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The house opened up almost immediately into the kitchen, and the first thing I noticed were the floors, a beautiful warm-toned wood that instantly felt homey. They matched the walls nicely, which were a crisp white. The space was supposed to be a dining room, but instead of a table with chairs, Harry had tools and other odds and ends littered around the floor.
“Work in progress.” He sighed from behind me, following me in.
I could see the vision, though. The appliances weren’t top of the line and were mismatched, but they blended in with the gray cupboards nicely, the countertops a sleek marble. That obviously had been redone recently.
“Remind me to hire you if I ever buy a house,” I murmured, slipping my shoes off and nudging them along the wall.
“You’d be amazed at what the internet can teach you.” He hung his coat on a hook near the door and reached for the buttons on my Claire-Haute. “Want a proper tour?”
His hands were gentle as he smoothed the fabric off my shoulders, hanging it up too. “You know I do.”
He took me to the living room first, on the other side of the kitchen. “There used to be a wall here,” he explained to me as we stepped into the living room, gesturing toward the space. “I’m an open-concept kind of guy, I guess. Plus a house this small felt so much littler with all the walls.”
The living room had the same hardwood floors, but it also had a large sectional pushed into one corner, aimed at a decently sized TV. “So, you lived here when you were little?” I asked, remembering how he said his parents left him the house.
“Yeah, crazy, right? When I was a kid, I remember it being much bigger. That wall used to separate my bedroom.” Harry kept walking through another archway that led to two separate doors. “This is the bathroom,” he said, shoving the door open. It gave a loudcreakin protest. He winced. “Yeah, that still needs fixing. But I redid the tile in here. Vincent thinks it’s ugly, but I like it.”
The tilewasbusy, with a white-and-black design, but I liked it too. It wasn’t perfect, though. By the shower, I could see a few tiles that weren’t cut to the exact measurements, but that almost made it more endearing.
“Very clean,” I noted, and it was. There wasn’t a single dirty towel in sight.
Harry snorted, pressing a hand against his throat, along the lines of the tattoo. “You should’ve seen me forty-five minutes ago. I cleaned like a madman. Don’t look in any closets, okay?”
I nudged him in the side. “No promises.”
We stopped by Harry’s bedroom last on the very brief tour. He reached for the doorknob but hesitated, as if realizing that showing me his bedroom was a personal thing. I caught his blue eyes glance at me, only debating a fracture of a second before pushing it inward. “This one is the current work in progress at the moment,” he said as he led the way inside.
The room was small, with a queen-sized bed and a simple oak dresser. He had his guitar case propped against the dresser, but there weren’t any other decorations. No pictures hung on the wall, not a poster in sight.
“Why are you doing all these renovations?” I asked him, looking closely at his expression. “To make it feel more homey?”
“Each time I do a renovation, the value of the house goes up,” he explained, analyzing his bedroom. “Quite a bit, actually.”
“Ah, you want to sell it and turn a profit.”
“Maybe one day. For now, I like how it’s cleaning up the place.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist, feeling the toned muscles there. “And it’s got to be nice to know that you’ve done most of the heavy lifting. Satisfying, in a way.”
“Well, there’s that.”
He smelled so good, like body wash and candles. Underneath my ear, I could hear his heartbeat, listening to the steadythu-thumpwith my eyes closed.
I pulled back a bit to look up at him. Memorizing his features was something I loved doing, if only to convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming. I categorized his freckles, the pattern so haphazard and beautiful. His lashes held their reddish tint in this light. They brought out the blue in his eyes, such a vibrant color that almost looked electric.
“When you look at me like that,” he murmured, almost a whisper, “I feel like I can’t breathe.”
“Is that bad?”
Harry chuckled, a gasping sort of sound. “Who needs oxygen, anyway?”
I pressed my fingertip along the tattoo lines, and he stilled under my touch.NowI believed he wasn’t breathing, almost like the air stalled in his throat. I couldn’t stop touching him, though. As my fingers trailed high, toward the bottom of his chin, I could feel the prickle of stubble.
“I love this,” I told him, eyeing the tattoo. “It’s soyou.”
The blue in his eyes seemed to glow, emotion passing over like a tidal wave. “You think?”
“You wouldn’t be my Harry without it.”
