The Grumpy Landlord, page 26
"Don't push your luck."
"I'm pushing it. I want a flower girl."
She winked and walked away, heading toward the dance floor with a determination that terrified me.
I watched her go.
Then I felt a tug on my hand.
Willow.
She had snuck up on me.
"You look serious," she said.
"I was contemplating the terrifying efficiency of my sister."
"She's a force of nature. We should probably just surrender."
"I already have."
Willow laced her fingers through mine.
"Come with me," she said.
"Where? The party is here."
"I need a minute. My social battery is at five percent."
She led me away from the patio. We walked around the side of the house, toward the renovated guest house.
The windows were dark, reflecting the fairy lights from the yard.
We stepped inside.
The smell was different now. It didn't smell like a bachelor pad or a temporary shelter. It smelled of sawdust and clay and oil paint.
We had gutted it. Just like we planned.
The walls were gone. It was one big, open space. My workbench stood in one corner, surrounded by tools that were actually being used. Willow’s easels dominated the center, bathed in the moonlight streaming through the skylights we had installed.
It was a shared space. A shared life.
Willow didn't turn on the overhead lights. She walked to the worktable and clicked on a small lamp.
The golden glow illuminated a canvas she had been working on. It was covered, draped in a cloth.
"I have a gift," she said.
"It's not my birthday."
"It's an engagement gift. Since you gave me a ring made of actual gold and I gave you a washer."
I looked at the titanium band on my finger.
"I like the washer. I kept it."
"I know. It's on your keychain. It's adorable."
She stood in front of the covered canvas. She looked nervous. She was biting her lip, twisting the ring on her finger.
"Willow?"
"Okay. So. We talked about the future."
"We did."
"And we talked about... expanding."
"The studio?"
"The family."
The air rushed out of my lungs.
"Yeah. We talked about it. Someday."
"Someday," she repeated.
She reached for the cloth covering the canvas.
"I painted this," she said. "It's... it's a vision board. Sort of."
She pulled the cloth away.
I stared at the painting.
It wasn't an abstract. It wasn't a landscape.
It was a portrait.
It was us.
Me, sitting on the porch swing. Willow, leaning against my shoulder.
But there was something else.
In the painting, I was holding something. A small bundle. Wrapped in a blanket that looked like a kaleidoscope of colors.
And Willow... painted-Willow... had a hand resting on a small, rounded curve of her stomach.
The air left my lungs.
I looked from the painting to Willow.
She wasn't looking at the canvas. She was looking at me. Her eyes were huge, shimmering with tears and a hope so bright it hurt to look at.
"Willow," I whispered. My voice didn't work.
She reached into the pocket of her dress.
She pulled out a small object.
She took my hand. She turned it palm up.
She placed the object in my hand.
It was soft. Knitted. Yellow.
A baby bootie.
Just one. Tiny. Impossible.
I stared at it.
It looked ridiculous in my large, scarred hand. It looked like the most important thing I had ever held.
"Someday came early," she whispered.
I looked at her stomach. The dress flowed over it, hiding everything.
"Are you..."
"Yes."
"How?"
She laughed, a wet, choked sound.
"Well, Doctor, when two people love each other very much and spend a lot of time in a maintenance closet..."
"Willow."
"I took a test," she said. "This morning. While you were making coffee. Three tests, actually. Just to be sure."
She stepped closer. She placed her hands on my chest, right over my heart.
"You're going to be a dad, Ethan."
The music faded. The crowd blurred. The only thing in focus was the woman in the sunrise dress.
The lights blurred.
A dad.
Me.
The man who broke things. The man who saw ghosts.
"I'm scared," I admitted. The confession was involuntary.
"I know," she said. "Me too. I don't know how to be a mom. I can barely keep a cactus alive."
She looked up at me.
"But we have a frame. And we have color. And we have each other."
She squeezed my shirt.
"You're not going to break this, Ethan. You're going to build it. You're going to teach this kid how to build things. How to be strong."
I looked at the bootie in my hand.
I closed my fingers around it. Gently. Protective.
"And you'll teach them how to be loud," I said. "How to see the gold."
"Exactly."
I dropped to my knees.
I pressed my face against her stomach. The silk of her dress was cool against my cheek. Underneath, her skin was warm.
I couldn't feel anything yet. No kicks. No movement.
But I knew.
There was life there. A new heartbeat. A new noise to drown out the silence.
"Hi," I whispered against her belly.
Willow’s hands came down to stroke my hair.
"Hi," she answered for the baby.
