Love Under Construction (Love By Design Book 1) Read online

  I was a spitting image of my dad and everyone knew how he’d treated my mother all these years. He was a real bastard, moving her to Michigan and preventing her from seeing her parents and sister. I was kind of big for my age and I was sure my attitude didn’t help. I couldn’t give a shit what people thought of me and I didn’t want to be like my dad either, so it was best I didn’t get real close to anybody. The heart can’t hurt if you don’t let anybody in.

  “Hunt! Let’s go. I’m starved.” Damien pulled me along the hallway into the cafeteria, breaking up the painful memories in my head. My aunt sweet-talked the principal into letting me sit in with Damien in his classes. Technically, I was old enough to be a junior, but I didn’t care about school and nobody here knew me, so here I was in fucking ninth grade, repeating shit I’d learned two years before. My aunt thought it would help being with my cousin around familiar things, and not having to work as hard academically right now. I wasn’t sure it really mattered, but I was given the option to test out of classes that ended up being too easy next year.

  “Is the food decent?” We stood in line with trays and despite my stomach growling, I wasn’t hungry for food. A few more classes left for the day and I could get the hell out of here where I’d been nothing but an object in a museum the way I’d been stared at all day. Dudes looked me up and down assessing me as a threat. Girls looked me over contemplating the size of my dick for a completely different reason from the guys. The south was looking better by the minute.

  “It’s all right, but my mom packed us some snacks for later, and Mrs. Bryant sent cookies over. It sucks it’s too late for you to try out for football this year. It would have been awesome if we played together.”

  My aunt, bless her heart, could have sweet-talked the coach, another friendly neighbor on our street, but I told her I didn’t want to play. Football was my dad’s thing and I wasn’t going to repeat anything else that bastard did. Poor Damien was convinced he could sway me, even dragged me down to the locker room office to meet with Coach Calloway. I might have missed tryouts, but I saw the way he looked my muscles over, assessing my potential. He offered me a chance, but I declined, obviously disappointing everyone as usual. I couldn’t even get a welcome to town meet and greet right. If it kept up I’d play football to shut them up and get them off my ass. Like my mother, I learned pretty quick how to please people if I chose to.

  Damien kept talking, and I swore he never shut the fuck up to breathe. He was a good guy, but sometimes I wished he’d keep his yap shut. Right now he was giving me a headache, introducing me to people and explaining shit I couldn’t be bothered to remember right now.

  “Yeah, too bad, right.” We got our food and ate quickly while Damien introduced me to every Tom, Mike, and Becky he knew. I wouldn’t remember their names because I didn’t care.

  “Hey, I see the girls. Let’s go annoy them.” Damien picked up my tray of mostly uneaten food, throwing it out, and dragged me over to a table on the other side of the cafeteria.

  I felt tempted to hit him for taking my food, but I held back, knowing my aunt had packed her growing boys, as she called us this morning, some extra food for later.

  He talked a lot, pissing off the girl named Kristen. Damien was always talking about her, so much that you’d think he was jerking off to her constantly. She was pretty if you liked tall, dark hair, and sarcastic mouths on girls. Damien kept the introductions going, and I recognized the second girl from his incessant descriptions during the week I took to settle in at his house. I recognized her from across the street, the one day she was helping her mom bring in grocery bags. She had this dangerously happy energy that threatened my status quo.

  Taylor Jane Bryant.

  Damien talked about her more like a friend, so I didn’t worry that he had got some kind of boner for her. I’d have to punch him in the mouth if he did. She was a little thing, kind of like how my mom was physically… and blond, very, very blond. She was quieter than either Kristen or Damien, and I liked that about her. She didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with chatter or ask me a million questions. Her eyes were bright blue and the tension in my chest eased a bit. My mother’s eyes were hazel like mine and the flashback subsided for now.

