Page 18 of Until the Storm Breaks (The Midnight Men #1)

CALVIN

I’ve been working on the sunroom since seven this morning. The temperature’s mild but I’m sweating from moving lumber and prying out old boards. Each piece I remove shows solid structure underneath. Good bones, Mom would say. Just needs new life breathed into it.

Dad added this room when we were kids. A reading room for Mom, he’d said, though we all knew it was really because she’d mentioned once how nice it would be to have morning coffee surrounded by windows.

He spent every weekend that summer out here with me and Theo “helping,” which mostly meant fetching tools and causing mayhem.

Mom would bring lemonade and watch from the doorway, smiling at the chaos.

The storm last year blew out two of the east windows. Dominic had them boarded up right away, but the water damage was already done. Stained walls, warped floorboards, window frames soft with rot. Another room in the house slowly giving up.

Now I’m replacing those boards one by one, watching the sunroom transform back into the place where Mom spent every morning with her books and coffee.

She’d sit in that old wicker chair, the one that’s still in the garage because I can’t bring myself to throw it out.

Always reading a book from the library, mysteries mostly.

She said they were puzzles that promised solutions, unlike real life.

I set the hammer down and take a drink of water. The house feels too quiet without her puttering around.

Working with my hands helps, keeps me from spiraling into memories of Mom. But between the hammering and measuring, other thoughts creep in. Maren. Always Maren. I’ve been trying to keep her out of my head all morning, but not thinking about her feels impossible when I’m living right next to her.

It’s been a few days since the almost kiss, and we’ve been dancing around each other, both pretending it didn’t happen. Hell, maybe I imagined the whole thing. That’s what I’ve been telling myself while measuring boards, hammering nails, anything to avoid being in that cabin with her so close.

This morning tested every bit of my self-control.

She had been in the kitchen making breakfast. Cropped sweatshirt, leggings that left nothing to my imagination. When she bent to get a pan from the lower cabinet, I nearly lost it.

That perfect ass. All I could think about was dropping to my knees behind her, pulling those leggings down, and eating her out until her legs gave out. Making her come on my tongue until she couldn’t remember her own name.

I left before I actually did it.

Now I’m standing here with a hammer, still aching from the memory, trying to focus on literally anything else. The boards. The measurements. Anything but how badly I want to taste her.

“Calvin?”

I jump, nearly dropping the hammer. Maren’s in the doorway.

Fuck. My face heats like she can read my mind, like she knows exactly what I was just thinking about doing to her.

“Hey.” I set the hammer on the sawhorse, trying to act normal despite the fact that I was just imagining her coming on my tongue.

“Wow, this is really coming together,” she says, stepping inside, carefully navigating around the lumber and tools.

She’s changed into jeans and a t-shirt. Seeing her fully dressed and talking about the sunroom while I’m still fighting off thoughts of her naked makes me feel guilty, but it doesn’t change the facts about what I want to do to her.

“Yeah, it’s getting there.” I wipe my hands on my jeans, needing something to do. “Slowly.”

She runs her fingers along the window frame I finished yesterday. “I didn’t know you were so handy,” she says, looking over with a grin.

“Construction work during college,” I say. “My Dad knew a guy who needed help. After a year of literary theory, some time hammering boards was oddly therapeutic.”

“I get that. Sometimes at the bar, after dealing with spreadsheets and inventory, I just want to throw darts or clean glasses. Something physical.” She smiles, then shifts her weight, clearly working up to something.

“Hey, do you have a minute?” she asks, chewing her bottom lip. “I wanted to ask you a question.”

My breath catches. Is this about the other night? The almost-kiss? The way we’ve been dancing around each other since? “Yeah,” I say. “Of course. What’s up?”

She takes a breath like she’s steeling herself. “I wanted to talk about Susan’s memorial.”

Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that. The memorial is still a few weeks away. My brothers and I have been texting about logistics, but mostly I’ve been trying not to think about it. Trying to avoid the reality that we’re planning a goodbye for the woman who raised us.

“Sure. What about it?” I ask.

