Page 2 of Room to Spare (The Fixer Upper #2)

Finn sighed. “Of course it doesn’t. With his workaholic tendencies, it’s only a matter of time before he puts a cot in the storage room for the nights he works too late to stumble up the stairs.”

“That’d be a shame. From the sounds of it, it’s pretty damned sweet up there.” Luke glared at Keaton, but a smile played at his lips. “Not that we’d know since he won’t let anyone see it.”

The truth was, Keaton wasn’t ready for anyone to see the place. It wasn’t just about the renovation or the tech features he’d installed. It was about the emptiness. The way his voice echoed in the space. The way he’d arranged everything just so, with no one to mess it up or leave their mark.

“Can we focus?” he said, sharper than he intended. “Some of us have work to do today. And if you quit being dicks, I’ll take you guys up to see it now that everything’s finished. I didn’t want anyone making me second-guess anything.”

Finn and Luke exchanged another glance but let it drop—for now. “Just holler when you’re ready. We’d love to see it.” Finn was always the easier-going of his friends, the one who tried maintaining the peace when Luke goaded Keaton just a little too much.

The guys were in the middle of their weekly planning meeting when Keaton’s phone blared with his mom’s ringtone. His stomach clenched with a familiar mixture of love and dread.

He ignored it.

Finn smirked. Luke didn’t bother hiding his amusement.

“She’s just going to call back,” Luke murmured.

He wasn’t wrong. The phone started ringing again thirty seconds later.

With a sigh, Keaton answered. “Hey, Mom, can I give you a call back? We’re in the middle of something here.”

“Keaton, sweetheart, I was just calling to see if you’re still meeting us this afternoon for a tour of the mural sites.” Her voice was sweet but held an edge of steel that meant she wasn’t really asking.

“I have a full schedule today.” He’d known this was coming, which was why he’d scheduled meetings this afternoon. He didn’t need to walk down Main Street with his mom and the reps from the tourism commission to know what needed to be done. “I can try to get down there, but no promises.”

“Well, you’ll figure it out,” she said breezily. “Paige is meeting with the council tomorrow night to get the final approval, and she needs your input. You know they value your assessment.”

That was a low blow. His mom knew damned well Keaton wouldn’t leave Paige on her own.

His sister had worked too hard to make this project a reality, and if she’d been the one to call, he would have caved instantly.

And unfortunately, their mom was right. Getting the approval would be easier if some of the council members didn’t think Paige was just a flighty art teacher who thought everything needed more color.

“Mom—”

“Oh, and dinner tonight. Your father wants to talk to you about something.”

His grip on the phone tightened. “About what?”

“It’s nothing that can’t wait until dinner.” There was something in her tone—a mixture of concern and determination—that made his chest tighten.

Keaton exhaled slowly, remembering the last family dinner that had turned into an intervention about his work habits.

“I’ll try to make it, but I can’t guarantee anything.

It’s a busy week. Things are ramping up with the apartment project, and I need to see if I can compress the timeline a bit more.

” He figured he’d be okay if he could get the work done within the next three months.

Anything more than that and he would be tapping into his savings.

Diana tsked. “Keaton.”

That was all she said, but damn if it didn’t work every time. It was the tone of her voice more than anything, the one that had made him confess to breaking the neighbor’s window when he was eight and coming home past curfew at sixteen.

Luke smirked. Either his mom was loud enough for them to hear her, or the slump of his shoulders was a clear signal of defeat.

Finn shook his head, muttering, “Tragic. You know he won’t say no.”

“Fine,” Keaton muttered. “I’ll be there.”

Keaton spent the next hour reorganizing his schedule to fit in the walk-through and dinner with the family. It wasn’t easy. Nothing ever ran as smoothly as it should, and he’d already been cutting corners on sleep to keep up with everything.

By the time he set things in order, Luke dropped into the chair across from him. “When’s the last time you took a weekend off? You’ve moved beyond bags under your eyes. That shit’s checked-bag-sized suitcases at this point. It’s a miracle you can hold your head upright.”

Keaton didn’t look up. “I don’t need a weekend off.”

“You’re right. You need at least a week or two, but that’s not what I asked.”

