Page 55 of When to Call a Blitz

Heidi’s bottom lip pops out in a pout as she watches, her eyes finding mine across the room.

“Fine,” I break. “But we’re making a home for him outside. That thing isn’t living in here, and you guys need to be quiet about it, got it?”

The two women nod, their smiles big enough it seems like they could fall off. “Thank you dad!” Juniper screams as she rushes me, throwing her arms around my leg.

I wasn’t expecting to spend my day going to the hardware store and holed up in my garage building a god damn house for an opossum.

“Do you need help?” Heidi skips down the stairs into the garage, a faint smile still on her lips from getting her way.

“I feel like you’ve helped enough,” I mutter, drilling two pieces of wood together.

She falls silent, instead jumping up onto the work bench to watch me work. “What is this?”

“It’s an opossum house.”

“It doesn’t look like he can get in there very easily.”

I put my drill down, leaning against the bench myself. “That’s kind of the point. They need to be protected from predators.”

“So he doesn’t have a real entrance?”

I shake my head. “No, I have to make little notches going up to the entrance up top. He has to climb to get in.

Heidi bites her cheek. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“Heid, he’ll be safe.”

She raises a brow, a slow smile slinking across her lips. “Heid?”

I feel my face heat, and a heaviness settles on my shoulders. “What are we doing here, Heidi.”

She gestures to the drill. “Making an opossum house.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” It comes out like a whisper, as if I’m trying to convince myself that this conversation is even happening in the first place.

She shrugs, and in a move that I know I’m going to regret later, I close some of the distance between us, my fists resting on the surface on either side of her. She stares up at me, her eyes shining as they drift slowly down to my lips. “I’m not the one who runs away,” she whispers, her breath caressing my skin.

“But you want to.”

She shakes her head, her red hair falling into her face. “I think that’s what you tell yourself in order to sleep at night.”

“You have no idea how I sleep.”

She makes a face. “Like a baby, apparently.”

“How do you know?”

She smirks. “I may be shy,” she starts slowly. Her head tilts slightly as she holds my gaze. If it weren’t for the way her chest rises and falls with each breath that hits my skin, I’d think she was going wholly unaffected. “I may not even think I deserve you. But I don’t think it’s a secret that I wish I did.”

I shake my head, feeling almost annoyed that I have to say this. “You deserve everything you want.”

“And you don’t?”

I can’t say anything in response, the wind being knocked out of me.

Because I do want her.

I’ve wanted her ever since that summer night under the sunset.

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