When in December (Home Haven #1)

Chapter 12

twelve

. . .

Poppy

“Are you going to tell me how to build this thing or not?”

“You’re going to put that piece together there.” I pointed at what I was talking about as I walked Aaron through how to make a bookshelf that looked like it had always been part of the home, step by step.

“Did you ever think that maybe this would’ve been better if you had gotten them from one of those big-box stores?” he asked. “You know they have a piece of paper that tells you what to do and everything. Emergency urgent care run probably not included, however.”

And have the delivery not arrive to this place, like everything else?

I instructed one piece after another as Aaron worked through how exactly I’d managed to put the first one together myself. Time and a lot of energy.

Both of which I didn’t exactly have in truckloads right now.

I was never going to get this place done.

I shook my head. No. I was. I was going to do everything in my power to turn this cabin around into the most idyllic holiday getaway anyone had ever seen. For the promotion. For Aaron and his family. For me.

No matter what it took, I was going to make it happen, even if my hand still throbbed from whatever disinfectant they’d put on it at the doctor’s office and I’d already suffered through Aaron putting me directly into the shower after we got inside from my embarrassingly ill-timed fall. I couldn’t even find it in me to care. The water was so warm it tingled on the bottom of my feet. When I got out of the shower, a folded stack containing a gray pair of sweatpants I had to roll over a few times to make fit and an oversized gray sweatshirt waited for me on the counter.

Aaron’s attention locked on me when I reentered the living room. His stare roamed over the way my wet hair stuck to the shoulders of the heather-gray cotton sweatshirt. Only then did he meet my eyes, which should’ve let him know then and there that I knew how absurd I looked.

“Make sure you take care of that sweatshirt,” he said. “It’s my favorite.”

Worried I was missing something, I looked down at myself. “It’s plain gray.”

“And?” he questioned.

“I’ll guard it with my life.”

“That’s all I ask.”

That was also why I was forced to have a large napkin unfolded over my chest by the time pizza was miraculously delivered from the roads I wasn’t allowed to drive on.

Even if I was slightly grateful that I hadn’t had to. And he was fulfilling his previous promise about feeding me.

“I got fries too,” mumbled Aaron, dumping another takeout container in front of me.

He took one before shoving the rest toward me in offering. I hesitated before I took one with the perfect golden crunch.

Though with food came another issue as the dog, Oz, stared at me without blinking, sneaking a step forward every few seconds, as if trying to be sly about how he wanted to steal my pizza.

He looked at me. He came a step closer. Then another.

If Aaron noticed, he didn’t call the dog off.

At least he wasn’t growling this time. Neither the dog nor Aaron.

“Can I …” I reached out and petted the back of his neck. “Oh, you’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

Oz seemed to like that, bending his body into me closer, until he was nearly about to push me right over onto the floor.

“Such a good boy. Oh, you want more pets? Do you want me to pet your butt? Weird, but all right. What a good boy.”

The dog looked much more pleased with me than this morning, lightly panting with his mouth open.

It almost looked like he was smiling at me.

There was where all comparisons between him and his temporary owner ended. That didn’t take long. He was much better mannered.

I couldn’t help but notice the way Aaron paused occasionally to check in on us, shifting from one leg and back to the other like it pained him. He shook it out like a runner getting ready for a race, seamlessly attempting to cover up an old injury.

He shifted on his feet again as he reached for another piece of the shelf.

“You okay over there?” he asked, catching my line of sight.

I slid my hand away from Oz and took another bite of pizza. “Yeah, fine. Ready for the next step?”

“I just slide the shelf in, right?”

“Make sure that the shelves are level and even with the tiny markers I made on the wood,” I instructed.

He twisted around piece after piece to make sure they were the correct ones I was referring to.

“You’ve never worked with your hands much, huh?”

“Not in the way you mean,” he muttered, just loud enough.

Was that a joke? “Professional, remember?”

“Was that before or after I drove you to urgent care and we agreed you’re staying the night?” he asked. “I thought I’d already decided that we’d throw that word out the window.”

“Not your decision.”

He huffed.

“And I’m not staying the night .”

At that, Aaron raised an eyebrow, looking back over me, lounging on the floor in his sweats that smelled like spring-fresh laundry detergent, eating yet another slice after I said I was done after number three.

I’d admit, it didn’t look great.

“Not like that,” I said, a bit more sheepish.

He knew what I’d meant. Even though the real question remained. Where was I going to end up sleeping when the time came? It wasn’t as if I could stay over on his brand-new couch that hadn’t been delivered.

My eyes caught on to what he was doing next. “No. Don’t use that small of a screw. You want it to provide structure for weight. Those are for the molding when it goes up at the end.”

Aaron dropped the metal in favor of the one I was rapidly pointing at.

He wasn’t terrible at following directions.

“First time building something?”

“Sort of,” he said. “I didn’t have a father who was around much and did projects by himself. My family used to live closer to the city, where my sister still is. Whenever there was a leak or issue, you called it out to be fixed.”

“That makes sense,” I said, not letting on to how much I knew about his family.

