21. Ambrose
AMbrOSE
N o one, not even Dax, knew I’d been restoring my great-uncle’s old house.
They all assumed it had rotted away, but I’d been slowly working on it since a few months after my return.
It wasn’t finished, but the power and water were hooked up again, and the lower floor had air conditioning, though I’d yet to put the ducts in for the upstairs.
It might be a bit rough, but Eric would view it as far more livable than my cabin, and now that I knew how handy he was, he could help me if he really did want things between us to last.
I’d intended to show it to Dax first, but I hoped it would be okay that I was taking Eric there.
I didn’t think Dax would mind, and I’d mainly wanted to show him first so I could gloat that I’d done a much more extensive renovation than he had, even if it wasn’t perfectly historically accurate.
It was as much like the pictures I’d found in our aunt’s old albums as I could make it, and I’d even salvaged a lot of the original materials.
“Are you going to tell me about this other place we can go?”
He shook his head. “All I’ll say is that you’ll like it more than my cabin.”
“It’s not a tent or a couple of hammocks strung up between cypress trees, is it?”
I laughed. “No, you’ll have a roof over your head.”
“And walls around me?”
“Yes, now go.”
Neither of us took long to pack. I stayed out of sight as Eric drove through town, but once we were past where people might be watching, I climbed into the passenger seat.
“Pull over the next chance you get. I’ll drive.”
He gave me a disapproving look.
“Watch the road.”
He turned his eyes back to the rough pavement in front of us. “You have no idea how to find the place we’re going. I doubt anybody does unless Dax or Beau have better memories than I think.”
“You could direct me there.”
“It’s too complicated. Just let me drive.”
Eric still looked annoyed.
“You do realize this truck is going to get scratched up no matter who drives it through the bayou.”
“Yes, that’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
He huffed. “I like control. I don’t like being a passenger.”
The petulant tone of his voice made me smile. “Sometimes you don’t mind losing control.”
“I might enjoy letting you fuck me, but letting you drive… I think that will be the opposite of fun.”
“Are you saying you didn’t enjoy the ride on my bike?”
“I was sure you were going to kill us.”
“You didn’t like being right behind me, pressed up against me.”
“Fuck, you know I did, but I don’t get to be pressed against you while you drive my truck.”
“No, but I’ll hold your hand if you get scared.”
He flipped me off as he pulled into a graveled area where fishermen parked when they headed down to the small dock barely visible through the trees.
He scowled at me as he shoved the gear shift into park and reached for the door handle. “Don’t make me regret this.”
I grabbed the front of his shirt, yanking him toward me. “Have you regretted any of the time you’ve spent with me?”
He held my gaze for several seconds then closed his eyes. “No. Not at all.”
“That’s what I thought. Now, let’s get going.”
Eric clutched the door and squeezed my fingers almost hard enough to break them as I showed off, driving faster than I should through basically nonexistent paths. Limbs smacked the truck, and I’m sure he thought we were headed into the water a few times.
“We’re almost there,” I told him when I turned onto the path a few other bayou residents had helped me clear for trucks to get in with supplies.
“Thank God. How close is this to your cabin?”
“You mean you didn’t recognize the route?”
“Fuck no.”
I loved this man so much. “It’s about a mile. I walk back and forth.”
“What the hell is this place?”
“You’ll see in a second.” I rounded a corner and immediately heard Eric suck in his breath.
“You’re kidding me. This house was just hidden out here in the bayou, and you could have been living here, but you chose that two-room cabin.”
“I don’t need all this space, and it’s still a work in progress.”
He frowned. “This isn’t a new house?”
“No, I’m renovating it.”
“Whose is it?”
“It’s mine now, but it belonged to my uncle.”
“I thought the cabin you lived in was where your uncle lived.”
“It is, but it wasn’t his original home. I helped him build it after my aunt died. He wouldn’t stay here anymore. Too many memories. They’d lost two children in this house, but she never wanted to leave.”
“Are you about to tell me it’s haunted?”
I shrugged. “Could be, but the spirits aren’t giving me any trouble.”
“How long have you been working on the house?”
“Pretty much since I got out of the army. For the first few months, all I did was lie in bed and drink, but once Dax sobered me up and started making me get out of bed every day, I needed something to focus on, so I came here.
“Has Dax been helping you with it?”
I shook my head. “No. This is my project. I’ve gotten help from a few neighbors out here, but Dax doesn’t know I’ve been working on the house. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know it exists in any salvageable state. We all used to play here when we were kids, but even then it was run-down.”
“And your uncle didn’t try to fix it?”
“My uncle’s father gambled away most of the family’s money and drank up the rest. He and my aunt lived day-to-day, growing what food they could and hunting.
