I sighed and dropped my forehead to the two-by-four framing one part of the wall and sucked in a slow breath.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
In. Out. In. Out.
I didn’t know the motivation, didn’t understand what had changed, why she wanted me to have this now. It wasn’t like she’d included a hand-written note. Just a notarized copy of the legal documents listing me as the heir.
Seventeen years since that night in the hospital.
One short conversation. Seven years of foster care. One check at twenty-five. A set of documents at twenty-eight.
That was my family.
Cool.
I forced myself to straighten, to pick up my tape measure and check the length again. Then I made myself cut the pipe and glue it in position.
I repeated the process—measuring, cutting, securing the lengths—until I’d finished the storeroom and moved on to the hall where I added cutting sheetrock and tearing out old pipes to my measure-cut-glue process.
That kept my hands busy for a long time.
But my mind, the one that remembered how scared and hurt and alone I’d felt for all those years, wasn’t spending any time at all thinking about the confusing tangle of pipes.
It was squarely focused on that envelope in my toolbox and the mess it was about to create of my carefully formed and hard-earned life.
My grandmother, folks.
The gift that never stopped giving.
“Charlie?” Tig popped his head into the hall while I was elbows deep in sheetrock. “I’m grabbing lunch again. Not burrito bowls. Maybe Italian, maybe Thai. What are you . . .”
He kept talking, confirming what I already knew.
Delia had sent him.
I’d tried to fake it when she’d come in that morning, but I’d known I hadn’t done a very good job.
No wonder, because hours after I’d opened the packet, I was still an absolute mess.
I wasn’t an actor on my best day, but I couldn’t even begin to pretend like I was fine. Still, if I could have lifted a hand to stop him and temper his worries, I would have. However, both were currently occupied with the large plastic pipe I was shoving through a hole in the framing.
“I’m not hungry,” I said instead, talking right over the top of him as Thai turned to pizza.
“Char—”
I got the pipe secure and turned to face him. “I opened the envelope. I’m not okay. I—” This time I did put a hand up to stop his talking. “I’m not ready to talk about it.”
He sighed. “You sure?”
I nodded.
His eyes stayed on mine for a long time, but then he sighed and nodded. “So, pizza?”
I shook my head. “I’m not hungry.”
“I might not force you to talk to me”—he crossed his arms—“but I will sic Delia on you if I need to.”
“You guys are like some awful professional wrestling tag team.”
“Tig-tastic?”
I laughed despite myself. “If you’re trying to suggest that would be a good wrestling team name, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“Delia and Tig?”
The pipe was so . . . close . . . and got it. “Uninspired,” I said, “albeit accurate.”
“So, pizza?”
I sighed. “You’re not going to stop with the food thing, are you?”
“Since I saw what you pack in that lunch box and try to pass off as food? No.”
“A salad is a perfectly reasonable lunch.”
“For a rabbit.”
Another sigh. “Fine. Pizza’s great. Now, will you leave me alone so I can finish this job?”
“Yup.” A flash of teeth. “Especially since it worked.”
“What worked?” I asked, glancing back down and moving onto the next fitting.
“You’re snapping at me.”
My brows drew down. “Yeah? So, when is that new?”
“Exactly,” he said, not explaining himself or the cocky smile on his face. “I’ll come pester you again when the pizza’s here.”
“Don’t—”
I’d started to say, don’t bother, that I would come out when I was at a stopping point, but Tig had disappeared back around the corner before I got that far.
With one more put-upon sigh—I was turning into a teenager—I got back to work, mentally deducting all the lunches Tig was buying me from my bottom line. He might say he was paying, but I wasn’t going to take advantage.
Which meant this was going to get expensive.
But I couldn’t lie and say I hadn’t enjoyed sitting with the artists and eating together before their first appointments came in. Tig had built his own family here at the shop, and it was nice to be a part of it, even if it was just temporary.
Still, I thought it might be wise for me to come in even earlier the next day and finish before noon then come back after they were closed.
Less disruption for the clients, especially since I was done in the way back.
There.
Settled.
Yet, even as I tried to convince myself I was just doing right by Tig’s business, another part of me knew I was pulling back.
Too close.
Careful to not get too close.
That was when the blows hurt the most.
When they came from the people I’d opened up to enough to trust.
Eight
Garret
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Okay, so now I was getting really irritated.
This was Day Three of a seven A.M. wake up call. Day Three of Charlie making a shit-ton of noise below me until almost midnight.
First of all, I did not function well in the morning.
If Charlie had made noise until two, then came back and started working at noon, fine.
But this? Her leaving at midnight and me not being able to crash until three? Yeah, that didn’t work for me. Sighing, I shoved my head under the pillow and tried to ignore the racket below.
The bang, bang, bang was almost rhythmic, as though she were doing her level best to bug the shit out of me.
And maybe she was.
And maybe the world revolved around my dumb ass.
She hadn’t given me a second look the previous day, not even when the entire staff had sat together over a couple of large pies. Instead, she’d talked to Delia, planning a shopping trip for the two of them to pick out new fixtures for the bathroom, both of them ignored Tig’s protests that it was his name on the sign out front and he should have the final say.
Though . . . she had smiled when I’d suggested Delia get a chandelier for the bathroom—much to Delia’s cackling laughter and Tig’s ever-growing-louder protests.
She just hadn’t looked at me when she’d done so.
And okay, so maybe I had to have been studying her profile very closely to see the slight crease in her cheek when her mouth curved up, but Charlie had a great profile. Very pleasing to an artist’s eye, and I just had a built-in ability to appreciate that kind of beauty—
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Yeah,” I said, pushing up and speaking in the general direction of the noise below. “Don’t worry. I don’t believe my own bullshit either.”
Especially since my promise to be a dick and do what I wanted had lasted all of ten minutes.