“I know how to sew.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“In the barest sense of the word,” Aaron clarified. Not that I saw him sewing ball gowns or anything in his free time, but still, consider me impressed. “Can’t even call it a party trick really, though it sounds super impressive when a guy says it, doesn’t it?”

“It’s sexist, but yeah.”

“We were encouraged to learn how to manage the basics in the army. You should at least know how to sew a button back on. Then, there were sewing patches and making things last as long as you could. I wasn’t the worst at it—that was for sure,” he went on, pressing the drill to connect the shelves into place.

I focused on the work and not him as I asked more questions. “You weren’t close to your family?”

He paused as if truly thinking about it. “Close enough. My parents were busy a lot of the time. My sister got that gene. My unit in the Army became my family.”

“That’s nice.”

“For a while,” he half-heartedly agreed.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Pretty sure you’ve already asked a few,” said Aaron. “But go on.”

“Before, when you were taking me to urgent care, you said something.”

“And what was that?”

“You said you didn’t want another person bleeding out on you,” I reminded him.

He paused his work.

I was encroaching upon a topic that he likely didn’t want to talk about. Who would? He hadn’t even wanted to accept me telling him that I understood that he was grieving the other day, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Did that happen before? I mean, I assume?—”

“Yeah.” He nodded, turning back to look toward the mess of screws lying around. The ones he needed were right there, but he ran his fingers through them anyway, sending one or two rolling to the side. “Sort of anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” I quickly tried to correct, seeing his attitude start to turn. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“I don’t remember much of it.” He focused on finding the next board that I must’ve put in the wrong spot earlier. “When I was deployed this last time, there was an accident. We weren’t supposed to be there. There was an old mine no one was lucky enough to run over until we did. My buddy took a hit. I took a hit.”

My eyes scanned over the puckered skin on his leg and under his shirt, where I remembered scars running up along his torso when he couldn’t be bothered putting on a shirt. Perhaps there was a reason for that. Maybe he liked to see those scars every day, to be reminded of what had happened.

“I was still conscious enough to try to get to my friend. I tried to stop the bleeding, but he was … it was already too late. They told me that I must’ve been in shock when I tried to save him. I was trying to bring him back to goddamn life.” He chuckled lowly. “The only sound after we hit the mine was his dog. He wouldn’t stop whining or crying—I don’t know.”

Both of us glanced toward Oz. He was lying next to me, maw in his paws.

The moment Aaron turned away again, I reached down to feed him a piece of my crust.

He scampered up to his feet, waiting for more.

Aaron hadn’t noticed as he continued his story, words soft and vulnerable, whether he meant them to be or not. “Then, there was my own heart, still beating like it didn’t even know that anything had happened. That everything had ended in less than a second.”

There was a beat. We sat in silence.

“Told you, not a good storyteller,” said Aaron, his voice void of emotion.

I felt pressure forming behind my eyes. But I wasn’t going to cry. Not for him. Especially since I was pretty sure that he’d berate me if I did.

I forced myself to hold it together. “What was his name?”

Aaron took a deep breath. He peeked over his shoulder at me. “Vassar.”

“Vassar. And Oz was …”

“Yep.” He got back to work, leaving us in the quiet.

I broke the silence. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“What?” he asked.

“You should stop doing what you’re doing right now,” I said, my voice coming out more teasingly than I’d intended, though I still couldn’t look at him.

He dropped the tool in his hand before he glanced up at my small smile, not talking about the bookshelves.

“I don’t want to like you.”

“You don’t have to,” he said. “Professional, remember?”

“Can’t we just get along until I finish this project? Because I do need to finish it,” I said. “And now, you kind of did help me here.”

“Why do you even need to finish this project?” he asked. “Why not move on to the next snooty homeowner’s house?”

“Are you calling your sister snooty?”

He breathed a short sound that sounded a little like a chuckle.

“Because I can’t let myself not finish it,” I tried explaining. “This job has always been my dream, and at the end of the year …”

He listened closely.

“There’s a promotion,” I confessed, testing the waters to see if he was going to use this as another piece of ammunition to shoot back at me somehow. “I was told that the promotion was set to be mine. Now though, there’s a sort of last-minute challenge since there are two of us up for it.”

“And what’s this other girl working with?” he asked.

“A house in the city.”

“Just a house?”

I took a deep breath, setting down my slice of pizza as I laid it out for him. “A well-off family brownstone in the city that also wants to be ready for the holidays this season. Historical integrity, mixed with modern, clean edges and silver trees probably. If I know Alison—the works.”

“The works.”

“Yes.”

“What do the works entail?” he asked. “Seriously, what are we talking about here? A fake Santa squeezing his ass down the chimney on Christmas Day and a fancy plastic tree or …”

“More like thousands of dollars strictly for the holiday, dedicated to one-of-a-kind chandeliers and hand-blown Venetian glass ornaments.”

Aaron let out a low whistle.

“You know, to give it that special kind of cozy touch,” I said, even though I would just about die to be put in the position Alison was in. I looked around the cabin. “I know I can make this place look amazing. Not in the same way, of course, but it could be the best place I’ve put together so far.”

