Domestic Do-over Page 17

  Brandon was taking out his anger by banging floorboards into place on the first floor. There was something satisfying about the bounce of a rubber mallet off the edge of the board when it slid into place.

  Travis walked into the room. “If you bang on those any harder you’ll chip the sides.”

  Brandon sighed and stood up. “Did you need something?”

  Travis held up his hands. “No. I was just coming in to tell you that the camera crew wrapped for the day. I guess Erik got all the footage of you whacking at flooring that he wanted.”

  He’d gotten plenty of footage of Brandon and Travis bickering all day too. Brandon was fretting about his dilemma so much that he was taking it out on everyone, and Travis most of all.

  Couldn’t he see how great they’d be together? Couldn’t he see what potential this house had? No, of course not, because Brandon had never brought it up and they were having their romance in secret. And all of that was on Brandon.

  So maybe the person Brandon was most angry at was himself.

  He wanted to throw his rubber mallet at the newly painted wall, but he placed it on the floor instead.

  The day crew was working on the bathrooms upstairs. All of the flooring and tiles, except for the backordered kitchen backsplash tiles, had been delivered the day before. Brandon had volunteered to do these floors because he thought getting his hands on a project would help him feel better, but being alone in the room had left him mulling over his thoughts.

  Travis lingered.

  “Is there more?”

  “I’m debating about whether to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, that’s just it. My instinct is to apologize for pissing you off earlier, but I don’t think I really did anything wrong. We told you about the roof leak as soon as we discovered it, but it was out of our control.”

  “I still don’t understand why no one noticed it. You, Ismael, and the inspector we hired all agreed that the roof was sound.”

  “We were wrong. My working theory is that what we saw today is a new leak through a roof that was already compromised because it’s old. We thought replacing the roof was one of those cans we could kick down the road in order to keep the budget intact, but we were wrong about that. It happens.”

  Brandon nodded because Travis was right, but that didn’t soothe him at all. “What the hell am I supposed to do now? We’re over budget. Depending on when we can get the roofer here, we may go over schedule. My profit margin is diminishing by the day, and this is starting to look like an increasingly stupid investment. So now I’m left wondering if I should just do the minimum to get the house done and sold, take what I can for it, or to stick with my vision.”

  “I can’t make that decision for you.”

  “Why can’t you?” Brandon snapped. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. Just… what would you do if you were in my shoes?”

  Travis shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on. You have opinions about everything.”

  “It’s an absurd amount of money, Brandon. I don’t even know how to process it. If money was no object, I’d stick to the original design and fix the roof. But you’re worried about profits, so money is an issue. So I’d evaluate which things will affect the value of the house. Most of the compromises I’ve suggested will save you money without really compromising anything. Well, maybe the floor, but some buyers actually like carpet.”

  “And if this was your house? Your dream house.”

  Travis rubbed his head. He looked exhausted. “I wouldn’t put in carpet.”

  Brandon sighed.

  “I’m not in your shoes. It’s not my money. It has to be your call. I can’t be your substitute Kayla.”

  That remark hit Brandon like a gut punch. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Okay, first of all, keep your voice down.”

  Brandon pressed his lips together. Of course. The house was still full of people.

  “Second,” said Travis, “you told me yourself that you work better when you have someone to bounce ideas off of. I get that, but that’s not my role here. I’m not your cohost. I’m just the project manager.”

  “Come on, Travis. You’re not just the project manager.”

  “So in what capacity am I acting now? You asked my opinion, I gave it to you. But am I the project manager or the guy you’ve been hooking up with?”

  “Come on. You know you’re more than that.” Travis had to have felt how things were between them lately. Maybe they hadn’t been together very long, but they had a good thing. Didn’t they?

  “I also can’t be the one you pin everything on. My experience is in fixing houses, not selling them. If I give you a bad opinion, will you resent me? Because you know more about this shit than I do. Or are you just going to get angry and yell at me when you can’t make your own decisions?”

  “Trav, I….” But Brandon had no idea what to say.

  “I’m not trying to be difficult. But the lines are getting blurry here. I’m having a hard time sorting out how I’m supposed to behave around you, and if it’s different when the cameras are on us or when other people are around. And I’m starting to think it definitely is different in ways I’m not totally comfortable with.”

  “What are you saying?” Although Brandon already knew. He’d felt the same strain.

  “Nothing,” said Travis softly, stepping closer to Brandon. “There’s no easy answer here. If we keep pretending that nothing happens after hours, we have to compartmentalize better during the day. And I gotta say, that feels a lot like going back in the closet.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “This isn’t the place to hash all this out.” Travis took a step away. “I just think we need to think some things through.”

  “Yeah.” But Brandon didn’t like the sound of that. Did Travis want to break up? Brandon hadn’t seen that coming. They’d argued today, but things had felt so good between them lately. Did Travis not understand that Brandon would live his life out in the open, in the light of day, for the first time in his life, if only he could? He wanted that so fucking badly, but given his position, it wasn’t an option. Failure was not an option. If anyone found out about their affair, the show would get canceled.

