Chapter Seven
Ruby
The kitchen feels smaller. I’m standing here with paint on my hands and a half-finished wall I probably shouldn’t touch. And he’s three feet away.
He doesn’t say anything right away. Just moves around the room like he’s done it before, as if he belongs here, stopping in front of the section of wall I’ve been side-eyeing for the last hour.
I cross my arms, leaning back against the counter. “So?”
He crouches, running his hand along the seam, knocking on spots I didn’t think to check. “What were you planning to do?”
The man has the sexiest arms in the world, with a light coating of dark hair and veins that bulge along with the muscles. It’s stupid that he makes a rolled-up flannel shirt hot. But he does.
I hesitate, then point to the section I’ve been staring at. “Take this out. Open it up a little.”
He exhales through his nose. “That would’ve been a problem.”
I wince. “Define ‘problem.’”
I’m assuming he’s referring to this support stuff and the ceiling ending up on the floor thing. That would’ve been a mess. I shudder. And I was minutes away from taking a sledgehammer to it and probably knocking myself out with sheetrock.
“This? You take this out. It all comes down.” He taps the section I pointed to, causing his biceps to flex.
My stomach drops at how close I came to disaster. “Great,” I mutter. “Love that.”
His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t say anything, shifts his hand a few inches over, knocking his knuckles into a different section. “This part.” He taps again. “You’ve got some room here.”
I step closer, following the line of his hand while ignoring that his fingers are as hot as the rest of him. Because, right now, there are more important things to consider. “So I can take that out?”
“Carefully. Not all at once.”
“Of course not.” This is excruciating. Maybe I shouldn’t have purchased a fixer-upper. It’s not like I have any idea what I’m doing. And it doesn’t help having Xavier here to point it out.
I pinch my fingertips into the back of my neck.
“You cut into it small. Check what’s behind it before you go any further.”
“That sounds like a terrible idea.” She lifts her shoulder. “I’m more of a jump first kind of girl.”
“In this case, you need to go slow because if you don’t, you’ll end up spending twice as much money and countless hours fixing the mess.”
I look back at the wall, trying to see what he’s seeing instead of what I thought I saw. “Okay. So where do I start?”
His sleeve rides up as he reaches past me for the pencil, exposing dark ink along the inside of his forearm. Thin black contour lines disappear beneath the rolled flannel cuff before I can make sense of what they're supposed to be.
I should move. I don’t. I’ve seen the tattoo before but never had the nerve to ask what it means.
His arm brushes mine as he draws a clean line along the drywall and my skin pebbles with awareness. He draws another line below it. Quick. Precise. Like he knows exactly where everything goes.
“Here.” He stands back as if he’s admiring his handiwork. “You mark it first. Then you cut enough to see what you’re working with.”
I watch his hand instead of his face. It’s easier that way. Xavier Cole is too good-looking to stand this close to and stare at without drooling. “Check how?”
“Small opening,” he says. “Nothing aggressive.”
“That feels like a suggestion I’m going to ignore in about five minutes.” I trace my fingers along the lines he drew. How does he know these are the right places to start cutting? And what’re we looking for when we’re looking inside the opening?
His mouth twitches. “That would be a mistake.”
“Good thing I learn from those.”
He steps behind me to look at the line from another angle. And that’s when it gets worse. Because now he’s closer. Standing behind me, one hand braced against the wall near my shoulder.
He smells like spices and wood. I suck in a breath, holding it so I don’t inhale again. His chest is close enough that if I lean back even a fraction….
I don’t. I snatch up the pencil he used and grip it as if my life depends upon it.
“Got it.” I do not got it. I am, in fact, extremely aware of the fact that he smells like seduction wrapped in a heap load of bad decisions.
He steps back a second later. Space. Air. Functioning brain cells returning slowly. Thank God.
I clear my throat, turning toward the wall like that didn’t just happen. “So….” I aim for casual and land somewhere just short of it. “Does Lindsey usually follow you around like that, or was that a special occasion?”
What in the fuck? What’s wrong with me? I stare at the line on the wall like I didn’t just say that out loud.
There’s a beat. Then…. “No.”
Good. “Right.” Shit. Heat flows up my neck. “I’m sorry, that’s not my business. She seemed…” I gesture vaguely with the pencil.
“Like she wanted something?” He finishes when I don’t. Unfortunately, I’d prefer to open the cabinet under the sink and crawl inside.
But he asked a question, and now, I need to answer it. I brace my shoulders. “Yeah.”
“She did.”
Of course she did. Girls like Lindsey don’t show up for leg presses. They show up for…. Him.
“Didn’t work.” His eyes are unreadable as they meet mine.
My grip squeezes the pencil. “Right.” My voice comes out somewhere between a crack and a screech. Jesus. This night keeps getting better. I clear my throat. “That’s probably a relief for her. Saves her from being disappointed in the end.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” His jaw flexes as if he’s chewing on my words.
The words keep coming out of my mouth. The words that I wish I could swallow back down, but they’re already out there.
I shrug, meeting his eyes again. “I think people usually know what they’re getting with you.”
There’s no bite in it. No accusation. Just truth. As far as I’ve ever seen it. It’s not his fault that he’s a player. He’s never pretended to be anything else.
“Yeah,” he says after a second. “Usually.”
“Alright.” I tap the pencil against the drywall. “Walk me through it.”
Because this- lines, steps, things I can fix- makes sense. Not him showing up four days late.
Not the way the room changed when he stepped behind me. Not the fact that I’m still thinking about it.
I square my shoulders, focusing on the line. “Where do I cut?”
And this time, when he moves closer, I shift my stance, giving me the room I need to remind myself that worshipping Xavier Cole never achieves anything.