Chapter 29
Harley
Skyler Thompson used to be a masterpiece of avoidance.
He was a man built of velvet and silence, a human shrug living in his father’s shadow.
In the Thompson mansion, Skyler was nothing more than a beautiful piece of furniture, carefully placed to complement the decor.
He drifted through the mahogany hallways, never raising his voice and never standing his ground.
I haven’t found him yet. Physically, that is.
Because I’m hidden. Strategically placed between the lumber and a portable generator, I’m an observer.
Skyler is thirty feet away, standing in the center of what will eventually be the Delgado living room. Wearing a T-shirt that’s seen better days, there’s a smudge of charcoal across his forehead. It’s as if he drew up designs in ink and then immediately jumped into action.
I watch him as a crew member—a tall man with arms like knotted ropes—struggles to position a massive support beam. The beam is heavy, a dead weight of yellow pine that threatens to slip.
Old Skyler would have called a foreperson. Old Skyler would have checked his reflection in a window and waited for someone else to get their hands dirty while he negotiated the “aesthetic synergy” of the room.
But this Skyler doesn’t call anyone; he moves.
When he steps into the mud, his boots sink an inch into the soft earth.
Muscles in his back bunch and tighten through the thin fabric of his shirt.
He grunts, a raw, guttural sound that would make Elaine Thompson faint into her tea.
With a coordinated heave, he helps the worker slide the timber into its bracket.
I find myself leaning forward, my grip on the edge of the lumber stack tightening until a splinter pricks the ball of my thumb.
They finish the placement, and the worker claps Skyler on the shoulder.
This is where the real surprise hits.
A second man is gesturing toward the stairwell framing, his voice raised over the din of a nearby compressor.
He wants to skip a reinforced brace to save time on the drywall schedule.
In the past, Skyler would have nodded. He would have weighed the social cost of a confrontation against the structural integrity of the house and chosen the path of least resistance every single time.
He was a man who let his mother dictate the color of his wedding flowers; he wasn’t going to argue with a contractor about a brace.
But the man standing in the dirt today is different.
“No,” he says. The word isn’t loud, but it has weight to it.
“We aren’t skipping it. The load-bearing capacity for that landing is non-negotiable.
If you skip the brace, the stairs settle in five years.
I’m not signing off on a house that starts to tilt before the mortgage is half-paid. I’m sure Mike and Diego will agree.”
The contractor argues something about the budget and the timeline, but Skyler cuts him off. Not in a jerk way, or pulling rank, but in a way that shows his morals are immovable.
“We do it right, or we don’t do it at all,” Skyler says. “Those are the specs. You want to argue the math, go get your calculator. Otherwise, get the brace.”
The contractor glares, then mutters something under his breath and heads toward the supply trailer.
I realize my mouth is agape. I snap it shut, the dryness in my throat a sharp reminder of how long I’ve been holding my breath. My heart is doing a strange, frantic rhythm.
I keep thinking about the man who let Elaine throw my father’s handmade cedar boxes into a dumpster because they weren’t “appropriate.” I think about the man who sat in silence while his father insulted my career, my family, and my worth as a human being.
That man is gone. Or maybe he was never there to begin with, just a skin Skyler was trying to shed for thirty years.
In a quick, decisive stroke, he pulls a pencil from behind his ear and marks something on the wood framing.
I shift my weight, my heels grinding into the gravel. I came here today to be a professional, to be the social worker who manages her client’s transition into a new home.
But it’s hard to ignore a man who is currently rebuilding himself out of sawdust and spit.
Leaning my head back against the stack of wood, I feel the rough grain catch in my hair. I was supposed to be the one who had it all figured out, the one who walked away. I found my identity in a bookstore and a social services office, assuming I was the only one capable of change.
But looking at Skyler now, he’s laughing. It’s a genuine, unforced sound I haven’t heard since our second date, before the gravity of the Thompson name sucked the air out of the room. He and another worker have their heads bent over a junction box.