They couldn’t keep up with the house. They shut up the second floor, possibly before I was even born, but that didn’t stop Dax and me from sneaking up there. ”
“Are you going to live here when it’s ready?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
You . “Several things.”
“Like.”
“I’m not ready to talk about it, but the electricity is on, and there’s one fully functional bathroom.”
“And a bed?”
I smiled. “I wouldn’t have suggested staying here otherwise. We even have options: an antique bed or a mattress on the floor.”
“I guess we should consider how vigorous we’re going to be.”
“We’ll take the mattress on the floor,” I said.
Eric smiled. “Probably best.”
“Come on.” I opened the front door and stepped inside, but Eric didn’t move out of the doorway.
“This isn’t what I was expecting at all.” He looked around the pale blue entryway, studying the trim and chair rail I’d installed. “It’s a gorgeous house.”
“Did you think it would look like my cabin on the inside?”
“No, I… I just didn’t know what to expect. You laughed about Dax working so hard on his place.”
I shook my head. “I never laugh at hard work. I laughed at how picky he is about everything being perfect. This house isn’t going to be perfect. Etienne wouldn’t have wanted it that way. I want it to be like it would have been when he was a kid.”
“I love it.”
“You do?” The words came out choked.
He frowned, studying me for a moment. “Did you expect me not to?”
I cleared my throat before I could speak. “I wasn’t sure. I mean, it’s a nice house, but it’s out here in the middle of all this. Speaking of which, shut the door before the house is full of mosquitoes.”
“Don’t we need to leave it open to get some breeze?”
“You would already know if you’d come farther inside, but the house is fucking air conditioned.”
He walked around, taking in the large rooms, the high ceilings, the details I’d added, the floors I’d laid all by myself and the ones I’d refinished where it hadn’t rotted away.
“I could totally get into a place like this,” he said. “I might never find my way out of the bayou, but maybe, in time, I could learn.” He looked at me, expression intense. “Is this really possible? You and me?”
“If you’re ready to make some compromises.”
He chuckled. “Compromises are something that both people have to make.”
“I’m not very good at that. I never have been.”
“I guess you haven’t had to be.”
“You’re wrong about that. I had to compromise a lot when I was a kid, like going back to the city instead of living out here full time, letting my mom go, and following orders in the army.”
The air hung heavy between us as I thought of our conversation from earlier.
“But I don’t have to make them now unless I want to. I’m self-sufficient, and I have a hell of a lot of money in the bank.”
“And a family that will support you no matter what you do?”
“I mean, if I became Albertine Parish’s newest deputy, they’d probably have something to say about it.”
Eric smiled. “I imagine they would. And if I remain in my position?”
“Things will be awkward.”
“So that’s it. I have to quit to be with you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Eric took a deep breath, and I watched his chest rise and fall. “How would it work if I was still in law enforcement?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not letting you go. We’ll have to figure something out.”
“I can’t leave you, and I sure as hell can’t arrest you.”
“Yeah.”
I took his hand and led him into the room my aunt referred to as the back parlor.
It faced what had been a vegetable garden in Etienne’s time, and before that, there had been a gazebo and flowers growing.
I turned on the electric candles I’d placed in the fireplace, which I wasn’t going to need for warmth.
“I wouldn’t have expected you to like candles,” Eric said.
“There’s supposed to be a fire there. I needed something to take its place.”
“And you’re not renovating it so you can split wood and let me watch?”
“If you want to watch me chop wood, we can arrange that, but it won’t be for this fireplace. I’m not ruining all I’ve done in here with soot.”
I laughed. “You like nicer things than you want to admit.”
“Yeah, and if I were ever going to sell the place…”
“Sell it?” Eric sounded horrified.
“I don’t need a place this big just for me.”
“You also don’t need the money.”
“No, but it shouldn’t just stand empty. I guess I could give it to someone.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“Not unless it was Dax.”
Eric held my gaze, and I fought the urge to look away, or worse, to get up and run for my cabin where I was safe. There was too much space here and too much feeling.
“What is it you’re not saying?”
My heart felt like it would beat out of my chest, and sweat ran down my back despite the cool air in the house.
I didn’t think I could actually say the words because once I had, I couldn’t take them back, and if Eric said a definite no, then where would that leave us?
What was I doing thinking I could handle this?
“Ambrose?” Eric cupped my face, and I blinked, realizing I hadn’t been seeing him anymore. Instead, I’d seen myself alone in the cabin like Etienne.
“You… you could…”
He brushed his thumbs over my cheekbones. “It’s okay. You can say anything to me. What could I do?”
“You could live here with me.”
His eyes went huge, and my stomach knotted. I was afraid I was going to puke. I started to pull away from him.