Chapter Eight
Xavier
“Here.” I take a step closer because she’s still holding the pencil, staring at the line like it might change if she looks at it long enough.
“Not here.” I reach around her, taking her wrist lightly and guiding it down a fraction. “Here.”
Her hand stills under mine. Warm. Steady. Too steady.
“Small cut,” I add. “Just enough to see what you’re working with.”
She nods, but she doesn’t move. Neither do I.
For a second longer than necessary, my hand stays over hers, adjusting the angle. Her shoulder shifts back, just barely, and that’s where it crosses the line. Too close. Too easy to lean in. Too easy to forget why I don’t do this.
I step back. Fast enough that it doesn’t look like I’m thinking about it. Even though I am. “Right there.”
She clears her throat, drawing the line herself this time. “Got it.”
I force my attention back to the wall. Structure. Framing. Load-bearing walls. Anything that makes more sense than standing in her kitchen noticing the way she didn’t pull away.
Or the fact that I didn’t either.
A set of headlights sweeps across the front window. She stills. Light cuts across the yard, slows, then disappears past the house. The vehicle pulls to a stop, turns into the nearby dead-end, and comes back the way it came.
“Don’t get much traffic out here.” She frowns. Her house sits at the end of the road. Although she has neighbors on her right and across the street, to her left is a pasture opening, and nothing else.
“No. I don’t suppose you do.”
She’s already turned back to the wall, pencil tapping lightly against the drywall like she’s trying to shake something off.
“Go ahead. Your turn.” Now that I’m sure she’s not going to have the ceiling cave down on top of her head, I’m willing to let her take over. I pass the reciprocating saw to her.
She lifts the blade this time instead of the pencil. Careful. Controlled. Exactly how I told her. The first cut is small. Clean. “Like that?”
“Yeah.” Exactly like that.
When I walked in the door, she had no idea what she was doing, but Ruby is proving to be a fast learner.