Wicked in Love

Chapter 13 - dreams

Cameron

"Hey, Caleb. I wanna ask you something," I said.

Caleb looked up from snapping lines on the floor. Sweat ran on the side of his face, and he wiped it with his arm. He drove in before breakfast and helped me with the reno since morning.

"You're too late," he said and grinned. "I'm already marrying someone else."

I snickered. I placed a fresh pitcher of iced tea I just made from the kitchen downstairs on the makeshift worktable in the hallway.

I had renovated the downstairs kitchen a while ago—just enough to make it functional. I didn't like bringing a cooler with me to keep my drinks and food cold if I could help it. I hooked up the electricity and installed an old fridge I had in storage in the kitchen.

In the last two weeks I had stripped all six bedrooms on the second floor down to the bones. I decided to start on the three huge bedrooms on the right wing and fix them first and slowly work my way to the left wing.

I was hoping I could salvage the hardwood floors, but when I ripped off the carpet, I discovered the water damage was so bad all of them had to be replaced.

After finding where the leak came from and repaired, the new subfloors were installed, sanded, checked for moisture, and levelled. Caleb was prepping them now so we can install the underlayment.

I managed to snag a good deal from my supplier, bit the bullet and paid for a huge order of flooring. The new floors have been laid out in the room next door for a few days and were ready to be installed. Since the old baseboards and molding were still in good shape, I was keeping them.

"What if I promise to give you one hell of a honeymoon?" I deadpanned.

Now Caleb was the one who snickered. "Okay. I'll think about it."

"There's a glass in my sink again," I said. "Why the hell do you always leave a cup in the sink? Does that give you a hard on?"

"Kinda. Toss me that measuring tape." I tossed it and he caught it. "Who only has one measuring tape? I can't believe you don't have a spare." He measured, jot down numbers on a notepad. "What if you lose it?"

"Then I'll just buy another," I said.

"When my dad left us," he said after a moment, "Ben raised me."

He didn't like talking about his childhood, but he told me enough about it that I knew. But why was he telling me this suddenly?

"But when I started high school, that's when Ben went to college. He lived in the dorms. Mom was busy and out of the country all the time."

"You were alone most of the time," I said.

"You were in the same boat."

I grunted in reply.

He continued, "When there's a glass in the sink, I knew that Ben's home."

I filled his glass with iced tea, handed it to him.

Maybe having a glass in the sink made it more bearable for him to be alone, made him feel comforted. It reminded him that someone... loved him. We worked for a bit and moved on to installing the flooring.

"By the way," Caleb said. "What are you gonna do with that chimney?"

The damaged chimney that Rick pointed out was in an annex in the left wing—a sort of mini ballroom that was connected to the house by a covered walkway. Whatever damage it already had or would have would not affect the main house. I could get rid of the annex if I wanted to. I'd decide what to do with it later.