Caleb
The site's running smoothly three weeks after Millbrook, the two of us settling into something that feels less like an experiment and more like a routine every day.
Rena stays at my place four nights out of seven now.
There's a drawer in my dresser slowly filling with her clothes. It should scare me more than it does.
Tommy jogs over one afternoon, grinning. "Crew wants to know if you and Rena are coming to the thing at the Foundry tonight. Celebrating hitting phase two on schedule."
"I'll ask Rena," I say, and he fist-pumps before jogging off.
She agrees, though I catch the flicker of nerves when I mention it. "Will it be weird? Me being there as the consultant who's sleeping with the site supervisor?"
"Probably. But they already know, and pretending we're not together would be weirder at this point."
By the time we arrive, the bar's packed, Kayla is behind it with a knowing smile.
The crew gravitates toward us almost immediately, and I watch Rena shift into easy warmth, accepting compliments on her work with the kind of graciousness that reminds me why I fell for her.
Marcus tells her, seriously, that she saved his ass with a rebar spacing call.
By the time we've been there two hours, she's laughing at Tommy's terrible jokes and looking more relaxed in a social setting than I've ever seen her.
Gus and Marlene pull us aside near the end of the night.
"The union's been talking," Gus says. "We want to formally recommend you two as a consulting team for future municipal projects.
Site supervisor and safety consultant as integrated oversight, not separate entities.
What you two proved is that when you work together from the start instead of fighting each other, you get better results. "
Rena and I exchange a glance that has a whole conversation in it. "Can we think about it?" she asks.
"Of course. I just wanted to plant the seed."
Later, dancing to a song Tommy insists is tradition, she leans into my shoulder. "I want to try it. The joint consulting thing. I think we could build something really good together."
"Together," I say, the word becoming something close to a promise.
We leave not long after, and the drive home is quiet but charged.
We don't make it far past the front door before her hands are in my shirt and mine are working her jeans, and it's fast and desperate in a way that's different from before. It’s urgent instead of careful, both of us laughing between kisses because we know each other now, know what works, and don't need to go slow to get where we're going.
Afterward, tangled together and catching our breath, she traces idle patterns on my chest. "Can I ask you something? What are we doing here? Long term."
"What do you want it to be?"
"I don't know. I've never gotten this far before without running. But I think, maybe, I want it to be something real. Something that lasts beyond my contract."
Relief washes through me, sharp and profound. "I'm all in, Rena. Have been since that first day at Marlene's."
"Three months and I'm already talking about staying," she muses. "That's got to be some kind of record for me."
"Then let's set a new one."
The next morning, she's already at the kitchen table with her laptop and coffee when I wake, deep in research on what it would take to formalize the joint consulting arrangement.
"You're serious about this," I say, sitting across from her.
"I'm serious about us," she replies. "About building something that lasts. If we're going to do this, we should do it right."
For the next hour we sit at our kitchen table planning a future that includes both of us. Building. Together. Always.