As he spoke, I watched his face, and realized that he loved doing this.
"Why do you work at the shop with Travis and the Hails when you could be doing this full time?" I questioned him.
He shrugged.
"They have insurance."
I burst out laughing.
"I'm sure that's not the only reason," I teased and took another sip of the beer he'd handed me.
It wasn't as bad that time, but still, I placed my drink down on the counter and started to inspect his work.
My eyes went to the wall where the wood trim met the wood of the walls. "Is this shiplap?"
He grunted. "I was doing it before Joanna Gaines."
I started to giggle. "I guess you were otherwise occupied when they got famous."
He gave me a droll look, then took my hand. "Grab your beer, I'll show you the rest of the house."
I grabbed my beer and followed behind him, periodically taking a drink while I took in everything he wanted to do to the place, and everything he was going to leave as it was.
By the time we'd reached the second floor-and his bedroom-I was in love with the large, old house.
"This place is going to be magnificent when you're through," I told him. "I'd love to live here. Mine is nice, and I'd love to own something similar, but it always seemed like a lot of upkeep, so I've never taken the owners of the house up on their offer. I'm not really cut out for doing this kind of stuff."
His eyes twinkled.
"Sure you are," he said, pushing the bathroom door open and letting me get my first glimpse of the master bath.
And I fell in love. Utterly in love.
"Wow," I breathed. "It's a clawfoot tub! Is this the original?"
He nodded his head and followed me inside, taking in the room with a much more critical eye than I was sure that I had.
"This will be perfect once you get a fresh coat of paint on the walls. The floor is odd, with all that mismatched wood, but I love it."
He looked down.
"This being the bathroom, I wasn't sure I was going to leave the wood. Wood rots when it gets wet, but my uncle did a fantastic job at keeping the water off the floor in here. The floors in the other bathrooms have already been replaced with tile, but this one is all original." He scuffed his boot on the floor, and smiled down at it.
I agreed. This floor was pretty beautiful. The slats of wood were a lot smaller than I was used to seeing as hardwood floors went.
"I think you should shiplap that wall," I told him, pointing to the wall that was closest to the tub. "Make this room really pop."
He walked over to the wall, with its dark green wallpaper, and reached up to the ceiling-yes, I said the ceiling-and took a hold of the corner of the left most piece, then pulled it down.
It didn't all come down in one piece like I was expecting, but what it did do was show me enough that there was already shiplap on the walls behind the paper.
"Why would anyone want to cover that up?" I mused. "The nerve of some people."
He grunted. "They'll probably say the same thing about us in twenty years when they get a load of what we're decorating with now."
I agreed. They probably would.
I walked up to where he was standing and started to peel off more of the wallpaper that I could reach. He helped, and in twenty minutes, we mostly had all of the paper off the wall, and I was amazed with what was revealed behind it.
"It's like a perfect little farmhouse wall," I told him. "I wouldn't do a single thing but maybe sand this to get all the stray pieces of wallpaper off it."
He didn't say anything, causing me to look up at him. When I did, it was to find him staring at me with amusement.
"What?"
"I thought you said you didn't know anything about fixing up your own house?"
I blushed.
"I could probably do the easy stuff like this," I said. "But I've never sanded. Never cut a board. Never done much of anything like that."
He trailed one of his fingers down the length of my neck, and a shiver stole over my body.
"I can teach you anything you want to know, little rebel."
I huffed out a laugh.
"Little rebel?"
He fingered my now very short hair that was now cut and styled around the top of my shoulder. It was much shorter than I would've liked, but it did, I had to admit, look cute.
"Little rebel," he confirmed. "You're a little rebel that doesn't care what anyone thinks. I like that in a person."
I licked my suddenly dry lips.
"We shouldn't have done what we did," I admitted softly … hesitantly.
He knew what I meant, but I couldn't make myself say any more.
I didn't want it to be over with. I didn't want to admit that we'd taken it too far.
"Probably not," he agreed. "But we're going to do it again."
I winced. "We crossed a moral line."
His eyes felt like they were lasering into me as he said, "Do I look like a man that gives a fuck about moral lines?"
I bit my lip.
"You, maybe not. Me? Do I look like a woman that doesn't care about moral lines?"
His hand curled around my head-yes, I do mean my entire head … he had big hands-and he pulled me to him until I was inches away from his mouth.
"How about you let me worry about your morals for a little while?"
I hesitated. "I don't want you to go back to jail."
It was purely selfish. The reason I didn't want him to go back to prison had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me. I knew that I wouldn't like not seeing him.
Sure, I'd be worried for him if he had to go back, and honestly, that was pretty big too.
However, I just plain didn't want him to go, because I would miss him.
"Not going back to jail, sweetheart," he told me bluntly. "Got out on good behavior. Saved a guard from getting himself dead. Trust me when I say, I'm not going back."
I pursed my lips. "If you weren't going back, what's with all the business of anger management with me, or the fact that you have to see the parole officer?"
He pulled me in closer-which I didn't think was possible-and spoke only millimeters away from my lips.
"Bureaucratic bullshit," he admitted. "They have to play the part. The man I saved, though? He was someone important. Didn't know it at the time, but now I do. We're talking the nephew of the goddamn president important. Why he was working in a prison, I still have yet to find out, but whatever. I was seriously minutes away from getting pardoned completely when I told them I didn't want the easy way out. They gave me this."
"But why?"
The thought of him getting out, completely unscathed, for something that he'd done was appealing. Who wouldn't want to be pardoned? That was like getting a ‘get out of jail free' card. I'd have taken it in a New York minute.
"Because that's cheating," he admitted. "And I'm no cheater."
I bit my lip and looked at him.
He was so close my eyes almost had to cross to see him clearly.
However, the only thing touching me was the warm, huge palm of his hand that was still curled around my head, and nothing else.
Just as I was about to reach out and touch him, he stepped away, dropping his hand from my face as he did.
"I talked to your father."
And that was the one true way to turn everything off inside of me.
I looked away from his intense gaze. A gaze that was taking everything about me in, and missing nothing. Not one single thing.
He saw the flinch that I couldn't stop.
He saw the way my face paled, and my forehead instantly broke out in a sweat.
He also noticed the way my hand automatically went to my hair-or where my hair would've once been.
"How many times did he cut your hair like that when you were younger?"
I shrugged. I'd lost count.
"I don't know," I admitted. "A few."
A lot.
But who was counting?
"I can count eleven instances," he said. "And that was when I was home."
I started to study the planks on the wall, trying to think about anything but what he was saying.
Eleven.
I wanted to laugh.
It was more like forty-five, but again, who was counting?
Not me. No, sir.
I was a lying whore.
I knew the exact number of times.
I looked down at my arm.
I remembered sliding that cool piece of metal over my wrists.
I'd never broken skin. No, but I remembered the slide. The slight sting. The way there was a red mark there for days as it slowly faded to nothing.
"Then I started to think about the times that you weren't at church, or with your father when he was out and about in town," he continued as if he weren't breaking my heart. "I remember that time at the town Christmas tree lighting when you were a senior in high school. I'd seen you that morning. I'd said hi. You'd told me how much you were looking forward to watching the tree lit up … then you never showed. I looked for you."
That time … yeah that had been a bad one.
I remembered seeing Tate that day. He'd been wearing a green long sleeved Carhartt t-shirt, brown boots, and faded blue jeans that were dirty as hell. He'd been working on his car or something, because he'd had grease all over every available surface of his clothes.