  He never should have taken this job. He’d quit tomorrow if it was the only thing he could do to keep Travis.

  They stood there staring at each other for a moment.

  “I should go check on the bathrooms,” Travis said.

  Brandon nodded and knelt back on the floor, ready to pound some more boards into place.

  Erik walked into the room then. “Crew’s gone for the day,” he said. “I’m gonna head out too. You guys good? I heard the yelling.”

  “Yeah,” said Brandon. “Difference of opinion.”

  Travis paused in the kitchen doorway and watched Erik leave. Then he sighed and left the room.

  Chapter Seventeen

  BRANDON WASN’T particularly looking forward to the fight with Travis that he knew was coming. Travis had followed Brandon home but had been acting surly all evening. They’d had a dinner of miscellaneous leftovers from Brandon’s fridge mostly in silence.

  As Travis gathered up the dishes and put them in the sink, Brandon said, “What would you have me do?”

  “About?”

  “Us, Travis. What should we do about us? Because here’s what I know—I like spending time with you. I can see us having a relationship for a long time. I feel things for you I’ve never felt for anybody. But I don’t think keeping things secret is really working. But what alternative do we have? Say we go public? Then my show gets canceled.”

  “Why do you think the show would get canceled?”

  “The Restoration Channel is very heterosexual.”

  “Is it? Because I’ve seen episodes of other shows in which there are same-sex couples who are clients. That show with the brothers who make over houses? They renovated a house for a gay couple on an ep
isode I saw just last week.”

  “Since when do you watch the Restoration Channel?”

  Travis shrugged. “I can’t sleep sometimes, and they reair all their prime-time shows at weird times of the morning.”

  “You know that we’ve spent nearly every night together since we started sleeping together?”

  “You sleep really deeply.”

  Brandon sighed and rubbed his forehead. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. “So, what? We go public and brace ourselves for the consequences? I think it will be bad, Travis.”

  “Maybe you’re overestimating their homophobia. That show that got canceled, the one with the gay couple? That was Garrett Harwood’s predecessor’s decision, wasn’t it? Maybe Harwood isn’t so close-minded.”

  Brandon looked at Travis. Was he serious? “Well, is that what you want? To go public? Because I can already see the tabloid headlines.”

  Travis sat back down in the chair, hard. “You think our relationship would hit the tabloids? Are you really that famous?”

  “My divorce was all over them. It’s not fun having your dirty laundry aired like that. Even if the truth is not what people think. Some of those reporters are piranhas.”

  Travis looked startled. This was clearly not an idea that had entered his mind. “Oh God. That would be a scandal, wouldn’t it? If we go public, we go public.”

  “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

  “What a goddamn mess.” Travis put his face in his hands.

  Brandon didn’t know what choice, if any, they had. When they’d first started hooking up, it had been fun and sexy, but now Brandon was planning a future for himself and Travis—even if Travis didn’t know about that yet—and he didn’t want to break up. But they were in a bind, weren’t they?

  Before he could say anything, his phone rang. Brandon picked it up and looked at the caller ID. “It’s Virginia. I better take this.”

  “Sure.”

  Brandon answered the phone.

  “Hi, Brandon, glad I caught you.”

  “Hello, Virginia. How are you?”

  “I was wondering if I could see you in my office at Restoration HQ first thing in the morning.”

  Brandon already knew that something was wrong, and his first thought was that somehow word about him and Travis had gotten to Virginia. But how? Ismael? That seemed unlikely; Virginia and Ismael had barely ever spoken to each other.

  Or… Erik had left after Travis and Brandon had argued, hadn’t he? How long had Erik been listening before he’d walked into the living room earlier that evening?

  Shit.

  “I can do that,” he said. “Can I have a hint about what we need to discuss?”

  “I think it’s better to talk about it in the office. I know you’ve got things to film at the house tomorrow. So let’s say nine o’clock?”

  “All right. I’ll see you then.”

  When Brandon hung up, Travis was looking at him expectantly.

  “Virginia wants me to come to the Restoration offices for a meeting tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay.”

  “She wouldn’t say what it’s about. There’s an issue. And I think it’s that she knows about us.”

  “How can she… oh no. Erik was probably eavesdropping today.”

  “That’s my best guess.” It was like the realization of all of Brandon’s nightmares. “Holy shit. If she cancels the show…. I mean, I’ve invested so much money into this house already, so much time, and what was it all for?”

  “Maybe it’s about the Jessica Benton house.”

  Brandon had nearly forgotten about that. He’d met with Jessica the week before, and they’d had a nice talk about her vision for the house she’d just bought. Starting Monday, he and Travis would have to split their time between Jessica’s house and the Argyle Road house, and some of the crew would be moving now that the bulk of the work was nearly done. Travis was scheduled to do an inspection and put together an estimate for the renovation with Jessica’s input in a few days.

