I glanced at my watch. She'd left an hour ago to handle a problem with the countertop fabricator. I'd expected her to be gone until at least five. She climbed out of the car holding a cardboard box, and even from thirty feet away, I could hear the glass bottles clinking inside.
"Beer?" Collins called down from the loft, his voice hopeful.
"Beer," Olivia confirmed, setting the box on a sawhorse. "You guys earned it."
I climbed down the ladder, wiping caulk residue on my jeans. "We're not done yet. Still got the second floor?—"
"Ben." She looked at me, and there was something lighter in her expression. "You've been working sixteen-hour days for three months. Drink the damn beer."
Frank appeared from the kitchen, Walt right behind him. Collins was already down from the loft, cracking open a bottle with the edge of his tape measure.
"Boss says we earned it," Frank said, grabbing two bottles and handing one to Walt. "I'm not gonna argue."
I looked at Olivia. She was holding out a bottle toward me, one eyebrow raised in challenge.
"One beer," I said, taking it.
"One beer," she agreed.
We stood there in the fading afternoon light, five people covered in sawdust and caulk and drywall mud, drinking cheap domestic beer in a house that was finally starting to look finished. Collins made some joke about the window installation that I didn't quite catch, and Walt laughed with that rare, rusty sound that made even Frank crack a grin.
It felt good. It felt earned.
By the time the bottles were empty, the sun was starting to dip behind the hills. Frank stretched, his back cracking audibly.
"I'm out," he announced. "My wife's gonna kill me if I'm late for dinner again."
"Yeah, I should head too," Walt added. "Got physical therapy at six."
Collins drained the last of his beer and tossed the bottle into the recycling bin we'd set up near the garage. "Same. See you tomorrow, boss."
They filed out one by one, trucks rumbling down the driveway, leaving me and Olivia standing in the clearing.
She was looking up at the house, the bottle still in her hand, her expression thoughtful.
"Want to see it?" I asked.
"See what?"
"The house. With the windows in. It's different."
She looked at me, then back at the house. "Yeah. Okay."
We walked inside together.
The light was the first thing that hit me.
For months, the interior had been dim, the rough openings covered in plastic filtering the sun into a gray, washed-out glow. But now, with the windows installed, the light poured in, golden and warm, catching the raw wood and the fresh drywall in a way that made the whole space feel alive.
Olivia stopped just inside the threshold, her breath catching.
"Oh," she said softly.
I followed her gaze. The cathedral ceiling soared above us, the exposed beams casting long shadows. The massive stone fireplace rose up the back wall, still unfinished but imposing. And through the windows—those enormous, ridiculous, expensive windows—the hills rolled away in layers of green and gray, the reservoir a mirror in the distance.
It was beautiful.
Ryan had designed something beautiful.
