Fix Her Up (Hot & Hammered #1)(17)

“I’ll catch you next time, Zelda,” Georgie said on her way out the door.

Zelda merely turned the page in response.

Travis sat down on the stoop of the four-bedroom Cape, smacking the demolition dust off his jeans. Trying his best to ignore the house across the street, he cracked open a ginger ale and drank deeply. When Stephen had told him the address of this renovation, why hadn’t he declined? Out of anyone in Port Jefferson, Stephen would have understood. But it would have been admitting a weakness, and Travis had too many of those right now, didn’t he? Still, living in this town meant being surrounded by his past. He didn’t need to have it staring him in the face morning until night. No. He damn sure didn’t need that.

Travis’s father no longer lived in the ramshackle Colonial across the road, but since it had never been sold, all the signs of neglect were still there. The eaves drooped like sad, sloping eyebrows over grime-covered windows. Once upon a time, the trees surrounding the home were tall and proud. They hadn’t been trimmed in so long, though, they’d formed kind of a leafy green barrier around the house. A blessing, since it partially blocked everyone’s view of the house from the street. A breeze blew past, smacking a shutter off to the side of his old bedroom, just like it used to when he slept inside, scaring the shit out of him in the middle of the night.

If he closed his eyes, he could remember his mother pulling up outside the house in her old white Ford Explorer, dropping him off for the weekend. She’d sigh and hesitate. He’d pray she would bring him home and not force him to endure his father’s turn, custody agreement be damned. But she never caved, telling Travis to get out and go wait on the porch until his father returned home. Sometimes he’d sit there until the middle of the night, waiting.

A can cracked open behind Travis and he turned to find Stephen leaning against the wrought-iron rail, draining his own ginger ale, the work site drink of choice since they couldn’t have beer. Not on Stephen’s watch. “Got about another hour here before we head.” He shook some dust from his hair. “I want to get that wall opened up in the dining room and see what kind of structural support we’re dealing with. Could fuck up the open concept unless we want to knock it down and add a support beam.”

“Ouch. A beam will cost you.”

“Something always does.” Stephen took a slow sip and rolled it around in his mouth. “Been weird working this close to the old house?”

“That’s putting it mildly.” Travis stood and strode into the house. “Let’s get back to work.”

“Don’t you own the place now? Why not knock it down?” Stephen said, following Travis into the renovation, where the third member of their crew, Dominic Vega, was repointing an exposed brick wall, his movements slow and methodical. Focused. “Might be cathartic.”

Or it could enable the demons to run amok.

“We don’t share the same definition of ‘cathartic,’” Travis muttered.

“Are you referencing sex?” asked Stephen. “I drive a minivan part-time, so I need dirty jokes explained to me now.”

“If I’m talking about sex, you’ll know it.”

Dominic set down his trowel and crossed his arms, his legs braced in a military stance that meant business. “What are we talking about?”

“Nothing,” Travis answered, ignoring the impulse to look back out the window at the shrine to his childhood across the street. “The boss can’t mind his own business.”

Stephen sighed. “Having all the answers is a burden, but I press on.”

Dom coughed into his fist, the blue tattoos on his knuckles covered in dirt and specks of mortar. “Why not sell the place? Make it someone else’s problem?”

“Maybe being proactive with the house will prove he can still give a damn about something,” Stephen said, punctuating his statement with a superior sniff. “God forbid.”

Travis didn’t care for the hollowness of his own laugh. There was no chance he was going to tell Stephen and Dominic that while he did own the house, his father’s name was also still on the deed. And the last thing he needed was to bring that old fucker back into his life. He’d be keeping that to himself, though, because to an outsider it might seem like Travis was scared to confront his father. That wasn’t the case. It wasn’t that easy. The last time he’d seen his father, he’d beaten the odds and gotten scouted by Northwestern. He merely wanted to avoid hearing I told you so at all costs now that he’d failed.

“I don’t give a damn about anything. You should both try it sometime,” Travis finally responded. For some reason, Georgie’s face popped into his mind. The odd timing propelled him into picking up a sledgehammer and burying it in the dining room wall. “Come on in, boys. The water’s fine.”

“No, thank you.” Stephen inspected the wall through the hole. “I like the hot water Kristin is boiling me alive in. Keeps me young.”

“Keeps you on the verge of a stroke, you mean.”

“Maybe.” Stephen almost smiled, but whatever he saw in the wall made him frown. “We’re going to need to bring in a support beam.”

Dom came up behind them. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Stephen massaged the bridge of his nose. “But if I’ve got a post in the middle of Bethany’s open concept, she’ll have to change the whole design.”