  Was it possible that they’d gotten to a place where their relationship just wasn’t tenable anymore? Because now Brandon needed the show almost as much as he needed Travis in his life, but both….

  “It’s probably not a good idea to make any decisions until you hear what Virginia has to say,” said Travis.

  TRAVIS FELT like that phone call had let him off the hook.

  Because what did he really want here?

  It was as if he’d been floating for the past few weeks. The time he’d spent with Brandon was great. He enjoyed fighting over house design. He loved chatting over takeout meals. He’d come to Brandon’s tonight without even thinking about it much. They did have something real, but Travis was growing frustrated with the secrecy.

  The secrecy might have been their best defense mechanism, though.

  Travis hadn’t thought about the tabloid aspect of it all. In the scheme of things, Brandon was niche famous. Restoration Channel viewers knew Brandon, but did anyone else? Did it matter? Tabloid writers probably knew who Travis was now, so if they got wind of the fact that he was with Brandon—this nice man who used to be married to a woman who broke his heart by cheating on him, and who had found solace in the arms of a man—there would be hell to pay.

  He’d thought he could put all of this in different boxes. That he could do his job on set and be with Brandon after hours and it wouldn’t matter. But now it mattered. The lines were blurry. Separating the arguments they had about roofs and paint from how he felt about Brandon was getting harder. He cared for Brandon, wanted things to work out, but this was fucking hard.

  So what would happen if Virginia did find out? The network had made too much of a financial investment to just cancel the show, at least in Travis’s mind. Travis had thought that just being a couple as they worked on these houses would be fun, would make everything easier, but somehow, despite the persistent, pesky presence of cameras like mosquitos on a hot day, he’d pushed the fact that they were about to be on television out of his mind. It hadn’t occurred to him that being a couple at the house meant being a couple on the show. And anyone invested in Brandon’s divorce would likely have a lot to say about the fact that Brandon was with a man now.

  “You’re right,” Brandon said, scratching his chin. “She might just want to talk about Jessica Benton, although if that was the case, why couldn’t she just tell me that over the phone?”

  Brandon pushed away from the table and stood up. He paced back and forth across the kitchen. “If they cancel the show, well, we’ll finish the house. I’ll pay everyone’s salaries, and then we’ll sell the damn thing and be rid of it.”

  “That’s generous of you.”

  “I thought I loved this house. But it’s only brought me problems.” Brandon stopped pacing and leaned against the counter. “That house, the first time I walked it, totally charmed me. And I’ll admit, in my crazier moments, I think about buying out the Restoration Channel’s share and keeping the house. But fuck… this house. Thousands of dollars in the hole, I might not make that money back, and now it might be for nothing because I was thinking with my dick instead of my head.”

  “Not for nothing, Brandon.” Travis stood.

  But wait, Brandon was thinking about keeping the house?

  Travis pushed that aside. He’d deal with it later. He walked toward Brandon. “Not for nothing. We did have some fun, didn’t we? And we met each other. That never would have happened if it hadn’t been for the show.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I know we started off with just a physical thing because we were attracted to each other. I understand, even, that part of why we argued so much in the beginning of the project was because we were both sexually frustrated. But the more time we spend together, the more I kinda like you.”

  Brandon smiled. “I kinda like you too.”

  Travis didn’t want to break up—that was the bottom line. It would be taking the easy way out. They end th
ings now, go back to just being work colleagues, and Travis got to keep his job. Brandon could go into the meeting with Virginia, tell her there was nothing between him and Travis, and he wouldn’t be lying. But was that what Travis wanted?

  No. They were too enmeshed. He didn’t think it would be possible to just go back to working as though there was nothing between them. And Travis wanted to work with Brandon and be with him. They were good together.

  Travis stepped closer to Brandon. “I’ve never been the best at expressing my feelings.”

  “You express a lot.”

  “About tiles and flooring, sure. About anything deeper than that? About what’s in my heart? I have a hard time even thinking about that sometimes. But the truth is that you got under my skin. I didn’t even think hard about coming home with you tonight because I want to spend as much time with you as possible. And I want for us to be able to have a fucking conversation at the house without feeling paranoid that we’re about to be discovered. But shit, I don’t need anyone digging into my personal life.”

  “You were right. Let’s not make any decisions until I know what Virginia has to say.”

  “Brandon, hear what I’m telling you. I don’t like doing this, so you may never hear it again.”

  There was that stupid little half smile on Brandon’s face, the expression he made when he knew he had one over on Travis. Travis wanted to kiss that expression off Brandon’s face.

  Which told him a lot about how he felt.

  “We can’t just go back to how it was,” Travis said. “I am feeling some things for you. I want for us to be together, but… I think this is about to get a whole lot more challenging.”

  Brandon nodded. “I don’t want to think about it.”