Page 5 of Crushes to WHAT

And now Emerson knows it.

Not that I think he didn’t know before, but… Well, when he observes it himself, I can throw myself straight into delusion and pretend he didn’t see me trip, or spill my food, or run into a wall. When I’m pointing directly at the evidence of my gracelessness, it becomes exponentially more difficult to pretend he doesn’t notice it. Especially when I kind of need him to notice it, because I’m hiring him to fix it.

Emerson hums, eyes roving my studio—and the many, many bumps and bruises I’ve given it. “This was an addition?”

I nod. “Before I bought the house. It’s why I bought it, even though most of the problems you’re seeing needed to be fixed when I moved in.” Most being a relative word, but really, I didn’t cause all of the destruction here. “They kept really good care of the main house, but the previous owners used this area as an apartment for an elderly relative, and that relative wasn’t one for taking the greatest care of their space.” An understatement. I’d had to DIY a lot to get the place upgraded to its current level of disrepair, and it wasn’t just pulling out a kitchen that required my attention. The bathroom alone took weeks of my amateur work before it met building codes well enough for me to let clients into it, and the room I use for my breakroom-slash-office…

Yikes.

Yikes.

I am more than grateful that I’m in a place financially where I can afford to hire a professional to get my workspace where I want it to be. No longer will my studio have to suffer under my inexperienced hand slapping bandaids on problems that need surgery—or creating new problems myself.

Emerson tilts his head, moving his observative eye to the ceiling, where water damage from a leaky pipe last year decorates one corner. He frowns. “Has that leak been taken care of?”

My head bounces like a spring, up and down in frantic movement. “Yes. Wolfe and Sterne fixed it for me in April. It wasn’t a huge leak, and we found it really early. It looks way worse than it was.” My brother and his lifelong best friend fixed it right up for me, with only a couple dozen handfuls of curse words between the two. They’d pleaded with me to just call Big Ron’s—the contracting company Emerson co-owns and works at—but it’s really hard to avoid the man you have a life-altering crush on when you invite that man into your home to fix your things.

As I now well know.

His gaze drops from the ceiling to land on me, inscrutable and unnerving.

I hold my breath and wait for him to speak.

“From now on, you call me,” he says, low. Not angry, but not happy, either. Serious. Extremely. Freaking. Serious. “A big thing, a small thing, I don’t care. You call me.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, uncertain. “Um.”

His eyes darken. “You call me,” he says, more sternly. Not a suggestion. Not a request. An order.

My heart beats hard, driving my blood through my veins directly to my cheeks and chest, where the rushing liquid comes to rest in a burning blush. In lieu of an answer, I whimper.

Emerson nods, satisfied. “Good,” he praises.

I whimper again.

He has mercy on me and redirects his attention back to my crumbling studio.

I enter the familiar boundaries of Delusionville and pretend Emerson can’t hear me dragging air harshly into my lungs. I follow his example through my huffs, looking at my studio and attempting to see it through his contractor-construction-man eyes.

It’s… not good. As in, not gooder than the not good I already knew that it was.

The tiles form a cracked and jagged black-and-white checkerboard across the floor of what was once a downtrodden kitchen, but is now a workspace in a sad state—an upgrade, I know, but the thought doesn’t comfort me. Those cabinets were gross and a total pain to remove… for Wolfe, Sterne, and Fox, my other brother and Wolfe’s twin, but I can’t help but see how much further there is to go, despite how far I’ve already come.

Beyond the broken tiles, the studio also boasts the aforementioned water stain on the ceiling, dents and divots along the walls, and a full-blown hole hiding behind the cabinet I store my hair towels in, which I’ll have to show Emerson at some point. The door that leads to the rest of the house is perfectly solid and abundantly oiled at the hinges, but the client door to the side driveway sticks, and the square window settled within it has a hairline crack in the corner that grows every winter. The window to the left of the door is likewise cracked. The window to the right of the door has been painted ever-so-slightly open, and no amount of oomph from me has been able to best the dried paint to get it shut.

Winters get cold in the studio, and summers get hot, and my heating and air bill is through the roof during both.

“I can give you a solid quote,” Emerson says. “And it’ll include that hole you think you’re hiding behind your cabinet there.”

I blush. Busted.

He chuckles, sighs, and approaches to twirl a lock of my pale pink hair around his calloused index finger. “Before I do that, I gotta know. How much of this are you going to let me do pro bono?”

I light up. “Pro bono?” I repeat. “For free?”

His eyes flick between mine, and his lip quirks up at the corner. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t cause any problems,” he murmurs, and… yeah. He definitely should have. Almond Blackwood is no dummy.

“I love free stuff,” I inform him. “Particularly free labor.” I remember the state of my studio, and a niggle of shame and propriety threatens to destroy the entirety of my savings account, which I had planned to throw at Emerson for this project. If I can keep it, though…