Page 68 of In Your Dreams, Holden Rhodes

She nodded. “Okay.” She straightened up and pulled away from me and I itched to pull her back into another hug. “Let’s knock this wall down, shall we?”

We checked that it wasn’t a supporting wall, confirmed there was no plumbing or electrical running through it, and cut the power to the house, just in case. I ignored the annoyed look she shot me when I plunked a hardhat on her head and handed her the mask.

“There could be mold or asbestos in the walls,” I told her. “You don’t want to inhale that shit and sound like a seventy-year-old smoker.”

“I’d sound sexy,” she shot back, taking the mask.

“You don’t need any help with that,” I said without realizing it.

She shot me a curious smile but it dropped when I handed her the sledgehammer.

I widened my eyes at her. “Go on.”

She scoffed and pointed at me. “You’re the one with all the muscles. You look like a freaking hockey player, Holden. You do it.”

I hid a grin. Hockey player, huh? “You have muscles, too. Come on. It’ll be fun. You can get me back by taking me to get my tarot cards read.”

Her eyes sparkled with delight. “That would be so fun. Great idea.”

It did sound fun. With Sadie, everything was fun.

She gripped the wooden handle and the sledgehammer thunked to the floor. “It’s heavy.” She frowned.

“Yep.”

She sighed, lifted the sledgehammer, and swung it at the wall. It barely cracked the drywall.

She straightened up with a frown. “This is hard.”

“You aren’t angry enough.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I’mplentyangry.”

“Then show me. Think of someone who pissed you off.”

Her expression changed, and I remembered our conversation the other day, about the fucking asshole who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her.

“Him?” I asked in a low voice. “Are you thinking about him?”

She nodded, not meeting my eyes, and my shoulders tensed. “What was his name?”

“Grant,” she gritted out, fire in her eyes.

There it was. That’s what I wanted to see.

I pointed at the hole in the drywall. “Right there, honey. His face is right there. What are you going to do?”

She lifted the sledgehammer and swung it into the hole. More drywall crumbled. Her eyebrows knitted together with focus.

“Nice. Keep going.”

She hit it again.

“He lied to me,” she gritted out before she hit it again. She hit a plank of wood and it cracked. “I thought he was the perfect guy, and he was a fake person the whole time.” She hit the wall again.

More and more drywall fell away until I could see through the other side. My heart raced like I was the one swinging the hammer. Her face flushed and her eyes raged with fury and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“I can’t believe I was going to marry thatass!” she spat before she hit the wall again.

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