Page 171 of Wildest Dreams

“You tryna flatter me?” he asks, and I hold my palms up in surrender.

“I’m being dead serious,” I tell him. “I’ll pay anything to get this fixed today.”

We trudge across the landing, Jason following behind as I lead him down the corridor.

“One, I’m not asking for compensation,” he says gruffly, stepping over the threshold as I jerk my thumb toward the affected drywall, “and two…”

He blinks down at the area a few feet away from the door, slowly tilting his head to the side as he frowns down at it.

After a long moment he glances back to me and repeats, “Uh… what’d you do?”

I breathe out a nervous laugh as he crouches in front of the dent. His eyes slide to the soft faux-fur rug beside his boot – as in, therug which I made love to Ash on the second that we got back to Larch Peak – and after a slightly amused, slightly painedglimpse in my direction, he jokingly moves a few inches farther away from it.

I rub awkwardly at the back of my neck. Yeah, I should have thought to move that before he got here.

“Jesus, Mace,” he mumbles, setting down the piece of drywall and his toolbox. He gets a measuring tape from his pocket, takes a mental note, and then finds his utility knife.

He turns to look at me over his shoulder, gesturing for me to take a look at what he’s doing.

I crouch down next to him, nodding as he explains the procedure, and grateful as hell that a damage this small doesn’t require a full wall upheaval.

“We’re gonna replace the damaged area with a new piece of drywall,” he says, “putting in a little wooden support before we slot in the new square. After we’ve screwed the support in, we’ll use some joint compound to fill in the edges and scrape away the excess with a putty knife.”

I nod. “Got it.”

“Tomorrow morning you’re gonna use this sanding block” – he holds it up to me – “and brush it over the area so that you’re left with a smooth surface. You might need to add some more joint compound and repeat the sanding process, but it just depends. Then all that’s left to do is paint the area to match the rest of the wall. You got the paint that was used in this project?”

“Yeah, Ash has it.”

He glances over at me. “Who’s Ash?”

“The chick who owns this house.”

He stares at me for a beat. “And you put a hole through her wall?”

I wince and grip the back of my neck. “It was an accident.”

Jace gives me an amused, kind of pitying look.

“She mad at you?” he asks, while he places a ruler beside the dent. He pencils a faint line to create one side of a square.

I shake my head, looking down at my locked fingers.

“Not even,” I admit. “She was, like, real sweet about it. As long as I get this fixed for her I think everything’ll be okay.”

“Sounds like a very understanding girl,” he says quietly, brow low in concentration as he finishes marking up the area.

“She’s the best,” I murmur, clearing my throat as I duck my head.

Jace gives my shoulder a fatherly shove and I glance up at him, pulling myself from my thoughts. Thoughts about how much Ash has grown this summer, how much trust she’s put in me – and how, for the first time in four years, she’s started wearing her heart on her sleeve.

Jace holds the utility knife between us and raises his brow in a question.

“You wanna do the fixing?” he offers. “I’ll make sure you don’t mess it up.”

I breathe out a laugh and take the knife. “Trust me, I won’t be doing that again.”

He laughs, quiet and kind, and then we get to work on fixing the wall.

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