7. Chapter 7 #2
“You’re good at this,” she said, brushing a stray piece of hair from her face.
Heath shrugged, peeling another long strip off the wall. “Years of experience.”
She eyed him. “And what, exactly, is your actual job?”
There it was. The question he knew was coming.
He took his time answering, rolling the words around in his head, waiting for the reaction.
“Navy SEAL. I’m a combat medic.”
Maddie blinked.
He heard her breath catch, barely noticeable, before she covered it with a quick nod. “Oh. That’s… impressive.”
He smirked. “I like to think so.”
She shot him a look, but he saw the curiosity there. “Why are you doing this?”
“Contracting? I love this stuff. Never get enough of it. One day, I’ll retire from the Navy and just do this full-time.”
She licked her lower lip, tilting her head as she assessed him.
“You?” he asked, peeling another strip of wallpaper. “Med school, right?”
She hesitated. Just for a second. “Yeah. Doctor. Trauma surgery.”
He glanced at her. “You on a break or something?”
She pressed her lips together, the answer coming slow. “Something like that.”
She didn’t want to talk about it.
He recognized the brush-off, the subtle closing of a door.
Heath didn’t push.
They worked in silence for a while, stripping section after section, the old wallpaper coming off in frustrating little pieces, and the longer they worked, the warmer the house got. October in California could still be brutal, and this house was like an oven.
Maddie exhaled sharply, dragging the back of her wrist over her forehead, pink-cheeked and looking exhausted.
She was working too hard.
She was always working too hard.
He watched the way she kept moving, like if she stopped, everything would cave in around her. Like if she let herself slow down, even for a second, she’d have to actually sit with the weight of it all.
They settled into a rhythm, the quiet hiss and scrape of wallpaper peeling away filling the space between them.
The job was tedious, the glue stubborn, but there was something almost meditative about it.
Maddie had stopped asking for direction, her movements more confident now, her brow furrowed in concentration as she worked.
They talked between it all, casual, easy.
Maddie asked him about different kinds of wood.
He told her about the time he almost put a nail through his hand trying to reframe a door at eighteen.
She told him she wasn’t convinced he actually knew how to fix things.
He told her she’d be useless in a hardware store.
And then she uncorked a bottle of red wine.
“You trying to get me drunk?” Heath asked, watching as she filled his glass generously, then her own.
Maddie smirked, cheeks already slightly flushed from the heat of the house. “Would it be so bad?”
He huffed a laugh, shaking his head as he grabbed his glass. “You’re trouble, McAuley.”
Her eyes sparkled. “So I’ve been told.”
They worked some more, Maddie getting increasingly tipsy, increasingly chatty. Heath found himself watching her between strips of wallpaper, the way she moved, the way she let her guard down in tiny, fleeting moments.
After a while, she sighed, rolling her shoulders, wine glass in hand.
“Thanks for helping me,” she said, finally.
Heath glanced at her, tilting his head. “Someone has to.”
She turned, frowning slightly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He ripped another strip from the wall, his voice matter-of-fact.
“You’re holding this place together with duct tape and denial, McAuley.”
Maddie stilled.
Then—her head snapped toward him, eyes flashing.
“Not everyone has a family to fall back on, Heath,” she said, her voice sharp, defensive—but something else, too. Something brittle.
“Some of us just have to figure it out.”
Heath didn’t flinch. Didn’t react.
He just held her gaze, steady, unreadable.
And then—he nodded. Like he understood.
Because he did.
But she didn’t need to know that yet.
Maddie found the bottle of wine again and tipped it, watching the deep red liquid swirl into Heath’s glass as he scraped the a stubborn strip of wallpaper from the wall.
He glanced over his shoulder, eyes narrowing slightly. “Should I tell you to stop?
She smirked, lifting a brow. “But, I know you want more.”
That should’ve been the end of it. A harmless joke. A casual tease.
But then—she flushed.
That deep, rosy warmth creeping up her throat, blooming over her cheekbones.
The exact way she had flushed when she’d come apart in his hands.
Heat slammed through him, tight and immediate. His jaw ticked, his grip tightening on the scraper.
This fucking woman.
She had no idea what she was doing to him.
No clue that just working alongside her, shoulder to shoulder, trading jokes and stripping walls, was somehow hotter than anything he’d ever experienced.
He exhaled sharply, rolling his neck, adjusting his stance to ease the sudden pressure in his jeans. Jesus Christ.
