listening, not really. She’d been deep in her authorial fever , but he’d gone ahead and pulled the plug anyway.
“What can I do?”
She shook her head.
“You should take a break,” he said, keeping his voice even. “ Let me show you?—”
“I don’t have time to take a break. Have you heard anything I said? I just lost so many words!”
“Just for a minute,” he persuaded.
If she saw the tub, he knew she’d calm down. Then she could take a long hot bath and relax and either find the missing backup or remember the missing words.
“Please?” he coaxed.
Scrubbing a hand across her glistening eyes, she relented to being led next door to the loo, and when her gaze landed on the tub her face softened for half a second.
“Do you want to try it out?” he whispered, his voice husky with excitement.
Just like that, her face drained of color and she shrank away from him, her expression shuttered. “ Are you serious right now?”
Oh. Maybe this had been another miscalculation. “ Yes …?”
“A bath?” She was nodding her head like some kind of bobble toy, fighting off tears. “ And then what?”
“And then…” he faltered. His mouth opened and closed like a codfish, trying to find his own lost words. “ Whatever ?” he finally managed.
“You think you’re the first man who tried to seduce me with a bubble bath, Bryan MacNeil ?” Now she shook her head repeatedly. “ Maybe the first who went so far as remodeling a whole bathroom, but whatever you seem to think, you’re not going to fix me.”
“That’s not?—”
“You’re all the same. I don’t have time for this.”
“Rios, there was no?—”
“Right,” she interrupted again, squeezing past him, pressing herself into the wall so she wouldn’t so much as brush against him as she rushed out of the bog that no longer looked as bright or beautiful or inviting as he’d thought. Now it just seemed old and tired and try-hard.
“This wasn’t a ruse to get you into b-bed,” he said, following her out of the loo.
“Of course not. It never is, right? There ’ s other ways ? Come on.”
“I didn’t know what you wanted from me that night. I don’t now! This isn’t— I just thought you could relax?—”
“I don’t need to relax. I actually work better under pressure, but thanks.” She was breathing too fast, blinking back tears. “ I know none of this is your fault, okay? I shouldn’t have stayed here. Wes was right, it was silly—no, really.” She stopped his protests before they could leave his lips. “ You’re just doing what you need to do, I get it. Your deadline is sooner than mine, and as I’ve told literally everyone on this island, this is your place. I’m the one in the way. I’m the problem, again— Wes tried to tell me that. You tried to tell me that. And honestly, if I would have just listened, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“You d-don’t need to g-go,” he said, cursing himself for choking on his words now, when he needed them most. “ You’re n-n— You’re not in the way. I lo— I’m in lo?—”
“Thanks, Bryan , truly. But I should go. I think we both know that.”
She was throwing clothes into her suitcase now, and he was powerless to stop her. He couldn’t get a word in. Why wasn’t she hearing him? “ S -s-stop.” He intercepted one of her t-shirts, but she refused to look at him.
“Let’s not try to force something where it doesn’t belong. I was always going to leave. This is vacation. It’s not real life.”
She threw the stupid laptop into a satchel and turned back to her suitcase.
“Rios—”
“It’s no big deal,” she said.
But there were tears in her eyes and he didn’t understand what was happening. Sure , he hadn’t originally included a bathtub in his remodel, and yes, maybe he’d bought it for her, but only because he knew how much she’d like it. Did she really think he was trying to lure her into bed?
“It clearly is a huge deal, and not just about your novel.”
“Just?” she repeated, but the outrage she was reaching for had burned itself out. Her face and throat twitched and contracted like she was trying desperately to hold back the tears he could see filling her chestnut-colored eyes.
“Please talk to me. I can’t fix it if I don’t understand.”
Grace slumped onto the bed beside her suitcase, holding the dress she’d worn to the ceilidh, and Bryan took a hesitant seat on the other end.
“Did I misinterpret your desire for a bath?”
“I love a bath.” She shook her head. “ I’m sorry. I … panic. Sometimes . Especially in bathrooms. With men.”
Bryan wanted to hold her. He wanted to understand, but he sat very still, squeezing the wrinkles out of the t-shirt still clenched in his fist.
“It isn’t you,” she started over. “ I know you would never…” She took a shaky breath. “ It was a knee-jerk overreaction. The bathroom is beautiful. The tub looks amazing.”
An overreaction to what? he wanted to ask, but he knew firsthand it was best to stay quiet when someone was having trouble speaking their truth.
“I’m tired is all.”
She hazarded a look at him and must have seen plainly from his face he wasn’t buying it, because she closed her eyes to start again.
“When I was fourteen, almost fifteen, my best friend was this boy, Justin Everett . We grew up together—our brothers played soccer together until Diego left home.”
A sick feeling settled in Bryan’s stomach, but he kept his eyes on her face.
“Justin got picked on a lot at school. He was kind of small. He liked math a little too much, played the clarinet. Anyway , he started hounding me for one of my bras or my underwear… then, for a naked picture… so he could earn some cred with the other guys.”
Bryan sighed, and it accidentally came out as a low growl. He already hated Justin Everett .
“I kept telling him no. So one day, I was showering after gym and somehow he snuck into the girls’ locker room with a digital camera. He got his picture.”
She bit her lip, and a tear finally trickled down her cheek.
“Every boy in school had seen it by the end of the day. Sister Mary Agnes gave me a three-day suspension, because clearly I had done something to encourage his behavior, or at least not enough to discourage it.”
“You were fourteen, for Christ’s sake,” Bryan growled, ready to tear both Justin and Sister Mary Agnes limb from limb.
“Almost fifteen,” she said again, and that’s when he realized. Her quinceanera. This was the reason she’d cancelled.
“I’m so?—”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.”
Bryan frowned. “ If you want me to kill them, I will. Even the nun.”
She laughed, and then her face clouded once more, and she shook her head. “ You’ve done an incredible job with the house, MacNeil ,” she said, tossing the dress in her suitcase and zipping it closed with such a sense of finality. “ Your investor’s going to fall in love with it as much as I have. The whole town will, the minute you let them in. If you need help writing your speech or anything, let me know. Otherwise , I’ll see you around.”
“You don’t have to,” he said, reaching for her hand.
She cupped his face, running her thumb tenderly over his cheek, and he almost melted into the touch. “ I think I do. Going home was always going to hurt. Maybe it’s time. I’ll be here for the big reveal.”
And like the breath of fresh air that had blown onto the island with her, she left in the same unexpected way she’d come, and he stood there and let her go, still clutching her t-shirt like a lifeline.
Bryan watched through the bedroom window as she hurried down the walk, where a group of neighbors had gathered in front of his garden holding signs that said Not On Our Beach and Elderly Citizens for Elderly Homes and No Change Means No , and when the hell had they started picketing him?
They parted to let Grace pass as though expecting her to yell at them, and she looked like she wanted to, but she shook her head and kept going, so Bryan yanked the curtains closed and climbed into bed to lick his wounds alone.