My grip tightens on the clipboard, the plastic cold and clinical against my palm. Surprise doesn’t cover it; I’m unsettled. Seeing him like this makes our failed relationship feel like a fever dream, reducing the villain I’ve been hating to a cheap caricature.
So I don’t move. I don’t call out. I remain behind the wood, a spy watching a stranger with a familiar face hammer out a new version of himself.
“You checking up on our architect? Or just making sure the lumber doesn’t grow legs?”
The voice is a low, gravelly rasp that vibrates through the wood stack. I jump, my clipboard nearly clattering to the ground as I spin around.
Diego is standing a few feet away, casually leaning against a support post for the porch.
He’s a burly man with hands that look like they could snap a two-by-four in half or gently cradle a bird.
Right now, they’re tucked into the pockets of a dusty work apron, and he’s watching me with amused curiosity.
“I’m observing,” I say, my voice coming out a little too defensively. I adjust my blazer, trying to summon the professional composure that’s currently hiding in my shoes. “For my client. Mrs. Delgado wants to make sure the timelines are holding.”
Diego grins, a flash of white teeth in his weathered face. “Timelines are solid. That boy over there doesn’t sleep. I think he’s trying to finish this house before the first frost just out of spite for the weather.”
He gestures toward Skyler with his chin. Skyler is currently thirty feet away, arguing with a measuring tape.
“He’s something else, isn’t he?” Diego steps closer, lowering his voice just enough to bypass the roar of the machinery.
“You see a lot of things on these sites. Most guys who show up looking like him—expensive haircut, posture that says they went to a school with a Latin name—don’t last the week.
They want the photo op. They want to hold a hammer for five minutes and then head back to their lofts to write a blog post about the ‘dignity of labor.’”
I look at Skyler’s sweat-soaked shirt. “And Skyler?”
“That guy’s the real deal,” Diego says, and there’s a note of genuine respect in his voice that makes my heart do a strange, uncomfortable flip. “Found out a couple of weeks ago he’s a trust fund kid. Some Thompson dynasty or something. Word is he walked away from all of it. Every dime.”
“He’s working for pennies, Diego. I’m pretty sure the trust fund is still there. He’s just…taking a sabbatical.”
Diego shakes his head, his eyes fixed on mine with startling intensity. “No. He didn’t just walk away from the name. He sold his fancy car and donated the whole damn thing. Every cent went to that legal aid housing thing downtown.”
I feel the blood drain out of my face. The site around me doesn’t get quiet, but the noise starts to feel like it’s coming from underwater.
Forty thousand dollars.
The anonymous donation that hit our books.
The money that saved Mrs. Rodriguez’s radiator.
The money that’s helping to pay for the lead inspector in the Delgado build.
I’d spent weeks imagining it was Skyler, but never truly believing it.
Because I honestly thought it had been a wealthy philanthropist with a guilty conscience or a faceless foundation looking for a tax write-off.
I never actually thought it was Skyler.
I look at him now—the man eating peanut butter on white bread and generic ramen in a Styrofoam cup. I’d judged him for it. In my head, I assumed his “salt-of-the-earth” performance was a ploy. I thought it was a costume he’d peel off, eventually.
“That’s why he’s eating like a college kid,” Diego adds, his voice pulling me back to the mud and the sawdust. “Doesn’t have a dime to his name beyond the paycheck we give him.
He bought that beat-up truck and rents a basement unit on the North Side.
He never mentions it, though. Just shows up at seven a.m., works harder than anyone on the crew, and spends his lunch break sketching porch railings. ”
I grip the clipboard so hard my knuckles turn white.
Everything I thought I knew feels like a blueprint that’s been drawn upside down. I thought Skyler’s “transformation” was a bid to win me back—a romantic gesture designed to convince me he’d changed just enough to be tolerable. I thought he was playing at being a person until the novelty wore off.
But you don’t eat ramen every day as part of a PR campaign.
You do that when you’re trying to burn the house down so you can build something else on the land.