The work helped. Kept his hands busy, kept his mind from dragging her against him and seeing just how deep that flush went.
They worked steadily, the bottle of wine disappearing between them, the house sweltering, their bodies loosening with the ease of long, shared labor.
At some point, Maddie got curious.
“You single?” she asked, glancing at him from the corner of her eye as she scraped the wall. “Married? In whatever kind of situation?”
Heath arched a brow. “You ask all your contractors that, or just me?”
Maddie snorted softly. “I probably should have asked on Sunday.”
Heath chuckled, setting down his scraper to grab his wine. “Yeah, might’ve been a good call.” He took a sip, watching her over the rim of his glass. “I just got out of something.”
Her hand stilled for a fraction of a second before she forced herself to keep working. “Something… serious?”
He let out a breath, rolling his shoulders. “We lived together. A dozen years.”
Maddie turned slightly, watching him now, interest flickering in those green eyes. “Married?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “No kids either.”
She studied him, tapping her scraper against the wall. “You didn’t want that?”
“At first, I wasn’t sure. Focused on work, mostly.” Heath let his gaze drift back to the wallpaper, expression unreadable. “And then, I realized… I do want those things. Just not with her.”
Maddie froze.
A flicker of something passed over her face—something sharp, knowing. But she didn’t press. Just turned back to her work, her jaw tight.
And Heath?
He wasn’t sure why he’d said it.
But he knew it was the truth.
The house was sweltering, the scent of old wallpaper glue thick in the air, but Heath barely felt it anymore.
They’d been working for hours, another bottle of wine nearly gone, their bodies loose from the slow drag of labor and alcohol. Maddie was softening around him, her movements less stiff, her tongue less sharp, her walls beginning to crack in ways he hadn’t expected.
And at some point—without him even realizing when—
She started confiding in him.
It was casual at first, just small pieces of her life slipping through the cracks.
“I got into med school early,” she said, her voice even as she scored another section of wallpaper, eyes focused on the work in front of her. “Barely twenty-two when I started.”
Heath hummed, peeling a long strip from the wall. “Smart kid, huh?”
Maddie huffed a laugh. “More like obsessed. I didn’t have a life. I lived, breathed, and slept medical textbooks. Other girls were out partying, dating, hooking up…” She trailed off, pressing her lips together. “I got married instead.”
Heath’s hand paused briefly before he kept working. “Young?”
“Twenty-three,” she said, scraping again. “David was older. Already a doctor.”
Something about the way she said his name—flat, clinical, like he was just another part of her past she had compartmentalized—set Heath on edge.
“How long?”
“Nine years,” she said, exhaling through her nose. “Nine years I can’t get back.”
His grip tightened around the scraper. Nine years?
He kept his voice neutral. “Did you love him?”
Maddie let out a short, humorless laugh. “I thought I did. I thought he was everything I needed—stable, dependable. He knew what it meant to be married to medicine, to be married to me.” She shook her head. “I thought that made it enough.”
Heath didn’t respond. He let her fill the silence.
“I worked my ass off,” she continued, “didn’t have time for much else. I was good at what I did. I am good at what I do.” She wiped the back of her wrist against her forehead. “But apparently, I wasn’t good enough at being a wife.”
Heath’s jaw clenched.
She didn’t look at him, just kept her hands busy, like she was afraid to stop moving.
“What happened?”
Maddie inhaled slowly, then—without any ceremony, without any weight in her tone—she said, “He cheated on me.”
Heath’s hand stilled.
The scraper pressed too hard against the wall, scraping deeper than it should.
He didn’t say anything.
Because if he opened his mouth right now, it wouldn’t come out calm.
She kept working, like she hadn’t just dropped a fucking bomb, like she hadn’t just casually unraveled part of her life in front of him.
But Heath couldn’t just let that sit.
“That why you left?” he asked, his voice lower, rougher.
Maddie gave a tight, bitter laugh. “It wasn’t just that.”
He turned slightly, watching her closer now, reading the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers tightened on the scraper.
“What else?”
She hesitated, her throat working around the words, like they were sharp, like they might hurt on the way out.
Then—
“He told me I deserved it.”
Heath felt his pulse spike.
Maddie swallowed, her voice steady but hollow.
“He said I was frigid… and that’s why I couldn’t give him a kid.”
Something inside Heath snapped.
A sharp, violent pressure built behind his ribs, thick and hot and too much.
He set down the scraper, stepped back.
Had to.
Because if he didn’t, he was going to punch a goddamn hole through her wall.