Aaron must’ve seen what I did. There was a long way to go—from the painting to the furniture that needed to be brought in to fill all the rooms. Then the most important part of all. Decorating. For the home. For the holiday.

All of it.

And we were already so far behind.

“I’m also making sure that I plan your holiday perfectly. That’s why I’m here. The event. The days before and day of Christmas. Everything will be perfect by the time I’m done.” I tried to maintain positivity, but I was beginning to think I’d misplaced it during the blood loss earlier.

“Will your boss see it to decide?”

Would Michelle notice all I work I’d put in for the family on Christmas Day alongside the big picture of the cabin itself? I wasn’t sure.

“Sarah has two children, right?” I asked.

Aaron nodded. “Why?”

“I was thinking everyone could make gingerbread houses in the kitchen one evening.”

“Gingerbread houses? You never turn that planning brain of yours off, do you?” he asked.

“It’s a classic,” I said, ignoring the latter portion of his question. “Have you ever made one?”

“No. I assume you have?”

“Once,” I admitted shyly. Though I liked to think of myself as a holiday-event-planning extraordinaire, there were still some things that needed a little work. “I made one at an after-school camp at the rec center on Pine Street in the city.”

Aaron paused. “On Pine? I think I went there once years ago.”

I hesitated before saying anything else, not looking up at him when I could feel his eyes land on me. “Oh?”

“Small world. Who knew your entry into home design would start with dry after-school cookies in such a dump?” he said.

“Yeah, it wasn’t my finest work.”

“I would’ve thought yours would’ve won first prize for perfect icing lines on the roof,” he muttered with a curl of his lip.

I laughed. It was easy once it started with little high-pitched giggles. “So, you do know your way around a gingerbread house. Mine had way too many gumdrops. Completely messed up the gingerbread feng shui.”

He raised an eyebrow, as if sensing more than that.

“The roof collapsed.”

Aaron barked a laugh.

My heart stopped in my chest as I listened to the deep, resonant vibrato that escaped him. The laugh wasn’t loud or long; it lasted a second. But there it was. It was enough for my eyes to widen in shock, as if hearing something rare and precious for the first time.

I’d heard it before, in the hallway or gym class.

I’d forgotten how perfect it was. How his laugh was one of the things that had made me fall for him when he didn’t even know that I existed. You could tell a lot about a person by how they laughed. If they were loud and carefree or if they guarded their happiness close to their heart.

He noticed my pause. “What?”

“Your laugh.”

“What about it?” he asked.

“Just haven’t heard it before.” Not in a long time anyway.

“Renovation disasters bring it out in me,” he said, monotone.

I narrowed my eyes, taking another bite of pizza. Ozzy was still staring at me, waiting for his next treat. “Me, too, but I don’t think we have the same reason.”

“Probably not. Yours is probably from joy.”

“Or not to cry.”

He stopped his work to glance back at me.

I lifted a shoulder. It was a joke. And, it also wasn’t. “You think this has been the best renovation I’ve worked on? Sure, it’s my first on my own, but I’ve had to deal with an angry homeowner making the process … not ideal.”

“That bad?”

“You or the project?”

“Poppy—”

I stopped him there, but this time, he didn’t hear it.

“I think what you’re trying to do here is pretty great. I had no idea it took so much work to make all this happen. Especially now that I hear it’s a hell of a lot more than fancy place settings,” he said, a bit contrite. “I mean, you have battle scars.”

If I hadn’t already today, I might’ve fallen over at the words.

“You’re ambitious. Determined.”

“Thank—”

“Even though, as of now, I think we can both agree, you’re never going to fucking finish this place in time.”

We’d see about that.

He paused before he got back to work. Lifting another screw for my inspection. I confirmed before he drilled another shelf in. He was turning into quite the bookshelf-crafting expert.

“You really need to win this competition of yours, huh?”

“I don’t like to think of it as a competition.”

“Sounds like one to me.”

I wiped my face with the back of my fist, still holding the end of my pizza slice.

The dog, who had been waiting patiently next to me this whole time, on the other hand, wasn’t having it, huffing as he tried to nip at my fingers again.

“Shh,” I warned him as I tore off another piece. He gobbled it up in one bite. “You need to be quiet.”

“I know you’re feeding the dog,” Aaron informed me.

“And?” I asked.

He cast a look between me and Oz. This wasn’t a fight he was going to win.

Aaron stared from my eyes, down the side of my jaw, to my lips, where his gaze seemed to lock on.

My heart pounded in my chest as his eyes softened.

I swallowed, inhaling on my words, making them come out a little breathy and squeaky. “What are you looking at?”

He continued to stare. Maybe he wasn’t looking at my mouth.

I looked down at my shirt to see if I had anything on myself.

“You got sauce.” Aaron reached out toward my jaw. His thumb ran along a damp line. He pulled away, and as if he wasn’t even thinking, he stuck his thumb into his mouth, sucking off the sweet herbs and tomato with a graze of his tongue before wiping his hand on his jeans, plywood dust streaked across the thighs.

He cleared his throat while I couldn’t pull my eyes away.

Oz snatched the last piece of crust out of my hand as it drifted toward him.

“Where does this last piece go?”