“He’s a good man, Harley,” Diego says quietly.
He stares at me for a long beat, his eyes searching mine with a wisdom that makes me want to look away.
“Lost his way for a bit, maybe. But he’s found the right tools now.
Just thought you should know…in case you’re here for more than just the timelines. ”
Diego doesn’t wait for me to answer. He just nods, hitches his tool belt, and walks back toward the house, shouting instructions to the drywall crew.
I’m left standing behind the lumber, the air suddenly feeling thin and sharp. I look at Skyler, who’s kneeling in the dirt, hammering a brace into place. Each strike of the hammer is precise. Each movement is a choice.
I think of the $40,000. Of the children who aren’t coughing because their heat is on. I think of the man who let his mother throw away the cedar boxes.
They are the same man, and yet they couldn’t be more different. One was a prisoner of a legacy he didn’t earn. The other is a man earning his own life, one nail at a time.
And it’s time I stopped hiding behind the lumber.
The walk across the lot feels like crossing a minefield, if the mines were made of orange extension cords and deep, muddy ruts that want to swallow my dignity.
This time, there is no skulking. I abandon the safe shadows of the lumber stacks and step into the open. I walk with my head high.
The workers nod to me as I pass. They’ve seen me here with Mrs. Delgado enough times to recognize the ‘Social Work Lady.’ One of the guys on the scaffolding gives me a thumb’s up.
I reach the plywood table where Skyler is working.
At first, he doesn’t see me. He’s completely submerged in the blueprints, his brow furrowed as he traces a line with a pencil stub. Sawdust is matted into his eyebrows, and his forearm is smudged with a streak of red chalk.
I stand there for a beat, just watching the way his hands move. They used to be the hands of a pianist—soft, cared for, designed for turning pages and holding wineglasses. Now, they’re scarred and darkened by the sun. They’re the hands of a man who knows the weight of a hammer.
“The back porch still needs that brace, Skyler. No matter how many times you redraw the landing.”
He jumps, his head snapping up with such force that the pencil stub flies from behind his ear and disappears into the gravel. His eyes go wide, his pupils dilating as he processes the fact that I’m standing two feet away without a client to protect me.
“Harley,” he breathes.
The sound of my name is different. Not with the desperate pleading quality it had in my father’s living room. It doesn’t have the managing, polished tone of our engagement. It’s just a word, weighted with surprise and a cautious hope that makes my chest ache.
“You’re right about the landing,” I say, gesturing to the blueprint. “If you don’t reinforce it, it won’t hold the weight of the furniture Mrs. Delgado is planning to bring. She’s got a mahogany dresser that weighs as much as a small car.”
Skyler looks down at the plans, then back at me. He swallows, and I see the way his throat moves, the muscles tight with a tension he’s trying to hide. “I’m putting in double-header joists. It’ll hold a tank if she wants to park one in the hallway.”
I offer a small, brief smile. It’s the first one I’ve given him in I’m not sure how long.
“Good.” Then, after a pause. “Would you like to have lunch sometime? Not here…at a restaurant. Somewhere with actual chairs and maybe a menu that doesn’t involve Styrofoam.”
Skyler’s hands, which were resting flat on the blueprints, suddenly tighten, his fingers curling into the paper until it crinkles. His expression shifts as a slow, dawning realization crosses his face.
“I’d like that,” he says, his voice a low, stable rumble. “I’d like that very much.”
“Next Thursday?” I ask. “After the inspection?”
“Thursday is good. I’ll…I’ll find a shirt without holes in it.”
“Don’t worry about the shirt, Skyler. I’m not interested in the clothes.”
He laughs, which triggers a chuckle out of me, too.
I turn and start to walk away before I can overthink it, before I can see the hope in his eyes turn into something that looks like an expectation. I’m not promising him anything. The altar is not forgotten. And I’m not saying the Thompson name doesn’t still taste like ash in my mouth.
But as I navigate the mud and the gravel, heading toward my dented Honda, I feel a strange lightness in my stride.