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“Oh, dear Lord,” I said and Reece grimaced.
“I know,” he said, looking around. The building was a doublewide trailer that had been set up on the property, but it was pretty trashed inside.
“You slept here last night?” I asked him, feeling even worse, especially since I’d slept in the wrong room and he might as well have had his own bed last night.
He smirked and waved a hand. “Oh, this is nothing compared to some of the places I’ve spent the night. Plus, I found a cot that was pretty clean.” He pointed to a cot he’d set up near the kitchen. There was a suitcase underneath it and more piled up beside, a reminder that he and his brother were as new here as I was.
I looked around the place, then back at him. He’d slept in worse? Then I remembered—he’d said he and his brother had lived on the streets. What kind of life had this man had? What kinds of things had he seen?
“Still, it would be good to do a deep clean so we can even start to see where the problems are,” he said, finally frowning as he looked around.
There was just so much stuff, like whoever had last lived here had left in a hurry and almost willingly trashed the place on the way out. Either that or they’d just lived in this pigsty. There were beer bottles and stray clothing all over the floor. The kitchen had cups with molded over contents still in them.
“If you don’t mind tackling the kitchen,” he said, “I’ll go wrestle the plumbing in the back.” He grimaced. “It’s not pretty back there.”
“Oh my God, I’ll take your word for it.”
“Smart woman. Here, I’ve got some thick rubber gloves if you’re gonna dig in here.”
“I hope you have some industrial cleaning supplies too.”
He laughed at that, but pointed to a bucket on the floor beside the disgusting kitchen counter. There were all sorts of bottles and sprays in the bucket, along with the rubber gloves he’d mentioned.
“Sorry I don’t have a gas mask, but we can open the windows to at least get some fresh air in here. Cold, but fresh.”
I didn’t even wait for him, I just immediately went to the windows and started opening them.
“What kinda tunes you want?” he asked, holding up his phone. “Country or 70’s rock?”
I thought of my long truck ride with Rick yesterday and scrunched my nose. “Anything but country.”
He grinned. “Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kansas it is.” He thumbed through his phone and then “Highway to Hell” started blaring more loudly than I would have expected from the small device.
He left it on a shelf in the living room between the back bathroom and the kitchen where I was. Then I snapped on the rubber gloves and got to work.
It was surprisingly cathartic to clean a really dirty room while rocking out to the classics. By the time “Hotel California” came on, I was swinging my hips and dancing along while I shoved item after item into the first of what would be many big black trash bags.
Song by song, bag by bag, order came from chaos and space began to open up from the disgusting clutter.
Occasionally I’d hear noises or Reece cursing from the back room where he worked on the plumbing.
If I stopped and thought about it, it should be shocking to me that I was in an enclosed space with a man and not freaking the hell out.
I was in the middle of nowhere with a guy who was all but a stranger to me. Ruth was asleep in her bed in another building and Jeremiah was God knows where.
But I… wasn’t afraid.
I paused scrubbing the counter in shock when that realization hit me. In fact, dancing along to the music while I cleaned—something I never would have dared at home—was almost fun.
And this feeling I was feeling right now… this was what it felt like to not feel afraid. Holy crap.
I stumbled back, bumping against the counter at the thought. Sometimes it would happen at home, but only while Jeff was gone at work, and even then, there was always the underlying anxiety knowing he’d be coming home soon and wondering what sort of mood he’d be in.
I could never really… unclench.
But here I was, dancing around this strange bunkhouse, cleaning, doing whatever the hell I wanted, about to leave tomorrow and go somewhere completely new still and—
No one had a hold of me or a say on what I did.
