Chapter 25
BLAKE
The workshop smells like lemon oil and sawdust. Clean. Ready.
I wipe down my workbench for the third time, not because it needs it, but because my hands want something to do.
The Charleston fireplace shipped out yesterday.
The armoire went back to Seattle last week.
Even the emergency repair job — some developer's kid who put a baseball through a hundred-year-old stained glass window — wrapped up Monday.
For the first time in months, I've got nothing on the bench.
Should feel wrong. Empty bench, empty hands — that's usually when the bad shit creeps in. When my brain decides it's a great time to replay every terrible thing I've ever said or done, in high definition, with commentary.
But right now I'm just... good.
Which is almost worse, in a way. Because I don't trust it. Good doesn't last. Good is the setup before the fall. I've lived long enough to know that.
Stop it. Just — be here. Be in the clean workshop with the empty bench and the lemon oil smell and stop waiting for the roof to cave in.
My phone buzzes. Then again. Then three more times in rapid succession.
The group chat. I pick it up, and there it is — that stupid grin spreading across my face before I've even read the words. Like a damn reflex.
Laine
okay but WHY would you put sriracha on CEREAL
Reid
it was ONE TIME
Laine
ONE TIME IS ONE TIME TOO MANY
Reid
I was half asleep!
Laine
that's not an excuse that's a cry for help
Reid
Blake back me up here
I snort. Not a chance in hell.
sriracha. on cereal.
Reid
TRAITOR
Laine
Laine
see even blake thinks you're unhinged
Reid
I thought we were brothers
we are. that's why I'm telling you the truth.
Reid sends a string of middle finger emojis. Laine responds with crying-laughing faces. I lean against the workbench, thumb tracing the edge of a chisel I left out, watching the back-and-forth scroll by.
This is the part I never expected. Not the big stuff — the dates, the conversations, the kissing Laine goodnight while my heart tries to crack my ribs open. I expected that to be terrifying and it is.
It's this. The stupid jokes. The group chat. The way three people who should be a disaster somehow turned into... whatever we are.
Three weeks of dates with Laine. Real ones.
Where we talk and I learn things about her I never knew — like how she can't stand the texture of mushrooms but loves the taste, so she picks every visible piece out of any dish.
Or how she has a whole playlist of whale sounds she listens to when she's stressed.
Or how her left eyebrow twitches when she's trying not to laugh.
I know the eyebrow thing because I've been watching her face like it's my job. Probably too much. Probably creepy. Add it to the list of things I'm doing wrong.
Three weeks of kissing her goodnight and walking away even when every cell in my body wants to stay.
She sets the pace. That's the rule I made for myself, and I will follow it until she tells me otherwise or I'm dead. After everything I did, everything I said — she gets to decide when and how and if.
Doesn't mean it's easy. Means it's right. There's a difference.
I pick up my phone again.
heading to portland. couple flea markets, maybe some antique stores. looking for a new project.
Reid
have fun, nerd
Laine
WAIT
can I come??
I stare at the screen. My hand goes to the center of my chest without thinking. That ache. The good kind. The kind I still don't know what to do with.
you want to dig through old junk with me?
Laine
YES
I love old junk
also I'm off today and my apartment is too clean and I'm bored
Reid
too clean. she says like that's a problem
Laine
it IS a problem when you've already reorganized everything twice
pick you up in 30?
Laine
She wants to come. She actually wants to spend her day off digging through flea markets with me.
Don't read too much into it. She's bored. You're available. That's it.
Except it's not just that and I know it. She could call anyone. Jamila. A friend from work. She could enjoy her day off alone like a normal person.
Instead, she picked me.
Don't screw this up.
The Portland Flea Market sprawls across three city blocks of covered stalls and open-air tables. Vintage furniture. Old records. Jewelry. Weird taxidermy. Rusted tools nobody's touched in fifty years.
My kind of place.
Laine bounces on her heels next to me, eyes wide. "This is amazing."
"You've never been?"
"I've driven past. Never stopped." She grabs my hand, tugging me toward the nearest row of stalls. "Where do we start?"
Her hand is warm in mine. Small. She threads her fingers through like it's nothing, like it's something she's done a thousand times, like she doesn't notice my pulse hammering against her palm.
Relax. It's a hand. People hold hands. This is normal.
It doesn't feel normal. It feels like I'm getting away with something. Like a just robbed a bank and the cops are going to pull up any second.
