Chapter One
This House Is Not a Project
The first thing I saw was a broken step. Second from the top.
Not the roses climbing the trellis, not the charming wraparound porch, not even the way the late afternoon light made the whole cottage glow like a magazine spread titled “Starting Over: Divorced and Delusional.” My eyes went straight to the split wood, the water damage from that gutter hanging by a single bracket. I could already see the fix: a new board, wood filler, maybe reinforce the railing while I was at it. Two hours, tops. Three if the rot went deeper than it looked.
My hand was already reaching for the sticky notes in my purse.
This is what I do, what I’ve always done. See a problem, fix the problem. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at and the only thing that ever made me worth keeping around. David had said so himself, right before he left: You’re so busy fixing everything else, you never noticed we were broken.
Joke was on him. I had noticed. I just couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
“You’ve been staring at that porch for four minutes,” my mother said from the passenger seat. “It’s a house, Gemma. Not a crime scene.”
“The step is broken.”
“So fix it later.”
“It’s a safety hazard.”
“It’s been a safety hazard for six months. The listing said ‘character and potential.’ That’s real estate code for ‘falling apart.’ You knew what you were buying.”
She wasn’t wrong. I knew exactly what I was getting—a 1920s cottage that sat empty since the previous owner died, priced forty thousand under market because the estate just wanted it gone. Three bedrooms, one and a half baths, original hardwood that probably needed refinishing, a kitchen that hadn’t seen an update since the Reagan administration, and approximately nine hundred things requiring immediate attention.
I’d made a list. Color-coded. Laminated.
“At least the scenery’s nice,” Mom said.
I followed her gaze to the property next door.
A man stood in the yard—tall, broad-shouldered, doing something with a welding torch that sent sparks cascading through the air like tiny orange fireworks. Flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up past forearms that looked like they’d actually been used for something besides carrying grocery bags and disappointing women. Safety goggles pushed into hair that was more silver than dark. The kind of focused expression that said he’d forgotten the rest of the world existed, which was honestly rude because some of us were trying not to stare and he was making it very difficult.
There was something about the way he moved—unhurried, deliberate—that made my chest do something inconvenient. My body apparently remembered what attraction felt like, even though my brain had filed it under “no longer applicable, see also: waste of time, see also: remember what happened last time you trusted a man with nice arms.”
Behind him, metal sculptures dotted the yard like strange, beautiful sentries. Abstract things made of twisted steel and found objects, catching the fading light in ways that made my organized brain itch. No pattern. No symmetry. No system. Just chaos arranged into something that thought it was art.
They were also, I noticed with a twitch I couldn’t suppress, slightly crooked. The tall one in the corner listed about three degrees to the left. My fingers actually twitched toward the sticky notes. I wanted to walk over there, introduce myself, and gently suggest he invest in a level.
This is my problem. I know this. I am aware.
