I might as well finish it, right?
I stared up at him and refused to flinch or look away, even when his expression darkened with an emotion that I couldn’t quite decipher. As tears slid from my eyes, I choked out, "Fine. I'm begging you. There. You happy?"
Chapter 8
Arden
On the other end of the phone, Cami sputtered, "I'm gonna kill him."
I huddled deeper under the covers and tried to smile. Cami was my very best friend. Until just last week, she'd been my college roommate, too.
She was loyal to a fault, and her righteous anger was a soothing balm to my battered soul.
Even though I was alone in the small, unfamiliar bedroom, I kept my voice low, just above a whisper. "You can't," I told her. "Well, not until he finishes the house, anyway."
It was just past nine o'clock in the morning, and I was giving her an update on everything that had happened between me and Brody. I'd just reached the part where I'd begged him to save the house.
Cami said, "Can I least maim him or something? I mean, seriously, what a lunk-blaster."
As a general rule, Cami didn't swear. Or at least, she didn't use traditional swearwords, which meant that she sometimes had to get creative when she got all worked up, like now for example.
On the phone, she was still raving. "He seriously made you get on your knees?"
At the memory of last night, heat flooded my face. Technically, he hadn'tmademe do anything, but yes, thathadbeen Brody's price for his promise to save the house.
And he got it, alright – my total humiliation.
I sighed. "Yeah, well, I guess it could've been worse."
"How?" she demanded.
"Well…" My face burned at the memory of me begging in the hallway, with my knees in the puddle and my face at his pelvis. "He could've expected, you know, 'services' while I was down there."
"Oh, please," she scoffed. "How do you know hewasn'texpecting that?"
"Because," I said, "I wasn't down there long enough to do anything. Cripes, you should've seen him. He practically yanked me to my feet, like he was worried I'd try to convince himorallyif you know what I mean."
From start to finish, the whole thing had been beyond mortifying. Still, I'd gotten what I'd needed, so it was worth it, right?
Cami muttered, "He's still a lunk-blaster."
I didn’t even know what that meant. Looking to move on, I said, "But you haven't heard the rest of it."
Sounding decidedly disgruntled, she asked, "Does it get better or worse?"
"Better." I hesitated. "Mostly."
As Cami listened, I went on to tell her that Brody had agreed not only to spare the house, but to fix it up, too.
Sure, he hadn't looked too happy about it, but hehadagreed.
I finished by telling her, "And when you think about it, fixing it up is almost as important as not tearing it down."
"How so?" she asked.
"Well, let's say heonlyagreed to not demolish it. Yeah, that's good fornow. But what happens if he sells it? If it's not even livable, the next person might demolish it anyway."
"But I don't get it," Cami said. "If the house needs so much work, why would anyone want to buy it in the first place?"
