Your house smelled like sawdust and cheap takeout again. It clung to the late afternoon air, thick and golden, heavy in your lungs as you leaned back against the half-built kitchen island, pretending you weren’t watching the way Patrick’s tank top clung to his back—soaked through with sweat, pulling tight over the hard cut of his shoulders, his spine, the thick bands of muscle that flexed every time he shifted.

He was crouched low by the cabinets, one knee on the scuffed linoleum, the other bent, jeans stretched taut over his thighs as he hammered something into place with slow, deliberate swings. Your kids, bless them, were a tangle of sticky fingers and breathless questions at his side, shoving toy trucks toward him and babbling about “helping.” He took it in stride, answering them between hammer strikes with a patience you hadn’t earned yet, his voice warm and low, vibrating through the hollow bones of the house.

You folded your arms across your chest, clutching yourself like that would somehow protect you from the gnawing heat building under your skin. You weren’t stupid—you knew what this was. You weren’t naive enough to believe it was just the house he was fixing. Every night, it got worse: standing too close over half-installed cabinet doors, brushing hands as you passed him a screwdriver, trading shy, exhausted smiles when the clock crept past midnight. Hearts hammering like fists against locked doors.

And now, broad daylight, the kids laughing and the air humming electric between you like a goddamn live wire, Patrick wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, dragging his shirt higher, not even thinking about it. A strip of golden skin flashed—lean, taut, dusted with sweat and sawdust. You almost missed his mouth moving, the words slow and easy, like he had all the time in the world to watch you squirm.

“Cabinet framing’s locked in,” he said, thumb hooking into his belt loop, voice a rough scrape that caught somewhere low in your spine. “Used pocket screws for the face frame—keeps it flush. Countertops’ll need silicone seams to set proper, and I gotta anchor the studs before I hang the uppers… but it’s all solid.”

He smiled, real slow, real crooked, the kind of smile that wasn’t polite anymore—wasn’t professional, wasn’t safe. Just a man standing in your half-finished kitchen, sweaty and smiling like he belonged there, like he wanted to.