For close to three months after everything went to shit the first time, Walker didn’t let me out of his sight. There were days when I don’t know if I’d still be here if it hadn’t been for him, Lillian, and their kids.
When the fog lifted a bit, I followed Jackson and Olivia on the road to a few races. We’d had a blast together, but I felt like that old man who hung out with high school or college kids because he couldn’t grasp that he wasn’t part of that crowd any longer. So, I came home to Texas after a very brief and horrendously disastrous stop in California.
It didn’t take long for Daddy and Mama to grate on my last nerve. If I had to deal with the clucking of my mother and the pitying looks from my dad any longer, I’d have rigged my horse to drag my ass through the back country naked.
All I wanted these days was to work and hide, and by ‘work,’ I meant working on the ranch and avoiding anything that put me in direct contact with a protectee. So, Daddy kept my to-do list filled with stuff that kept me to myself, and Walker sent me out on jobs as an overwatch only. When I wasn’t doing those things, I worked on this cabin and tried to mend what remained of my heart and life.
It wasn’t the least bit successful, the mending, but today was going to be a good day.
Maybe.
After showering, shaving, and narrowly skirting Mama and her clucking, I got in my truck and headed out to the cabin I’d been working on since I came home to lick my wounds. I could’ve paid to have it built, but that would’ve defeated the purpose. Building it with my own two hands gave me a task to keep me busy and a reprieve from the nosy assholes I called family. The number of times someone in the Holt clan had offered me relationship advice would tile a four-lane road from the earth to Pluto and back in those tiny ass mosaic tiles.
When I got to the cabin, I turned on my favorite playlist and pulled out the punch list, working on the last of the items. There wasn’t much. Odds and ends, really: Paint to touch up, door knobs to install, caulking the trim and quarter round, and putting on the cabinet handles were all that was left.
Several hours passed without my noticing anything other than the mundane tasks I’d knocked off my list until my stomach growled. I looked up from where I sat on the floor, noticing the sun’s rays were much stronger and had shifted. A glance at my watch made me realize it was noon already. While I’d not moved in yet, the power was on, and the fridge had sandwich fixin’s in it.
I finished the bead of caulking on the wall I’d been working on before moving to the sink in the laundry room to clean up. Once I made some sandwiches, I grabbed a couple of bottles of water and sat at the island. I loved these barstools. I didn’t want a piece of furniture that I had to move to clean under. I wanted something fixed and floating. I finally found what I wanted online, but the company couldn’t get them to me when I needed them, so I commissioned a blacksmith my family had known for years to make them.
Made of solid cast iron with a round wooden seat, the “stool” was mounted to the island and swung in and out as needed. They were cool as hell and fit the industrial look I was going for. I pulled the task list I’d been working on over to me and marked off the caulking. All that was left were the cabinet handles.
With my belly full, I went to work. It didn’t take me long before I was screwing the last one in place. As I walked through the house, pride filled me. I’d built this cabin with my own two hands. And I’dfinallyfinished it. Now, I had my own place—a space all to myself.
But as I looked around, realization set in. It seemed the masochist I’d become when I hooked up with Hayden still reigned supreme.
The house I’d built… Fuck!
My hands scrubbed my face in frustration.
I’d fucking built the house Hayden had gone about finding when he was finally out of the Marines. I didn’t know if he knew all the things he’d yammered on about while in the hospital under sedation, but this house had been the thing he mumbled about the most. He’d wanted a place to go to get away from everything. After years of deploying on warships, he yearned for wide-open spaces where he wouldn’t have to see a person for miles.
Glutton for punishment should have my photo next to it in the dictionary.
What idiot builds the exact house their husband wants when the husband no longer wants them?
I planted my ass on the raised hearth in the living room, looking out over the empty space I’d come to love as I labored away, making sure even thing was just so. Close hadn’t been good enough. It had to be perfect, and now I’d finished it. Only I would never share this space with the man I built it for. My husband was who knew where, doing who knew what—or who, as much as I hated the thought—and I was here, avoiding people like the plague.
And without Hayden, I couldn’t stay in this house. It would only serve to remind me what I’d lost.
I stood, moving toward the front door, trying to put as much distance between me and my idiocy. My phone rang as I stepped out on the porch. I thought about ignoring it, but I knew if I did, and it was one of the family, they’d all be calling.
Relief washed over me when I saw the name on the screen.
“Walker.”
“How you doing, kid?”
I chuckled to cover how choked up I got when he checked in on me and called me kid.
“I’m okay. Trying to decide what the fuck to do with a house I can’t bring myself to move into.”
“Why, is there something wrong with it?”
“Only that I’m a fucking imbecile and builthisdream house.”
“Jesus, kid.”
“My thoughts exactly. So, what’s the job?”