"I usually do a full lap first," I say. "Get a sense of what's here. Then circle back to anything interesting."
"That's very strategic."
"It's efficient."
"It's very you." She grins up at me. "Come on, strategic man. Show me how it's done."
We walk through the first aisle together, Laine's attention jumping from table to table. She picks up a brass telescope, squints through it, declares it "probably haunted." Moves on to a stack of old Life magazines. Flips through a box of vintage postcards, gasping at the weird ones.
I should be scanning the stalls. Looking for project material. That's why I'm here.
Instead I'm watching her. The way her face lights up at every new discovery. The way she narrates her own reactions like she's hosting a nature documentary about flea markets.
You're staring again. Cut it out.
"Blake. Blake, look at this."
She holds up a postcard of a jackalope. The taxidermy kind — rabbit with antlers glued on.
"People really believed in these," she says. "Or pretended to. Can you imagine being the guy who made the first one? Just sitting there gluing antlers on a bunny?"
"Probably thought it was hilarious."
"It IS hilarious." She tucks the postcard back in the box. "I want to meet that guy's ghost. I have questions."
I love her.
The thought hits me the way it always does — no warning, no buildup, just a wall of it slamming into my chest. And right behind it, the old reflex: you don't deserve this. You're going to ruin this. You ruin everything you—
No.
I shove it down. Not today. Today I'm at a flea market with a woman who chose to be here with me, and I'm going to hold her hand and enjoy it like a goddamn human being.
She catches me staring. "What?"
"Nothing." I squeeze her hand. "Keep going."
Two aisles later, I spot a rocking chair with a cracked spindle. Solid oak, probably 1920s. Good bones under the damage. My hands itch the second I see it — that automatic assessment, the part of my brain that's always cataloging what can be saved.
"This could work," I say, crouching to examine the joints.
"For what?"
"New project." I run my fingers along the wood grain. Feel the age of it. The quality underneath the neglect. "The spindle's shot, but everything else is solid. Strip the finish, repair the damage, new stain — could be beautiful."
Laine kneels next to me, studying the chair like she actually cares. Not humoring me. Actually looking.
"I didn't know you worked on furniture and other stuff."
"Yeah, that's how I started. The restoration stuff is more profitable, but I still flip pieces like this on the side. And right now, I've got a little time on my hands.
She smiles, slow and sweet. "Then you should get it."
I look at the price tag. Forty bucks. Not bad.
"Yeah," I say. "Maybe I will."
Laine grins and pops back up, already distracted by the next table. She's three stalls ahead before I finish talking to the vendor about holding the chair until we're done.
I catch up to her in front of a table covered in old dolls.
Creepy old dolls. The porcelain kind with dead eyes and cracked faces and hair that's somehow still perfect after a hundred years. Everything in my body says walk away.
Laine picks one up. Holds it at arm's length.
"This," she says solemnly, "is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen."
"Then put it down."
"I can't." She turns it to face me. The doll's painted smile doesn't reach its glass eyes. "She's chosen me now. We're bonded."
"Laine."
"Her name is Margaret. She was a Victorian child who died of consumption and now she haunts flea markets."
"You're making that up."
"Am I?" She tilts the doll's head. "Margaret says you're being rude."
I take a step back. Involuntary. Then have to force myself to stand my ground. "Keep that thing away from me."
Laine's face lights up like Christmas morning. "Oh my gosh. Are you scared of dolls?"
"No."
"You ARE."
"I'm not scared of dolls. That one specifically is cursed."
She advances toward me, holding Margaret out like a weapon. "Margaret just wants to be your friend, Blake."
"Margaret can go back to where she came from."
Laine cackles. Full-on villain laugh. The kind that turns heads three stalls over. "This is the best day of my life."
"I'm leaving you here."
"No you're not." She sets the doll down, still giggling. "But oh my goodness, we have to buy her."
"Absolutely not."
"Not for us." Her eyes are sparkling now. Scheming. And I know that look. Nothing good has ever followed that look. "For Reid."
I pause. "What do you mean, for Reid?"
"Think about it. We sneak into his room while he's at work. Put her on his pillow. Maybe sitting up in a chair facing the door."
The image forms in my mind. Reid coming home after a twelve-hour shift. Opening his bedroom door. Finding Margaret waiting for him with her dead eyes and cracked smile.
I shouldn't encourage this.
"We could put her in the bathroom cabinet," I hear myself say. "We'll take out the shelves, so when he opens it looking for toothpaste —"