“I think it’s too late. It’s changed.” He puts a hand into his hair. “I’m being a jerk because I’m stressed, and I’ve got you walking around in the middle of everything.”

“Ignore me.”

“You’re real hard to ignore.” He looks sideways at the house, eyebrows pulling down. “Okay, here’s where we’re at. I’m attempting the first day of what should be the rest of my career, and I can’t focus on it.”

“Because you want to put me against a wall and kiss me.” I’m taunting that thing inside him that always responds to me. It protects me and hunts me. “And you’d do it in front of everyone here. You like having keys in your pocket. It’s what your whole life is about. You want to be the only one with a key to me.” I count his breaths. “Am I right?”

“I am not going to answer that.” His body answers anyway; a shrugging of his entire body, like something is dropping down onto him. He looks so desperate that regret fills me. What have I done to him? I love his inner animal so much that I’m stopping him from turning back into the calm, controlled version he needs to be.

I think I do an identical shudder-shrug. Get yourself back on your leash, DB. “What am I photographing?”

“Everything,” Tom says, raspy. “I want you to photograph everything.” He propels me up the back stairs with a hand on my waistband.

“For what purpose?”

“Two purposes. To keep Jamie in the loop, because if we don’t, he’s coming down here.” He positions me at the doorway of the hall. “And I need content for my website. A before-and-after section. Lucky for me, I’ve got a professional photographer right on hand.”

I don’t really care for how he put a little sarcasm on professional. I really screwed up just now in front of his crew.

“How many times in my life have you rescued me? I can’t even count. I will always do the same for you. I will not stand there and say nothing when I could step in and help. It’s what we do for each other.”

He blinks, trying to understand. “No one does that for me.”

“I do it.”

“How can I explain this in a way you’ll understand?” Tom steps against my back and reaches around me. His fingers slide between mine and he raises my hands up until the camera is roughly in line with my eyes.

“Can you do your job like this?” When I line up the viewfinder on the hall, he moves our hands. I snap a shot that is, of course, garbage.

I try to shrug him off; he steps closer, dropping his mouth to the side of my neck. That mouth that sipped from my mug, telling every male in the room that I’m off-limits and untouchable. He’s still too far into the dark forest place we play in. He breathes me in. I feel the briefest scrape of his stubble on the curve of my shoulder and the most intriguing hard press on my butt. I feel like an animal about to be bitten, soft and slow, by its mate. Maybe he’d do it hard enough to leave a mark. When he finally releases the breath he’s been holding, his heavenly warm air goes down the neck of my top.

He says, “There’s so many things I’d do, if I could.”

“Well, seems pointless to tell me about them.” I bump him off.

Tom Valeska is a fucking liar. He does want me. He just doesn’t have the guts. In my pulse points, I’m nothing but Morse code: bed, bed, bed. And I’m disappointed in his lack of faith in me. No one could possibly succeed with messy Darcy Barrett around. That’s what I’ve been my whole life, right? A complication.

He puts another wobble into the camera as I try to take a shot. “This is how hard it is for me to do anything with you here.” Above my ear, his voice drops to a growl. “This house? This renovation? It’s what I do. Don’t step in again like that.”

“Get away from me. Safer, remember?” I sound bitter.

“Oh, you’re still on that?” Tom’s phone rings again. I’m ready to toss that thing into an active volcano. “I don’t think you fully got what I meant.”

“Of course I did, I’m not stupid,” I snap, and force my entire focus through the viewfinder.

“I was just …” There’s a pause so long I think he’s left. I take a few shots. “Surprised. I didn’t know that’s what you thought of me.”

“You weren’t surprised, you were traumatized. I heard you, loud and clear. From this point on, we’re going to ignore this thing between us. We’ll get ourselves a sold sign and we will see each other at Christmas. Maybe. There’s a festival in Korea around that time that’s always interested me.”

“Could you tell me why you did it?” I hear the floorboards under his feet creak. “Were you lonely? Mad? Trying to get back at me for something?” He hasn’t reached the conclusion that I want his body and his pleasure, more than I want water and food.

“I’m not telling you a damn thing,” I reply, because I know that’s what will annoy him the most. “I’ll tell you one day, when we’re eighty years old.”

I click the camera and look at the display. It’s hard to argue with reality, and here it is. This room—and this potential relationship with Tom—is not the flower-wallpapered version I’ve been carrying around in my head. This house is no longer beautiful, and Tom has receded out of reach. I’m down to zero.

His phone begins ringing again. “I’ve got to get this.” He starts to walk, but I stop him.

“What you did before, in the kitchen?” I snap a couple more frames. “With my coffee? Don’t do that shit again.”

“What did I do?” He looks up from the ringing phone, his thumb hovering. His brow is creased. He seriously doesn’t remember.

“You took a big slurp from my mug. Now your boys are looking at us like we’re …” I can’t finish.

Tom has the good grace to look embarrassed. “I guess not all sledgehammers are created equal.” He answers the phone. “Tom Valeska.”

I should get out of here and do my job. I should be taking advantage of the strawberry-sundae light.

I go down to the fishpond and hold the camera up to my eye. I haven’t taken an outdoor photo in probably a year, and it doesn’t help that my hands are shaking. What the hell just happened?

“I don’t know what to shoot,” I say to no one in particular. A tight feeling is in my chest now that I’m alone. Taking photos of this house? It’s too real. These are photographs of something I’m going to lose.

I want my white lightbox and mugs.

“Shoot everything,” a guy near me says, unfolding a metal table. He lifts a circular saw onto it with a grunt. “Because everything’s going to change.”

I walk around the outside of the house. “Just try to take one,” I whisper to myself. The first click is the hardest, and I barely look through the lens.

I take real estate shots, coaching myself through it, but before long, I’ve loosened up enough that I can pick out the little details. Just for me, so I can have them forever. I lean against the fence and shoot up at the crooked weathervane, topped with a galloping horse, that hasn’t spun in years.

This isn’t what Tom had in mind, but I shoot the moss and ivy clinging on the side of the wall, and the way the honeysuckle hangs low, dusting everything with yellow powder. I’m photographing this house like it’s a bride. As much as I ache to have it stand in the frozen fairy-tale clasp of roses forever, I know it’s time to let it go. The only way that I can is because it’s now in Tom’s care.