“So did you,” she replied.
Later, after Brian left with promises to return in the morning and Jason had locked up his tools, they sat on overturned paint buckets in the middle of the empty floor, pizza box between them.
“This doesn’t feel real yet,” Bree said, looking around. “Like we’re squatting in someone else’s dream.”
“It’s ours,” he said. “We just haven’t filled it in yet.”
She took a bite of pizza, chewed thoughtfully. “Speaking of filling in,” she said, “I talked to Diaz’s assistant. Her cousin’s a realtor. She sent over some listings.”
He swallowed a mouthful of crust. “Anything promising?”
“A few,” she said. “There’s a little bungalow near the marina that’s in our budget, but it’s tiny. There’s a farmhouse on the outskirts with land and a detached garage that keeps winking at me, but it needs work.”
“Work we could do,” he said.
“Work we’d have to do,” she countered. “On top of this.”
He thought about it. About walking out of a place that smelled like their coffee, their laundry, their life.
“Can we see the farmhouse?” he asked.
She smiled slowly. “Tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “Realtor’s meeting us there at three.”
He leaned back on his hands, looking up at the rafters. “A house and a shop in the same week,” he said. “We don’t do anything halfway, do we?”
“Nope,” she said.
He looked back at her, at the spark in her eyes that looked a lot like fear and excitement braided together.
“I’m in,” he said.
“For the house?” she asked.
“For the life,” he replied.
Her breath hitched; she looked away for a second, blinking fast, then back.
“Good,” she said. “Because I already started a list of potential paint colors for the kitchen.”
He laughed, the sound bouncing off bare brick and old beams. For the first time that day, the knot in his chest loosened for more than a moment.
Tomorrow, they’d walk through other people’s rooms and try to imagine their own lives there. The board could still say no. The case Diaz was working on could still get ugly.
But sitting on paint buckets in a half-finished dream with grease on his hands and Bree at his side, Hank felt something he hadn’t in a long time.
Steady. Pointed somewhere. Moving.
Chapter 23
The farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel lane, its white paint a little tired, its front porch tilting with the weary charm of something that had held a lot of stories.
Bree climbed out of Hank’s truck and stood for a moment, letting the place settle into her bones. A line of old maples bordered the property, their leaves just beginning to hint at gold. Beyond the house, a weathered barn and a long, low outbuilding stretched toward a fringe of trees.
“Okay,” she said under her breath. “I see why you liked the pictures.”
Hank came around the front of the truck, keys jingling. “Good bones,” he said. “Kind of like you, Spencer.”
She elbowed him lightly. “Flatterer,” she said.
