Page 83 of Trusting Fate (Hope Falls: Brewed Awakenings 2)

Viv took out her phone and pulled up YouTube clips. She pushed play on the first one and Grace realized it was of her and Easton from the show.

One was of him putting Xs on the wall that they were going to demolish and then having a competition to see who could throw the hammer closest to them.

The next was when a water pipe had burst and after they got it shut off, he got towels and they pretended to be ice skating to clean up the water on the floor.

The next was when they had a race to see who could remove the most tiles in sixty seconds from the guest bathroom.

It was strange to see the clips. Grace hadn’t seen any of the show. It had been on seven days a week starting the Monday after Thanksgiving. The network was using the UK Love Island model of airing an episode every night, to try and increase viewership retention. It was sort of the same concept as binge-watching, but you had to wait one day for the next episode instead of a week. Grace had been so busy working on the house she hadn’t had the time to watch any of the episodes, promos, or clips.

They were extremely close up because they couldn’t show anything that would give away which house it was, so Grace and Easton took up most of the screen.

“See, Easton is bringing fun Grace back. You look happy.”

Her sister was right. She did look happy.

Easton had brought back fun Grace. She didn’t even remember fun Grace. He’d given her a piece of herself she hadn’t even known was missing.

* * *

“You’re losing your touch.”Eli teased as they walked off the basketball court.

His brother had talked him into joining the weekly pickup game. This was the first night they’d had off since the day after Thanksgiving a few weeks ago.

He only agreed to come because Grace was at a book club. He was exhausted. He’d been running on an average of four hours sleep, which even for him was not enough. But there was no way that he could feel sorry for himself because Grace was running on even less.

He wasn’t sure how she did it. But every night when he and Cleo went up to bed she was downstairs in the kitchen going over budget or design or answering emails or putting out fires that had come up during the day. And even though they were under extreme stress and she was running on fumes, she never lost her cool. She just rolled with the punches.

Just this past week, they’d had an issue with a pipe freezing and then exploding, which had damaged some of the flooring. She’d just asked how much it would cost and told him she’d find it in the budget.

They’d had several deliveries get delayed including the appliances and counters, which only went in late yesterday. That meant they had to do backsplash today which would have been fine if there hadn’t been an issue with their paint, so that was also being done. She’d said that she would just have to stage tomorrow, which was when they’d planned on doing all the final touches but now, they would be scrambling just to get the project done.

Each and every time something came up that Easton thought, this is it, this is the thing that’s going to make her snap, cry, or just give up, she just handled it with class and grace. Her name literally was perfect for her.

Every day she impressed him in some new and unique way.

“Have you been watching the show?” Eli asked as the two men sat down on the bench.

“I told you, this is my first night off.” Easton grabbed his phone and sent Grace a quick text asking if she wanted him to pick anything up for dinner.

“Soooo, you haven’t seen that you’re trending?”

“I’m what?”

“You and Grace are trending. On Twitter.”

“I don’t have Twitter.”

Eli sighed. “Bro, do you hear the words that come out of your mouth?”

“What?” Easton had no idea what his brother was talking about.

“I love you, but sometimes you can sound like a pretentious prick.”

“Because I don’t have Twitter?”

“No. Because you don’t have Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Or anything else that might take away from your mindfulness,” Eli waved his fingers as he said the word like it was spooky or something. “We get it, you are better than everyone.” Eli pretended to open an envelope. “And the winner of Best Person Ever goes to Easton Hayes Bishop.”

Easton shook his head as he laughed. Even when his brother was being a dick, he was still funny. “Sorry, I’ll try to be less pretentious. What do you mean we’re trending?”

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