Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 76022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76022 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
As for the basement, well, maybe I wouldn’t go down there until I had a crew come and redo the whole thing: windows, real walls and floors. Maybe it could be a workshop for Saul and me to tinker with our projects.
By the time I was done fantasizing about it, I absolutely had to make it a reality.
Something told me that the current owner would be willing to sell, given how little he was making from rent.
It would eat up most of my money from the Novikoffs. But Saul and I could do a huge chunk of the work ourselves on the house to cut down on costs.
Was I getting ahead of myself?
Yes.
But I had a feeling that this thing with Saul, it was a forever sort of situation.
Saul - 6 months
Where the hell were my brownies?
I’d moved into the other side of the duplex a day and a half ago, and I’d yet to get my ‘welcome home’ baked goods from Este.
Este had only mentioned a new neighbor once, her lower lip trembling a bit. Because she’d been trying to get the owner to sell to her for a few months.
The problem was, of course, that he’d already agreed to sell to me. I’d slipped him a little extra money not to tell Este that he had already sold the house.
I wanted it to be a surprise.
I’d been listening to her talk about how perfect the house would be if she could undo the duplex and return it to its former glory.
I figured it was the best gift I could give her.
I wanted it to be a big, fun reveal.
But I was getting really bored of hanging out in the other side of the duplex, waiting for her. I couldn’t even get to work on renovations because I didn’t want to give her awful flashbacks.
“Hey! Trix! No!” Este yelled, making me turn from where I was looking out the back window.
I’d left the front door cracked, wanting to let in some fresh air (but not the bugs) because the place still had that closed-up scent about it.
It seemed Trix got a whiff of me through the gap, though.
Well, that worked too.
“Trix!” Este whisper-yelled from the front door, clearly not wanting to walk into someone else’s home.
Trix bounded at me, tail wagging, body slamming into me.
“Trix!” Clearly, Este’s fear of Trix destroying something or scaring someone overtook her reservations about trespassing, because her voice was drawing closer. “Tri—”
Her voice faltered and fell as she moved into the doorway and spotted me standing there.
“Saul? What are you doing in here?” she asked, brows scrunching up.
I reached into my pocket, found the keys, and jiggled them in the air.
“You rented out this side?” she asked, looking even more confused.
“I bought the whole house,” I explained. “For us.”
Her eyes went round, then flooded.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I thought he wasn’t interested in selling.”
“To you. Because he’d already sold to me. You’re right, by the way. If this wall was taken down, the kitchen would be hu—”
I trailed off on a grunt as Este flew herself into my arms, knocking me back a step.
“You’re amazing,” she told me, raining kisses up my neck, jaw, cheek, then finally my lips. She kissed me long and deep, and I could feel pieces of our future falling into place. “But I hope you know you just signed up for at least a year of nonstop renovation projects.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Este - 2 years
“You alright?” Saul asked, glancing over at me in the front seat of his pick-up truck on the long drive back to Shady Valley.
“Yeah, why?” I asked, glancing over.
“You haven’t said a word or moved in two hours.”
“Listen, I am so full that I feel like I might burst if I even breathe too deep,” I admitted, getting a low chuckle out of him. “You didn’t warn me that your family was going to keep piling my plate up each time it got even close to empty.”
“In my defense, you did tell them about the baby,” Saul said, shooting me a sweet smile. “They weren’t just feeding you, but them too.”
“The baby is going to have no room with how big my stomach had to stretch for all that food. I’m going to be craving those carnitas for the rest of my life.”
“My tía is going to love hearing that. She might want to move in to feed you while the baby grows.”
“Hey, we have extra rooms,” I said, getting a chuckle out of him.
“You might rethink that invitation when you know she insists on doing a deep house clean every Saturday morning. Starting at five a.m.”
“I mean… a clean house is never a bad thing.”
“No one is allowed to opt out of the cleaning.”
“Oh, in that case, maybe we just visit her every month. On, you know, a Tuesday.”