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Chad wheeled over to the pantry. The thing was huge, running the entire length of the kitchen. What a waste of space.
He knocked on the wall and listened for the tells of a load-bearing structure. He wouldn’t know for sure until he ripped down some drywall—which was definitely not original to the house, but might be hiding huge, unsightly support posts. More than likely they could demolish the pantry and add much-needed space to the kitchen.
“If we can rip this sucker out, you can have a huge island. Maybe we can even tear out that wall into the dining room and give you an open concept.”
“No,” Chad said. “I hate open concept. If I wanted to live in a studio, I’d rent a fucking apartment.”
Owen laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m glad you don’t have strong opinions on the matter.”
Through the kitchen was a tiny bathroom made cramped by a stacked washer and dryer.
“Nope,” Chad said. That wouldn’t work. “Is there room upstairs for a washer and dryer?”
“You know I don’t do plumbing,” Owen said.
“About the stairs . . .” The realtor was obvious as she avoided looking at Chad’s leg. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather look at a ranch? It would be . . . uh . . .”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m working on regrowing it.”
She laughed uncomfortably.
“He’s getting a prosthetic,” Owen said. “Knowing him, he’ll be running circles around me in no time.”
Exactly. And he couldn’t wait for the opportunity. They’d recently made a mold of his residual limb and were currently constructing his freedom. He wouldn’t have to wait much longer. Maybe he could forgo the shift to crutches altogether. He hated them almost as much as the chair. And the chair had never made him fall flat on his face and entirely lose his carefully maintained self-control in front of Lindsey.
“There is a small den off the living room that you could use as a bedroom,” the realtor suggested.
“And does it have a bathroom? Because where am I supposed to piss?” Chad asked the question because he was starting to enjoy watching her squirm. Odd that he’d feel that way, but if she insisted on focusing on his disability, then he was going to focus on it too.
“Well, no, but maybe you can squeeze a shower in here.” She pointed at the tiny powder room.
“No, thanks,” Chad said. “I’d like to see the upstairs now.”
“How are . . .”
She wet her lips and stared over his head. God, he wanted out of this fucking chair. Permanently. A week or two, the doctor had said. More like an eternity.
“Crawl.”
He didn’t actually crawl. He started sitting on the second step and pushed his way up the stairs backward, one step at a time.
“If I’d known you could do that, I wouldn’t have sawed through my fucking doorframe,” Owen said, watching from the foyer.
“Yeah, well, I was feeling pretty useless that day. I doubt I’d have figured out how to do this.”
“And you’re not feeling useless anymore?” Owen asked with what appeared to be pride in his expression.
“Hey, if I can bed a hot chick like Lindsey, I can do anything I set my mind to.”
Owen snorted. “Uh, she’s not exactly hard to get, stud.”
“Maybe not for a rock star, but for a homeless, unemployed cripple?”
“She doesn’t see you that way,” Owen insisted, starting up the steps now that Chad had a good head start. Owen had folded the wheelchair and was hefting it up the stairs over his head. He must have realized that Chad scooting up the stairs on his ass was humiliating but dragging himself around the upstairs on his belly would have been too hard on his pride.
“I’ll stay down here,” the realtor called up the stairwell. “Look around as much as you’d like.”
“I think you made her uncomfortable,” Owen said to Chad as he opened the wheelchair in the hall and locked the wheels. He didn’t even bother to offer a hand when Chad used the chair to push himself up off the floor and pivoted into the seat.
“I’m sorry if my reality is too tough for her to bear.” But he wasn’t sorry or even bitter. He just didn’t have patience for niceties or for coddling ignorance. He was doing the best he could with what he had, and if anyone had an issue with that, it was their problem, not his. “Shouldn’t realtors be experts at reality?”
“I don’t think they peddle in reality, to be honest.”
