My eyes followed the piping up and over her cabin and into the garage, and I took off again, bursting through the garage door and sprinting into the back room where the washer and dryer unit sat. I cut the water and ran back out to Wren just in time to see the last of the water spray out before it shrank in power and eventually stopped.
Wren was breathing heavy, chest strained against the now see-through fabric of her white dress. Her nipples were cold and hard, the dress sticking to them along with her ribs, her slim waist, her thighs. She batted at her hair, still dripping water, and shivered a bit as she looked up at me, mascara running, eyes wide. I watched as they skimmed my body the way mine had just devoured hers, and it was as if only then did she realize who it was who’d helped her. Her cheeks tinged pink and she scowled, and that’s all it took for me to lose it.
I laughed.
The sound was just as foreign as the feeling I’d had before I heard her scream. It almost hurt, laughing after so many years. My throat burned and my ribs cracked, shaking the rust off as I threw my head back and let the feeling consume me.
Wren’s scowl morphed, brows pinching together like she thought I was crazy.
Maybe I was.
And her standing there soaked and shivering and sexy as hell just made me laugh harder.
I bent at the waist, one hand gripping my stomach, and Wren kept on scowling. She swung at me, her tiny fists connecting with a pit and pat against my wet chest, and then she lost her balance, gripping onto my biceps to steady herself. I grabbed her, too, hands wrapping around her small elbows until she was standing again, her chest pressed against the bottom of my rib cage.
I wasn’t laughing anymore.
She peered up at me through long, dark, wet lashes and swallowed, her body reacting to the proximity of mine. I could have stepped back, let her go, ushered her inside so she could get out of her soaked clothes and into the shower, but instead I just held her there. Something came over me in that moment as the sun peeking through the tops of the trees caught her green eyes, highlighting the gold that spiraled out from her pupils. Maybe I wasn’t good for her, maybe she would tear through me that summer and then leave at the end of it all, and maybe none of that even mattered because she had her own shit to deal with and wouldn’t be fazed by me, anyway.
But I was wrong about one thing.
I did have something to give her.
“I’m sorry,” I said, voice low, eyes still watching hers.
“Me, too,” she whispered back.
I broke our stare long enough to look around at the damage the water had done, remembering the assessment I’d made of her cabin the day before. “Let me help you fix this place up.”
Wren sighed, breaking our contact and stepping back. She was still shivering and she crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s okay, I—”
“Please,” I interrupted.
I could have gone on, could have explained that none of that firewood would light now that it was drenched or that she was burning too much of it in the first place with her broken stove. I could have mentioned that it wasn’t just one or two floorboards inside or on the deck that needed to be replaced, but all of them. I could have pointed out the water leaks or the damaged flue pipes on the chimney or the clogged gutters or the odor most likely coming from a broken garbage disposal under her sink. But that one word was all I said, all I asked.
She swallowed, seemingly debating the risk associated with my request. Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, she glanced around at the mess before squinting back up at me. Then she smiled on a sigh, and all the tension between us melted away.
“Okay.”
MAYHAP
may·hap
Adverb
Possibly but not certainly: perhaps
I woke the next morning unsure of the decision I’d made.
Even after Anderson’s apology, part of me was still hurt by what he’d said to me at Ron’s, but a bigger part of me knew he wasn’t entirely wrong. I had fled to the cabin for the summer to get space and clarity, and hearing him point out the unoriginality of that made me want to prove him wrong.
I’d spent my first couple of weeks in the cabin not doing much of anything, and now it was time to start asking myself the questions I’d been avoiding, to start figuring out what it was I needed to take from my first summer alone.
Still, I worried about Anderson being around the house every day. Not just because he clearly had his own issues to deal with, but because his broken eyes called to me, stirring up emotions I almost forgot existed. Momma Von was right in that sense—I was a fixer, a doer, and the thought of helping him sort through his own demons was so appealing. The problem was that I found myself certain he wouldn’t want that help, and he’d be one more thing to derail my focus from where it needed to be—on myself.
Unsure as I was about all of it, I couldn’t deny the fact that I needed help around the cabin. It didn’t matter that I was only staying for the summer. I still needed firewood, water that worked, and a sturdy floor, among other things, and I’d made the agreement with Abdiel to handle it on my own while he was away. And that was that.
Just like Anderson promised when he left the day before, he showed up at my door at eight o’clock on the dot, toolbox in hand.
I greeted him with a cup of hot coffee, and he sat with me at the kitchen island, the two of us sipping from our mugs as he ran over some of the things that needed to be done. He’d slipped back into the straight-faced man I’d seen at the end of my driveway the first day I met him, and I wondered if the laughter I’d witnessed yesterday would ever make another appearance. I could still hear the baritone of it as I watched the dip in his forearm tighten and relax with every sweep of his hand over the list he’d made.
“There’s more than I thought,” I finally said, glancing around the cabin. “How do I... How much do I owe you for all this?”
Anderson cleared his throat, folding the list and tucking it into his pocket as he stood. “I still need to walk the property and assess everything. There might be more,” he said, nodding to my empty mug as he grabbed his. I handed mine over, and as he turned for the sink, he threw over his shoulder, “Payment isn’t necessary.”
I blanched. “It absolutely is.”
He dumped our mugs in the sink, rinsing each of them and laying them on the rack to dry. “I offered to help. Besides, this isn’t even your place,” he added, turning to face me. “What exactly did you and Abdiel work out, again?”
“Nothing, really. He was selling it, and I misread the ad, thought he was just renting it. When I found out he was selling, I thanked him for his time and tried to leave but he stopped me, said if I gave him all three month’s rent ahead of time that I could have it for the summer and he’d check in at the end to see if I wanted to buy then.”
Anderson raised his eyebrows. “So you are interested in possibly buying, then?”
“No,” I said on a laugh. “But he said either way, he’ll sell it in the fall.” I shrugged. “I guess he just saw that I... needed it.”