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“God, just fucking cover me up if that’s what you want!” he swore into the ceiling, knowing damn well the God would have filled his lungs with water if that’s what was causing the problem, but not knowing what else to do or say. “Just fucking wash all this into the fucking ground… FUCK.”
He heard something on the stairs above him. Footsteps. He groaned and leaned back against the wall, covering his face with his hands.
“I’ll be up in a moment. I’m going to call a plumber and we can go out. Just… let me fucking wallow for a second.”
The footsteps didn’t slow. In fact, they came down the stairs, and he heard a dull splash when she stepped into the water with him. He looked up from his hands, almost startled to see Teagan standing there, her jeans rolled up her calves and her shoes discarded at the top of the stairs.
She was pulling her hair back into a messy bun and looking at him.
“What do you need me to do?”
“I don’t fucking know, Teagan. You didn’t have to come down here. It’s a mess and soaking wet… flooded actually… to state the bloody obvious.”
She snorted a little. “I didn’t have to come down here? You were cursing your parents’ God last I checked, asking him to strike this place from Rydell. Besides. You’ve always helped me when I needed it. It’s high time I returned the favor. Now, what do you need me to do?”
Jaxon wondered if he had stars in his eyes right then because she looked like an absolute angel.
If he wasn’t in freezing cold water, he’d kiss her for real.
“Hold this cover for me while I check and see if the valve’s installed improperly…”
She did as he directed. Sometimes it took him a couple of tries to get exactly what he was asking for, but he tried to remain patient. She’d never worked on plumbing before.
But to no avail. Nothing he did seemed to make a difference. Every time one of them ran up to turn on the water, they had to turn it right off again because the other was being drenched.
Her hair was sticking to her scalp and her neck. And her forehead a little too by the time he was ready to give up again.
“Just… fucking drop it. I’ll call someone. I don’t know what I’m doing… I’ll be intruding on you for longer now…” He sighed and kicked the water with his foot.
“Okay, first, you’re not intruding on me. Secondly… why don’t you talk it out? I’ll be your rubber duck.”
His brow knit for a moment. Talking things out wouldn’t do a damned bit of good, but he loathed to deny her anything. Especially when she spoke in that soothing way she had.
He explained what a sump pump was, and what it was supposed to do. And how it kept the basement from flooding during rainy seasons.
“But… the only water that’s flooding the basement comes from the sump pump,” she said.
“Right.”
“And the basement’s not flooding until you turn the water on.”
“Yes,” he replied. “As I’ve described already.”
“So, where’s it coming from? It’s got to be coming from somewhere.” she looked down at the water pooling around their ankles.
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said, trying and failing to keep the frustration from his tone.
“It’s only when the water’s turned on,” she repeated, brow knitting.
“Correct, Teagan…”
“So, it’s a pipe somewhere that draining into it.”
He shrugged. “Right. But without tearing up the floor, there’s no way of knowing-”
“Didn’t you say this used to be broken up into separate apartments?”
“I mean, it was being broken up and then the owners went bankrupt, and I bought it on the cheap. Apparently for good reason, since the plumbing’s all fucked.”