“Theo called me yesterday asking for my contacts for local wine and beer.” The words come out fast, like she needs to get them all out before she loses her nerve.

“We got to talking and I mentioned... well, I offered the bar. For the reception. After the service. If you think that’s okay.

I mean, Theo seemed interested but I wanted to check with you too.

And also, I was wondering... after I got off the phone with him, I kept thinking about it, and if you and your brothers would be okay with it, I’d really like to help. With the planning.”

The uncertainty in her voice makes me want to reassure her immediately.

“That would be wonderful. Are you sure you want to help take that on?”

“Yeah, I’d really like to.” She gestures vaguely. “She was always there for me. After my parents died, she just... she showed up. Made sure I ate, made sure I got out of bed. I’d like to do this for her.”

“You should absolutely help,” I say. “I know my brothers will be alright with it.” I lean back against the workbench. “You were family to her. You should be there. Hell, you probably knew her better than any of us at the end. You were here with her every day.”

“Not every day.”

“More than us.”

She goes quiet, then looks out toward where you can just see the water through the trees. “You doing okay?” she asks, looking back at me. “With everything?”

The question surprises me. After days of polite avoidance, the genuine concern in her voice catches me off guard.

“Some days.” I look down at my hands. “I thought I’d be more prepared this time.

With my Dad, it was so sudden. The heart attack.

It hit me from nowhere. He just seemed so solid, you know?

Like nothing could ever happen to him. That grief felt like drowning.

But I thought this time would be different.

We had warning. Time to prepare.” I pause, trying to find the right words.

“Maybe I am handling it better. But it’s not easier like I thought it would be. ”

“Different kinds of hard,” Maren says, nodding slowly. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s still so strange. The world just keeps going even though it’s fundamentally different now.”

“When my parents died, I was furious at strangers for laughing,” she says, moving to sit on the windowsill, one foot on the floor, the other pulled up.

“How could anyone laugh when my entire world had just ended? Both of them, just erased in one car accident. I wanted to shake people, make them understand that everything was different now. That the world should stop spinning.”

I nod, remembering that same rage after Dad died. “The audacity of normalcy.”

“Exactly.” She picks at a splinter in the windowsill. “The weirdest thing now is I sometimes forget they’re gone. I’ll think ‘I should call Mom about this recipe’ or ‘Dad would love this song.’ Then I remember, and it’s like losing them all over again.”

“I think the hardest thing with Mom is that it feels like she started dying a long time ago,” I say, the words coming easier than expected.

“She had good days still, I know that from your stories, but she stopped remembering me consistently. The mom who knew my name, who remembered teaching me to ride a bike, who called every Sunday to check in. That person was already gone.”

Maren’s quiet, just listening. Not trying to fix it or make it better.

“But now she’s actually gone,” I continue. “No more visits where maybe she’ll have a good day. No more hoping she’ll suddenly remember. Just... nothing.”

“The finality,” she says softly.

“Yeah.” I look around at the sunroom walls, all these boards I’ve been replacing for a house that will be sold anyway. “Now I’m rebuilding her favorite room and she’ll never see it. Never sit here again.”

“The fixing helps though, doesn’t it?” Maren asks. “Having something to do with your hands. Something you can control.”

“Yeah. It does.” I run my hand along one of the new boards, feeling the grain. “Even if it’s pointless.”

“It’s not pointless. You’re taking care of something she loved. That matters.” She pauses, then says, “You know what sometimes still gets me?”

I shake my head.

“That now there’s no safety net. No parent to call when life goes sideways.

No one to ask for advice or approval. Just..

. nothing above us.” She laughs, but it’s hollow.

“I’m twenty-eight and I still don’t feel like a real adult sometimes.

Like I’m playing pretend at being a grown-up and everyone can tell. ”

She’s describing exactly what’s been gnawing at me since Mom died. This feeling of being untethered, unprotected. Except she’s been living with it for ten years.

“You were so young when you lost yours,” I say. “Seventeen. Both of them at once. I can’t imagine.”