Page 36 of Meet Me in Ivy Falls

BECK

A Slow Kind Of Torture.

I sank onto the dirty brown carpet grateful Torran couldn’t read my mind. Before her father interrupted us, I had visions of pressing her into the wall. Doing all sorts of wicked things to coax that sweet whimper out of her again. Stripping away at her armor bit by bit with every kiss and panting sigh I placed against her skin. But, as usual, Miles Wright had crappy timing.

I pulled the patches of carpet away from the wall trying to figure out what Torran meant when she’d said her father hadn’t been there when her mom needed him most. His icy demeanor only ever thawed around Mrs Wright. She’d had a special type of kindness that drew people to her like flies to sweet tea.

During the summers when Ivy Falls was cloaked in a wet, suffocating heat, her bookstore became my secret hideout. I’d search the shelves of the Pen & Prose for some new adventure until I’d run into Mrs Wright who always had an armful of suggestions. She’d lead me to the aisle where Torran was camped out and we’d read for hours, caught up in whatever new world we’d discovered.

The scent of cat piss, dirt and dust brought me back to the present. Sweat rolled down my face and my skin itched and ached. I hated that I had to wear long sleeves, but I wasn’t ready to share that part of me with Torran yet. It’s why I’d stopped her when she’d reached for the hem of my shirt.

Trying to take my mind off Torran’s blazing touch, I rolled up another length of carpet until it was settled in a corner of the room. Like Manny had predicted, there was a layer of hardwood underneath painted a stark white.

‘Why the hell would people do that?’ I mumbled.

‘It’s a sign of the times,’ Torran said from the doorway.

I loved how the scratch from my stubble still colored the arch of her neck. The way the white plaster dust covered her arms and face in a thin sheen. How her hair was tugged back up into a tight ponytail. Looking at her filled my body with a need, an ache, I couldn’t describe. Even through the grit and grime, she was beautiful.

‘New owners come in and they want to update. I can’t tell you the number of 1970s banana-yellow kitchens I’ve torn apart.’ She cocked her head back to the master bedroom. ‘Or early Eighties bathrooms I’ve encountered with hideous floral wallpaper.’

‘That’s true. My mom always hated the wallpaper in there.’

She moved to the corner and unrolled the carpet.

‘What are you doing? It took me ten minutes to wrestle that bad boy into a tight roll.’

She huffed and walked out the door. Two minutes later she reappeared clutching a small utility knife and a roll of duct tape. ‘The key to this job is to work smarter not harder.’

The muscles in her arms flexed as she cut down the carpet roll into three-foot sections. Her hair swung behind her as she yanked the silver tape around each of the pieces.

‘Manny would be mad if he saw the way you rolled the carpet. Do you know how much it weighs? Cutting it down into manageable sections makes it easier to discard, and it doesn’t strain your back.’ She paused staring at my hands. ‘Those gloves are meant for gardening. You need ones made of thicker material or you’re going to get blisters.’

Too late for that.

Her gaze moved across the dirty floor and she shook her head once she saw the series of curse words written across the black wall.

‘How’d you learn all this?’ I asked. ‘When we were kids you had a small interest in architecture, but construction, that’s a little bit of a leap.’

‘When you want to pull your head out of your nineteenth-century ass, I’ll explain it.’ She kicked a carpet roll into the corner and started to walk out of the room.

I reached for her arm. The heat of her sparking through me again. She gave a pointed stare to where my hand met her skin and I released her. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it came out. You’re perfectly capable of doing this job. I’ve seen that firsthand.’ I glanced at the knife still clutched in her hand. ‘I’m only curious about how you got into this line of work.’

Torran leaned against the doorjamb. I hated the hesitation in her eyes. There was a time when I could ask her anything and she’d pipe right up with an answer, but I was an ass, and that armor of hers was fully in place.

‘During senior year, my history class went to Franklin to tour an old Civil War house. The minute I walked into the foyer something hit me. It was like taking a trip back in time. The arched entrance. The heart of pine floors. Even the wallpaper. It was all preserved. If I closed my eyes, I could picture the family descending the staircase. Going into the parlor for late-afternoon tea.’

The far-off look in her eyes made me step closer. My hands twitched at my sides aching to touch her again. She noticed how I moved in and took a step back.

‘When we went to tour the outside, the guide pointed out holes in the wall from bullets exchanged during a battle on the back lawn. He took us downstairs into the cellar where the family hid from the fighting. The original chairs they sat on were still there. Preserved for all to see.’

Her voice had that sweet lilt that I loved. When we’d sat wrapped in a blanket near our favorite lake as kids, the same tone would ring in her words as she talked about our future. In those moments it was like nothing else existed in the world except the two of us. I’d often thought of those times after I’d buried my parents, needing to hold on to that light so the darkness didn’t swallow me whole.

‘It might sound weird, but a sense of comfort washed over me,’ she went on. ‘Like all our history was being saved for future generations. We didn’t have to read about it in a textbook because it was alive and in front of us in living color.’

She picked at the white pieces of drywall stuck to her arm before walking to a corner and unrolling another carpet remnant.

‘The guide told us that in the late 1960s the house was close to being condemned until a few investors stepped in and saved it. The fact that a piece of history almost went to rubble hit me hard.’