Page 171 of Small Town, Big Storm

Rain doesn’t respond.

Just keepstap.Tap.Tapping.

Then stands back, hammer falling to his side, and flips me off.“I’m trying to do something nice,asshole.”

I snort and move over to him.“I thought Harrisons don’t donice.”

He rolls his eyes, jerks his thumb to the side.“Shut up and look.”

I look, and feel…

God, I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to this.

God, I hope Idon’t.

Because if I do, if it starts to become second nature, old hat, whatever the fuck idiom that properly fits, I won’t appreciate it as much as I do in this moment.

Rain moves to stand beside me, turns to look at the wall.

At what he just hung on the wall.

It’s a framed eight-by-ten of me, Poppy, and Holly at the ice rink.Holly had just come off the ice after her hockey lesson and Poppy is kneeling down, having undone her helmet and setting it on the floor.They’re smiling at each other and I’m watching them with an expression that’s full of?—

Well, it’s love.

Right there in full color.

“Rain,” I whisper.

“I know,” he whispers back.

I sit in that feeling for a few more seconds…then I let a bit of theHarrisonout.

The Harrison I want to be, anyway.

“You download that shit from the Cedar Hollow Gazette?”

“Asshole,” he mutters.

My lips quirk.“That means yes.”

He just rolls his eyes again.

I shove his shoulder.“Next one needs to have you in it.”

His inhale is sharp, short, and he’s silent for a long time.But his throat is working and his blue eyes are full of emotion.

I give him space for it, turn back and stare at the photo, committing it to memory.

Then I look around the space, committing all that my brother gave me here to memory too—wide windows that let in lots of sunshine, large rooms cleared of liquor bottles and cardboard boxes full of shit.Moldy carpet gone, rage-filled holes from alcoholic fists patched.And inside the walls, the electrical and plumbing has been inspected, replaced where needed.

Across the hall, we installed the last of the appliances in the kitchen and hooked up the light fixture my dad definitely would have hated.

The bathrooms are finished, along with the guest bedroom downstairs and the three upstairs.

Even the office is completely redone.

It’salldone.