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“Fine.” Derek lobbed the phone at him.
Dylan’s non-bloody hand caught it and swiped on the flashlight function. It took him a second to juggle the glasses lens, the phone, and the bloody tissues, but he saw it. “Shoot.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It wasn’t just—” Dylan sighed, relief mixing with dread. The flood probably hadn’t helped… Who was he kidding, the kitchen flood was almost certainly the catalyst for the exact timing of the disaster, but the damage he was seeing in the weightbearing beam wasn’t from this flood. Nope. This was long-term rot, maybe from a small leak over time that ruined the subfloor. So it wasn’t completely his fault. Not that those facts would matter if his family found out about this. His family really couldn’t find out about causing the flood. “So… uh… Do you own this unit?” Dylan offered the phone back.
“Yeah.” Derek’s black eyebrows knit together. “Why?”
“I need a better look, but see there”—Dylan pointed to the rotted joist—“I think there’s an underlying water problem and a resulting structural problem that’s been here a while between the two units. I’m guessing it’s a failed plumbing joint, but I need more light and a better angle.” He scanned along the intact ceiling and wall and saw a very subtle amount of bubbling.
Derek’s eyes darkened as he muttered an oath. The dog snuffled against Derek’s leg and leaned on his strong thighs. The weight of that big head in a crisis seemed like it could be comforting, if you knew the animal wasn’t going to eat you.
“You still flooded the kitchen, right? I’ve heard dripping all night. It made it impossible to go to sleep. Now this problem just appears? Seems a bit coincidental for it to make your screwup not what caused this mess.” Derek winced like he didn’t mean to imply Dylan was a liar. Or maybe he didn’t mean the accusation to sound as harsh as it did.
It didn’t make it better.
Dylan was used to screwing up. Here was just one more person who thought Dylan was an idiot. And possibly a liar.
“You’re right that the water issue tonight didn’t help, but that… that’s been rotting for a long time.” Dylan rubbed his temples, weighing the mental and actual cost of his uncle and family finding out that he absolutely had done something incredibly stupid here. “Look. My dad’s a general contractor. I grew up working for him every single summer and after school. I’ve renovated an entire house that was in much worse shape than this. I know this shit.” God, Dylan’s head hurt. He rubbed at a spot in the center of his forehead.
Derek’s eyes followed his movements with an air of admittedly justifiable skepticism.
“That floor was a ticking time bomb, and I’m guessing the plumbing problem is between the two apartments.” Dylan squared his aching shoulders. “The intake for my uncle’s apartment is on the other side and I’ve already had his plumbing checked… so I think it might be…”
“A problem with the plumbing for my unit?” Derek’s shoulders slumped.
Dylan nodded.
His uncle couldn’t handle this. This entire situation was supposed to take stress off his uncle. If they found out about the flood, the family would just assume the entire thing was a typical Dylan screwup. His uncle also didn’t have a bunch of money for a deductible with the other bills piling up. He probably wouldn’t let Dylan pay for it once he found out the extent of the problem. Especially given that the problem had been present for a while. That massive tail thwacked Dylan in the leg again, interrupting his thoughts. Derek’s gaze was fixed on the bed. If the layouts of the two apartments were similar but reversed, this unit was likely also a one-bedroom unit, meaning he was probably wondering where the hell he was going to sleep tonight. Dylan couldn’t blame him. His own brain felt as soggy as his jeans. Goose bumps prickled the back of his neck. Christ, he wished he was wearing a goddamn shirt.
If Derek didn’t want people to know about the dog, and Dylan didn’t want people to find out about the flood…
In that second, Dylan made up his mind to do something really, really stupid. “What if I had another idea?”
Chapter 3
“You’re offering to pay for everything and do the labor yourself,” Derek repeated while scratching behind Gus’s ears.
“Yeah.”
Derek was good in a crisis. He could calm a room of screaming people during a cardiac arrest at work. Just a few hours before Dylan Gallagher crashed through his ceiling, he’d calmed his panicked mother and a collection of her shrieking Bible study friends while at the same time convincing a humane wildlife relocation specialist to come remove a very hyperactive family of bats from his mother’s attic after business hours. She forced Derek to go home before the wildlife expert even got there since he had to get up even earlier than usual for his shift tomorrow. He was in bed barely fifteen minutes when the persistent dripping began.
So no. Derek was not sleeping. And he was not calm. He was awake and being a dick to the guy who could have just broken his neck falling through a ceiling. His ceiling, yes. But still. He’d lost it on the guy. Maybe it was because his heart was still thumping from those seconds he thought Gus had been hurt and that was why he couldn’t process what Gallagher was saying.
“So…?” Gallagher shifted his weight.
“Why? What’s in it for you?”
“Uh…” Gallagher’s voice was still dazed. “It’s complicated. I just want to.”
If this had been the first time Derek had seen Gallagher be absentminded, he might have been more concerned that the shirtless, possibly concussed man in front of him wasn’t making sense.
“Again, why?”
“A lot of reasons.” Gallagher shrugged, wincing as he moved. Bruised ribs? “The plumbing work might be more complex, but I can call someone for that. I’ll do the drywall repair and even repaint your bedroom. If we can keep the extent of the structural damage from my uncle.”
“How do I know you actually know what you’re doing?” While nothing about his interactions with Gallagher inspired faith in his competence, Derek also had a very specific and incredibly personal reason to think Dylan Gallagher was an inconsiderate, self-involved ass.