Page 103 of Take My Heart
‘Us. And whatever the hell we’re doing.’
She looks down, shaking her head.
‘What? Are you saying you won’t talk about it?’
She turns her back to me. ‘Don’t do this, Brody.’
‘Do what?’
‘Ruin this. Just let us have a few more days.’
I move so I’m in front of her and notice her tearing up. I take her hand. ‘C’mon. Let’s go sit down.’
The only place to sit that isn’t covered in sheets is the kitchen table. I take her over there and sit on the chair, setting her on my lap.
‘Tell me what’s going on.’
‘I don’t want this to end,’ she whispers.
‘I don’t either, but I don’t know what to do. You’re leaving next weekend.’
She nods. ‘I know. And I know we agreed this wouldn’thappen, that we wouldn’t be anything more than roommates who sometimes have sex.’
‘Sometimes?’ I kid. We have sex daily, sometimes more than that.
She cracks a smile. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ I rub her hand. ‘It’s not what either of us planned. And I don’t know where we go from here.’
‘We go back to our lives. Back to how things were before we met.’
‘I won’t be going back to my old life. I’m not that person anymore.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve changed me, Kate. Your energy. Your organization. Your determination to get shit done. It somehow rubbed off on me and now I’m like a different person. You’ve inspired me to stop putting stuff off and just do it. Make it happen. If I’d felt like this last fall, I would’ve had this house renovated and sold by December instead of doing nothing all this time and racking up debt.’
‘What happened? Why’d you put off working on it?’
‘Because I was in over my head. I didn’t know what to do, where to start. My cousin, Nash, offered to help me, but I didn’t want him helping until I had a plan for what to do. But the plan never happened until you showed up and helped me envision what this place could look like. Then Jason gave me that ultimatum and forced me to take action.’
‘What ultimatum?’
Shit. She wasn’t supposed to know about that.
I decide to just tell her the truth about my money problems and how Jason’s been helping me. I make her promise to nevertell anyone, especially my family, not that she’ll ever see them again after she leaves.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?’ Kate says when I’m done. ‘I feel bad for pressuring you to work on the house when you didn’t have the money for it.’
‘You didn’t pressure me. You were just giving me ideas for how to fix it up, and they were really good ideas. I just didn’t have the money to do them. But then I got the money from a week of plowing and the money you gave me for rent and it was enough to get us to where we’re at now.’
‘Does that mean you’re out of money?’
‘Yeah, but it’s fine. We got more done than I thought we would given what we had to work with. At least now, the house is fixed up enough that I won’t have to take a loss on it. And when I finally sell it, I’m going to use some of the money to pay you back.’
‘Brody, no, I’m not taking your money.’
‘It’s not my money. It’s yours. You really think I’d charge you rent after all the work you’ve done?’