“It’s been a while,” he admitted. Luke was so blissfully partnered up now that he didn’t remember how he used to climb the walls when he didn’t have anything to do on his days off.

Hell, his own need to fill every minute of his free time was part of how he’d wound up with his little ready-made family.

He’d been unable to resist the urge to help Noah, who at the time was nothing more than the guy he’d crushed on when he was a teen, fix up the money pit of a house he’d bought.

The thought sent a pang through him—not quite regret, but something close to it. When had he stopped making time for anything but work?

Luke scoffed. “Exactly.”

“There’s too much shit going on here,” he grumbled. “I need the weekends to catch up on everything I don’t get done during the week, and now I’ll have these new units to fix up.”

Finn, ever the strategist, took a different approach.

“You could delegate more. Luke could pick up more of the project management tasks, and I wouldn’t mind doing more of the bid write-ups.

I could even look over the land surveys and report back to you.

And it’s not like you’re going to be single-handedly renovating the apartments.

I already have a crew put together for as soon as the permits are in order. ”

Keaton sighed. “I delegate plenty.”

Luke snorted. “Sure. If by ‘delegate,’ you mean ‘micromanage from a distance.’”

Keaton scowled. His parents had done just fine with his dad handling the crews and jobsite management while his mom kept the office running smoothly.

He was already a step beyond that and didn’t want to hand off even more.

Otherwise, he’d hear about it from his dad.

His parents were amazing people, but sometimes they set impossibly high standards.

Or maybe that was just the voice in his head, the one that never let him rest. Maybe he was the one setting the bar so high that he had no chance of clearing it.

“Thursday night,” Finn said. “Brew & Barrel. You’re going.”

Keaton hesitated.

Luke grinned. “That wasn’t a question. You’ve bailed on me the past three weeks. I haven’t said anything because you were trying to get your place in order, but now that it’s done, you have no excuse.”

“Fine.” Keaton knew it wasn’t worth arguing. If he tried to get out of it again, Luke would just show up and drag him out of the apartment. And maybe a night out would help quiet the restlessness that had been building inside him.

A while later, Keaton stood in the middle of his apartment with his friends.

It wasn’t the best time, and he still worried Luke wouldn’t be able to resist sharing his opinions about what Keaton had done with the place, but if he hadn’t let them in, they’d have kept giving him shit.

And really, he had nothing to worry about.

The apartment was exactly what he wanted.

Clean lines, efficient storage solutions, and as much natural light as possible.

Except—

His eyes landed on a thin crack in the drywall near the window. It wasn’t structural. Just cosmetic. It could be patched, painted over.

But it bugged him. It was like a flaw in his armor, a reminder that no matter how hard he tried, perfection was always just out of reach.

Luke followed his gaze. “You know, not everything has to be perfect. This isn’t one of our jobs to scour over with a fine-tooth comb. You can fix it later.”

Keaton exhaled. “I know that.”

Finn just gave him a knowing look. “It looks great, Keaton. No one but you will notice that little crack.”

“You guys did,” he pointed out.

Luke scoffed. “Yeah, because you were glaring at it, which made both of us start looking for what was wrong. Seriously, this place looks better than I thought it could. I still think it’s a bad idea for you to live where you work, but there’s no talking you out of that.

” He wandered over to the thermostat, which connected to an app on Keaton’s phone.

“Do you like this? I was thinking about installing one at our place. If we heat the house while no one’s there, the electric bill is through the roof, but it’d be nice to not freeze my ass off for the first hour after getting home. ”

“I do. I probably went overboard, but I’ve got the entire apartment connected. That’s the way things are moving in the future, and I figured it made sense to do it while I was remodeling.” He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to justify his decisions to his friends.

“Smart thinking. Otherwise, you’d wind up doing it down the road, and that would be an added cost.” Leave it to Finn to be the practical one.

Part of what made him good at his job was his natural tendency to pinch pennies without sacrificing quality wherever possible.

“Forget about the crack. It’s tiny and gives the place character. ”

Character. That was what his mother used to say about the house he grew up in—the creaky third stair, the door that stuck in humid weather.

His father would have fixed them in a heartbeat, but she insisted they were part of what made a house a home.

Keaton had never understood that. What was so charming about imperfection?