  Her fingers were tapping out a song I knew, watching how her small hands, short rounded nails painted a pale blue color, moved across the table. Green Day was my band and I loved all their stuff. I kind of wanted to grab her hand and help her fingers keep the proper beat, but I held back. She tried effortlessly and like my aunt, it was just easier to let her do it. Her tapping off beats didn’t bother me nearly as much as I liked to think it did. Weird how she picked their saddest song, but it was a good one, and I found that I wanted to ask her questions about what else she liked, and didn’t like, and how she ended up friends with these two yahoos… but I didn’t because that would mean opening up and letting her in, and I couldn’t do that. It hurt too much, and there was no room in my heart for the stuff she might swirl around. My life was finally a calm, clear pool of water living with my aunt, uncle, and dipshit cousin. The last thing I needed was a tender girl kicking up the silt from the bottom and clouding everything up.

  4

  Taylor Jane

  “Hey, Dad!” Unlocking the front door, I ducked inside. Turning back, I waved Hunter off from the driveway, watching him drive down the road in his shiny truck slick from the rain. My best friend hadn’t lived next door with his aunt, uncle, and Damien in years. Seeing him drive away felt like an unexpected, empty hole in my heart with fragile sutures. I knew coming home would be difficult and I had yet to decide if I would even stay past this house project. Almost certain that New Paltz was a layover in my journey, Hunter was a chapter left open and unread.

  Hearing my dad somewhere inside, I moved forward into the house my parents had brought me home to when I was born. Everything had stayed the same in all those years. The front door was still an arresting shade of peacock blue my mother loved, though the creases had started chipping well into my senior year of high school. The lace curtains in the kitchen got a yearly washing and remained bright white with some concoction my dad continued to use well after mom had passed. It was a comfort and a testament to my dad’s refusal to do much of anything different since Mom died. I could always count on him to be my constant.

  “In the den, Taylor Jane.”

  Closing the front door with a gentle click behind me, I smiled. To this day, only my parents and Hunter ever used my full first name and nothing else. To anyone else, I was a myriad of Taylor, TJ, Tay-Tay, T-Rex, and whatever else my close friends came up with. I was sure my posse found names bordering on unacceptable to irritate poor Hunter relentlessly.

  Walking down the hallway into the den that faced the backyard, Dad was standing on a ladder, trying to rehang a painting my grandmother had given us ages ago. It was some postmodern thing she pawned off on us and neither Dad nor myself had the heart to tell her we didn’t like it. If Dad had pulled it from the attic it meant she was visiting in the near future. I rushed over to keep the ladder from wobbling.

  “What are you doing, Dad?”

  He made me nervous when one knee buckled and he used one hand to grab the ladder. I needed to call Hunter and ask him to help Dad with this. Since I came home things felt off in the house, but I couldn’t put my finger on what. There was a need to watch him even when he was intent on pushing me out the door to pursue my dreams.

  “What does it look like?” He smiled, and I shook my head.

  “Gram is visiting soon?” Holding the ladder and not arguing was easier since he was already standing halfway up in the air.

  He waved me away from the ladder. “You know it, Taylor Jane. I didn’t want to forget and have her mention it.”

  Alan Bryant was a stubborn man, but I loved him deeply. He bravely took on both roles as father and mother when I needed him most. Dad had a major heart attack last year and it was the only reason I came home for Christmas as opposed to him com
ing to the city to see me. After his job urged him to take an early retirement, I began to realize how hard it had been on him staying home alone in this house. The rooms echoed too much without my mother’s presence to fill it with her warmth. I swore the wallpaper in the kitchen held her voice and the tea kettle Dad insisted on using chirped shrilly in her tone. Pangs of guilt hit me because once I went away to college I seldom came back home. My own pain still echoed in my bruised heart for the woman I desperately missed.

  Four years was a long time. People changed, bad haircuts grew out, and memories of what could have been faded to soreness instead of a raw burn. Sure, I loved this place, but there was something missing for me to make the leap and stay here.

