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EMMY

It starts with the smell of sawdust.

Soft. Earthy. Sharp in the way pine and cedar are when they’ve just been cut, like the trees haven’t quite forgotten the wind yet. It drifts in through the open windows, curling through the house like something alive.

The sound comes next—Cal’s voice, low and steady, rising beneath the hum of his tools.

He’s talking to himself again, murmuring measurements, soft affirmations, that quiet concentration that wraps around his work like a prayer.

Measure twice, cut once. I hear the blade, then the pause.

The breath before the next cut. It’s a rhythm I know now. A kind of heartbeat.

The bedroom looks different.

It’s not just the sawdust. Or the way the far wall is half-framed, open to the soft press of sun and breeze.

It’s something deeper. Something becoming.

Where there used to be only drywall and insulation and air, there’s now the outline of a room.

My room.

Not tucked away.

Not hidden.

Not separate.

Built right onto the house. Onto us.

Sunlight spills across the floorboards, catching on the floating motes like dust spun into gold. The scent of cedar and lavender curls through the air—my bundles drying on the porch rail, the breeze carrying them in. It smells like safety. Like warmth. Like the beginning of something good.

I stand at the screen door with a mug in my hand, bare feet tucked against the cool of the kitchen tile. Cleo is curled in a long beam of light behind me, her tiny frame barely rising and falling. Luca stretches once, then thumps his tail near the table before sighing back into sleep.

And out there—Cal.

Boots off.

Just in jeans, a sleeveless shirt faded soft with time.

His curls damp from the heat.

Skin flushed from the sun.

His back bowed over a long plank of pine, steady as the horizon.

His hands—strong, capable—are covered in sawdust and sap. One grips the wood, the other guides the sander. The muscles in his arms shift and flex with each pass, and there’s something quiet in his focus. Something so sure it makes my chest ache.

He’s building it.

For me.

The writing nook.

My nook.

He won’t call it an office. “Too cold,” he said.

“This is your place, little one. Where you dream.”

I can already see it.

The windows he framed with such care.

The shelves he’s measuring to fit my height, so I can reach without straining.

The little alcove in the corner—he left it on purpose.

“For your chair,” he told me.

“I want you comfortable. I want it to feel like you.”

My laptop sits behind me on the bed.

Blank screen.

Cursor blinking.

Like it’s waiting for me to be ready.

I haven’t written in a long time.

Not really.

Not without fear whispering at the edges.

Not without bracing for failure.

But something’s different now.

There’s a nudge.

A flicker.

A feeling like soft roots pressing down into warm soil. Not fast. Not loud.

But real.

Alive.

I watch him work.

Watch the way he wipes sweat from his brow with the back of his arm, leaving a streak of sawdust across his temple. He doesn’t even notice.

And then—

He does.

Looks up.

Meets my eyes.

And in that instant—everything stills.

The air.

The ache.

The quiet hum of not-enough I’ve carried for so long.

All of it just… hushes.

He smiles.

Not wide.

Not smug.

Just soft.

Certain.

And mouths it, like a promise.

“Almost done.”

I swallow.

Can’t speak.

But I nod.

Because I think—

I think I’m almost done, too.

Almost done running.

Almost done doubting.

Almost done pretending I don’t want to stay.

His hammer starts again, steady and sure.

And something in me settles.

I turn back toward the house, let the screen door close behind me.

Set my mug on the table.

Move to the bed.

The dogs don’t stir.

The breeze lifts the blanket, just a little, and birdsong weaves through the trees like background music to something holy.

I sit.

Pull the laptop onto my lap.

And for the first time in what feels like forever…

I start to type.

Just a few words.

A line.

Maybe the beginning of something new.

Or maybe the continuation of something I almost gave up on.

But it’s there.

The want.

The hope.

The beginning.

And I know—

I’ll have to rewrite this life a hundred times before I get it perfect.

But I won’t be doing it alone.

I look back through the window.

And when I see Cal—shoulders broad, hands sure, building me a room where I can belong—I feel it in my bones.

This isn’t a someday.

This isn’t borrowed.

This is mine.