God, it sounded so awful when he put it that way.
“Can you do me one little favor?”
I blew out a breath. “What is it?”
“Just don’t give up on us yet, okay?”
My heart did a stupid little skip, and I found myself nodding. “Okay, I promise I won’t.”
“Thanks, Vera. Get some sleep, okay? Things have a way of working out.”
Don’t give up.
That was easier said than done.
I woke up on Friday morning to the sound of someone knocking on my front door. I hadn’t slept nearly as much as I should have, but the knocking didn’t stop.
I shuffled to the front door in a t-shirt and shorts, hair in something that resembled a messy bun and a hurricane in one. I opened the door and Wyatt was standing there, looking unfairly good in jeans, a flannel shirt with a tool belt around his waist. It was a flashback to the first time he stood on my doorstep, except now I knew how good it felt to have his arms around me, and how much it hurt not to have them there again.
“Morning,” he handed me a to-go cup and a bag with the Bend’s Best Brew logo on the side. I took them dumbly, still half asleep. “What’s going on?”
Another Wild Timber truck pulled into my driveway, and two men I vaguely recognized got out.
Wyatt beamed. “We’re having a slow day at Wild Timber today; materials delay, again. So Zane, Elias, and I are going to help you build nightstands.”
“But…you don’t have to do that.” Rejecting help was my default setting, and I jumped to it even though I desperately needed the help.
He rested a hand on each of my arms, and the simple touch had my shoulders relaxing. “I know we don’t, and I know you don’t like to accept help. You would figure this all out without me, but sometimes if a hand is offered, you should just take it. I also know that if I’m going to convince you to go out on a second date, I have to show you that I’m all in. Not just for dinners out and sex, but for the day-to-day stuff too. Stuff with Ben or work or your business. You know?”
My heart started to melt and my sleep-deprived eyes watered.
“I want to kiss you and have fun with you, but I also want to be there when you’re stressed or get you coffee when you’ve had a hard day.”
“Wyatt, I—I’m a mess.” I gestured with my hand, which was holding the coffee, to my worn-out clothes.
“And I’m here to help clean it up. And one day, when I’m a mess, you’ll clean me up too. That’s what you want, right? A partner, not another obligation.”
“This is a lot of sweet things to say first thing in the morning. But yeah, that’s what I want.”
“Daylight’s wasting,” Elias called from behind us.
“Go have breakfast, okay? Drink some coffee, then meet us in the garage, and we’ll get as many of these things built as we can.”
I was tired, hungry, undercaffeinated, in desperate need of a shower, and completely overwhelmed. But I was also determined to make this business work, and Wyatt was offering me a lifeline.
I stepped back to let the guys in, then grabbed the breakfast sandwich from the bag and shoved it in my mouth as I ran up the stairs to get dressed. I didn’t have time to dawdle over coffee; I had three trained carpenters here offering to help, and I needed to take advantage.
The things that Wyatt had said circled in my mind as I pulled on some jeans, but I didn’t have time to dwell on them now. I had pushed him away because I couldn’t see how everything could work.
He was here to show me how wrong I was. I wanted to be wrong.
I just wasn’t in any position to decide right now. I needed to clear my head, and to do that I needed to clear the backlog of nightstands.
We set up an assembly line in the garage. I organized while Elias did the initial cuts, Zane did the assembly, and Wyatt sanded and stained.
The guys worked hard. We got a sizable amount of my orders done, or partly done by the time five o’clock rolled around and Zane and Elias said goodbye.
Wyatt was putting the finishing touches on one of the nightstands as I finally had time to look around and see what we had accomplished.