  “You know there are several people you could ask to help you with this. Me included.” I leaned against the wall, watching him. He set the crooked painting on the bracket, and I made a note to see if Hunter could stop by and fix it when Dad was out.

  “I know, princess.” Dad got down from the ladder and gave me a kiss on the head and left me standing in our great room while he tinkered in the kitchen next. I needed to find him a hobby or everything in the house was liable to look crooked from now on. I’d introduced him to a woman, but that ended disastrously and I learned my lesson that time. Dad was up for dating about as much as I was.

  Non-existent.

  “Did you eat lunch, Dad?” I called out to him, moving over to the pile of mail on his big desk, sorting magazines and bills in size order.

  From the kitchen he yelled back, “Not yet. I was thinking we could go to the Greek place on Main Street. I know you like their vegetarian gyros.”

  “Sounds good.” Talking to myself, I kept organizing the papers until one of the envelopes got caught. I pulled it free, noticing that it was already opened and unfolded. Turning it over, I saw a letter from the bank we used address to my dad. My voice faltered calling out to him and I looked over my shoulder and heard him still in the kitchen tinkering. Slowly I pulled out the thin folded letter, opening up the notice. My eyes skimmed the words, only catching the most important ones. I fell back against the desk, clutching the letter to my chest shaking. This was huge and Dad had kept this from me when we never had secrets before.

  The bank was sending notice to foreclose on my parents’ house. My home. Dad had used up the equity in it, I was guessing, but it must have been to pay for my education and living expenses in New York City. I thought that money had come from my mother’s life insurance settlement. This was a lot of money according to the bank letter. Money I didn’t think about because Dad constantly told me not to worry about those things. He said he was fine. He promised me. Now I wondered, a sick pit in my stomach, if this was why the bank was only too eager to give me a mortgage for the project on my house with my paltry down payment. Obviously I misjudged a few things, my father telling me the truth being one of them.

  “Princess?”

  I blamed myself for being selfish. I hadn’t been looking in on my dad the way I should have been. He kept throwing money my way, and I took it, living my dream unaware that I had slowly been taking his away.

  “Dad?” I held out the letter as he came into the den.

  He took it from me and visibly shook reading it and rubbing a hand over his jaw. He crumpled the stiff stationary in his fist.

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about, Taylor Jane.” He put the letter, a wrinkled ball, on the desk and turned away.

  “Dad, the bank is going to take the house and the money you gave me as a down payment for the flip has already been spent. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Taylor Jane.”

  “Dad, we have to talk about this. I can try and get the money back, see if the seller will cancel the contract on the house.” My heart thudded in my chest, scared and frustrated that this was the first time I was hearing about any of this. I’d lose a substantial amount on the closing costs, but Dad was more important and I’d find a way to fix this. How could I flip that house and support us when the money was already spent? To use Hunter’s terminology, what a clusterfuck...

  “No. I don’t want you to.” Thick eyebrows furrowed and his face reddened. It wasn’t often Dad and I had disagreements, but this was ridiculous. We would lose the house.

  I pressed further. “Dad.”

  “Enough.” His stern voice became uncharacteristically shaky and I pulled back, wounded and unsure.

  “But—”

  “We’re not discussing this.”

  “How can I work on this project knowing you’re going to lose the house? Are you suddenly going to go back to work after retiring? Your health can’t take it and I couldn’t bear it.”

  “You will because I tell you to.”

  “Mom wouldn’t have wanted this. She loved this house.”

  “Your mother loved you, and I promised your mother that you would follow your dreams. I promised her.” He fisted his hand tight, a determined look in his eyes I’d never seen before.

  “Dad… Mom has been gone for a long time and I’ve gotten to follow my dreams. You always made sure of that.” A chill crept down my neck whispering with dread. “This is going to cost our home. It’s not worth that to me.”

  “What kind of home is it if your mother isn’t here to share it with me? It’s just a house. This hasn’t been a home since she died.”