Chad unlocked the chair’s wheels and rolled to the first bedroom to the right. It was abysmally small and had been decorated for a sports fan—most likely a boy—with deep blue walls and a football border around the ceiling. The closet was miniscule, but the carpet looked new. He might repaint, but the room didn’t need much work. The second bedroom was identical in size to the first, but pink. He was struck by the mental image of Lindsey leaning over a white crib and scooping a baby into her arms. The sudden flood of emotion caught him completely off guard. The sweet room blurred as his eyes clouded with tears and his breath stalled in his throat.
“I’ll take it,” he said.
“You haven’t even seen the master bedroom yet.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re thinking about baby girls, aren’t you?”
“No. Shut up.”
Owen grinned knowingly and shook his head. “I’m as ridiculous about Lindsey as you are.”
“Do you think she’ll move in here with me? Her and the baby? I could help her out.” She could stop writing IOUs to his brother. Chad just hoped she wouldn’t start writing them to him instead.
“I should have known that’s what you had in mind when you wanted to see this place. We’re both a sucker for a damsel in distress.”
Chad wiped a hand over his face to rub off his likely sentimental expression. “I don’t think she’ll let us help her out for long. She gets a little more confident every day.”
“I guess she figures if she can bed a hot guy like my big brother, she can do anything she puts her mind to.”
Chad laughed. “Let’s check out that master bedroom.”
The master was surprisingly large. It had apparently once been two small bedrooms that had been converted into one larger bedroom with a decent-sized though hideously olive-green en suite bathroom and a small walk-in closet.
“This awesome bedroom is what should have sold you on the place,” Owen said. “Not the pink nursery.”
“If you tell anyone that I bought this place for the pink nursery, I’ll tell them what I found stuffed under your mattress when you were fifteen.”
Owen’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t the world love to know whose picture famous metal bassist Owen Mitchell used to masturbate to?”
“I swear I won’t tell a soul about the room that made you tear up.” Owen raised one hand and placed the other on an imaginary bible at waist level.
“I didn’t tear up.”
“You totally did.”
“It must have been the dust.”
Owen grinned. “Do you want me to call Lindsey over so she can see your new place?”
“Not yet.” Chad
knew she wouldn’t love the place as it was, but was certain that with a few updates, she’d be happy to move in with him. As his roommate. Nothing more, he reminded himself. Just his roommate. Roommates, he corrected himself. Soon there’d be two to love. Or like. Or whatever it was that he was feeling for Lindsey and her soon-to-arrive little one.
“Let’s fix the place up a bit first,” he said. “Make it nice.”
“You’d better hurry. If Mom gets the place above her garage finished, you know she’s going to guilt Lindsey into staying there so that baby’s within reach.”
Chad laughed. “Funny how Mom and I are competing for the girl you didn’t want.”
“I might have felt differently about Lindsey if I hadn’t met Caitlyn.”
Chad replaced his smile with a frown. “You aren’t going to change your mind about her, are you?”
“Afraid I’ll take her away?”
“You could,” Chad admitted.
“I think you’re wrong. She’s totally into you, man.”
“Only because you rejected her.”
Owen released a deep sigh. “And I was getting used to having my cocky, full-of-himself brother around again. Guess we’re back to Mr. Self-Doubt.”
“I’m not doubting—” He cut himself off before the lie slipped out. “Now that she’s had the best, she wouldn’t settle for you again,” he said, not really believing what he was saying, but maybe if he voiced it aloud, he’d start to buy his false bravado.
“You don’t have to be quite that insulting,” Owen said, but he was smiling. “Let’s go put in an offer on this house.”
“Maybe I should crawl under the house and check the foundation more closely.”
“Will any amount of damage stop you from buying the place?” Owen asked.
Chad considered Owen’s question and weighed it from several angles before shaking his head. “Nope. This house is mine. I’m even going to write the current owners a letter about how their home will help a disabled vet regain a normal life.”
Owen sucked air through his teeth. “Pulling out the big guns, huh?”
“I play to win,” Chad said.
Owen pounded him on the shoulder. “You always have.”