  Shocked at the revelation of his feelings, feelings I hadn’t countered before, my fingers flipped over what I realized now was a stack of mostly unpaid bills. Bills my father wouldn’t have had if he hadn’t been giving me my dream.

  I pushed the envelopes, spreading them over the desk, noting several were late notices that I could probably try to cover. Maybe if I asked the bank to modify the mortgage I was taking I could pay these until the project house sold. I knew there were ethically wrong decisions robbing Peter to pay Paul mixed up in those thoughts, but this was all we had of Jolene Bryant and I couldn’t lose this too.

  Grabbing a lightweight jacket from the hall closet, Dad stood in the hall, putting it on. “You coming to lunch or what?”

  I nodded, leaving the pile for later. It wasn’t as if the notices were going anywhere. Shame and guilt filled me up faster than gyros ever could, killing my appetite, but I went along because it made him happy. I was going to have my work cut out for me and the pressure to succeed took a stranglehold, evaporating my happiness from the ride with Hunter earlier.

  It was time I put aside some of my wants for my dad’s needs. I had to make this project work and I had to sell it when it was complete to pay off the bills here. It was time I took care of home and be the adult my mother would have been proud of if she were here today.

  5

  Hunter

  “Hey, Lumberjack!” Whittaker Jones picked up the phone on the second ring, and I could hear his teeth grinding at my greeting. I was feeling especially chipper today sharing the good news of Taylor Jane’s project, cue sarcasm of course.

  “What do you want? I don’t do free labor anymore.” Whit had been a longtime friend who now worked for the Park Service in our area. He sounded unusually grumpy, while his day job consisted of chasing drunken, underage campers from the park and breaking up the occasional fight over sleeping arrangements. I envied his job because there were times when he hiked in the woods for hours on end without a soul to bother him. I craved that kind of silence with the noise in my head sometimes that no one understood.

  “I know that, but since I helped you install that pellet stove in your house I figured you could give me a couple hours of grunt work in the next few weeks.”

  He groaned through the phone, making me laugh because I knew exactly how he felt.

  “For what?”

  I hesitated speaking the words out loud for fear this really wasn’t a nightmare I had to run damage control on. “Taylor Jane bought this condemned property she wants to flip for some television show contest. She’s made me the lead contractor, but I wanted your thoughts on
some eco-friendly approaches.”

  “Bullshit. You’re looking for cheap labor. I know how this works. I’m going back to bed on my day off.” Whit chuckled pretending to snore through the phone. He wasn’t totally wrong. This project was going to need all the help it could get and I wasn’t afraid to pull a few strings.

  “Yes, but considering her budget isn’t what it should be for a project like this I’m calling in all my favors. Come on, bro, help a guy out.”

  “Oh Christ.” Whit was probably rolling over trying to hide under flannel sheets or whatever he decorated his house with these days. “Is that shit-head Damien doing the plumbing?”

  “Of course.”

  Damien owed me for a decade of shit and he wasn’t getting out of this little adventure. If I had to suffer, he was going down with me.

  “Does he know that yet?” Whit nailed me with that one.

  Holding back my amusement, I said, “He will.”

  “All right, fuuuuck, fine. I’m in.”

  “Hey, don’t get too excited. Should I tell Damien you said hello?”

  “Oh believe me, I’m not. And fuck him. He owes me twenty bucks and a bottle of Jack.”

  “Right.” Because that was exactly what Damien needed—more alcohol to soak his stupid brain. The money was probably for a parking ticket courtesy of an Officer Rooney.

  “You ever going to own up to crushing on this girl anytime soon?” Whit knew me better than most, but even that detail was under lock and key. It wasn’t happening, ever. Taylor Jane was friend zoned for a number of reasons, starting with my sanity and her physical safety. I couldn’t risk going apeshit on her the way my dad did on my mom. It killed them both and a part of me on that rainy stretch of highway.