I stayed there for a long time. Just breathing. Just accepting that the man who thought his life was over was actually just starting the second act.
"We have to tell Sadie," I said, lifting my head.
Willow grinned.
"She's going to scream. It might shatter the windows."
"Let her."
I stood up. I tucked the yellow bootie into my pocket, right next to my heart.
I looked at the painting again. The family portrait.
"It needs one thing," I said.
"What?"
"A cat. You forgot Charlie."
"He wouldn't sit still for the reference photo."
I laughed. I pulled her into my arms.
"I love you," I said. "I love you and the chaos and the mess."
"I love you too, Frame."
We walked out of the studio. We walked back toward the lights and the music.
Back to our family.
I paused at the edge of the light. I looked at the house. My fortress.
It wasn't a fortress anymore. It was a home.
And it was about to get a lot louder.
Willow raised an eyebrow playfully, squeezing my hand.
"Ready?"
"Always."
We stepped into the light.
Mural of Us
Willow
The sun tasted like lemon drops and victory.
I stood on the makeshift stage in the center of the town square, squinting against the bright, golden light of late September. The air was crisp, smelling of turning leaves, roasted coffee from the cafe across the street, and the faint, lingering scent of aerosol varnish.
A crowd had gathered. A sea of familiar faces.
Sadie was in the front row, holding a sleeping bundle wrapped in a kaleidoscope blanket—my nephew, or niece, or... no, definitely my son. Leo. He was three months old and had already mastered his father’s brooding scowl.
Riley was next to her, wearing sunglasses that cost more than my first car and looking bored in a way that meant they were secretly thrilled.
And standing right beside me, his shoulder brushing mine, was the man who made the ground stop spinning.
Ethan.
He wasn't wearing scrubs. He wasn't wearing the paint-splattered jeans that had become his uniform on weekends. He was wearing a suit. Charcoal gray. Tailored.
The charcoal suit fit him like a second skin. It sharpened his edges.
"You're vibrating again," he murmured, his voice a low rumble that I felt in the soles of my feet.
"I'm nervous," I whispered back, clutching the microphone stand. "There are so many people. What if they hate it? What if it's too loud? What if I got the perspective wrong on the clock tower?"
"The perspective is perfect."
He reached out. His hand, large and warm and scarred, covered mine on the stand.
"And even if it wasn't," he said, "it's real. That's all that matters."
I looked up at him.
His eyes were the color of the ocean after a storm—clear, deep, and calm. The shadows that used to live there, the ghosts of the desert and the operating room, were gone. Or maybe they weren't gone, but they had stopped screaming. They were quiet now. Resting.
"You're biased," I said. "You sleep with the artist."
"I am the artist's frame," he corrected. A small smile played on his lips. "I have a vested interest in the structural integrity of the piece."
"Dr. Rourke, always talking about structure."
"Someone has to keep you from floating away."
"Is it time?"
Sadie waved from the front row. She tapped her wrist pointedly.
"It's time," Ethan said.
I took a deep breath. I filled my lungs with the cool autumn air.
I leaned into the microphone.
"Hi," I said.
The feedback whined for a second, then settled. The crowd quieted.
"Thank you all for coming," I started. My voice shook a little, then steadied. "A year ago, I stood in this square and I felt like... well, I felt like a mistake. I felt like I was too messy, too loud, too chaotic for this town."
I looked at Marian DeWitt, standing way in the back. She wasn't smiling, but she wasn't scowling either. She just looked... present. We had reached a truce. A cold, polite truce built on the fact that I was now the city's most commissioned artist and she had been quietly reinstated to the board on a probationary basis.
I looked back at Ethan.
"I thought art was about making things beautiful," I said. "I thought it was about covering up the cracks. Hiding the damage."
I reached out and took Ethan’s hand. He squeezed my fingers.
"But then I met someone who taught me that the cracks are the point," I said. "That the broken places are where the light gets in. That you don't paint over the scars. You paint them gold."
A murmur went through the crowd.
"This mural," I gestured to the massive, canvas-draped wall behind us, "is for everyone who has ever felt broken. For everyone who has ever felt like they didn't fit. It's for the noise in our heads and the peace we find in each other's hands."
I looked at Riley. At Sadie. At Leo, sleeping soundly in the chaos.
"It's called City of Hope," I said. "But really, it's just a story about how we put ourselves back together."
I nodded to Ethan.
"Ready?"
"Always," he said.
We walked to the ropes hanging at the side of the tarp.
"On three," he whispered.
"One."
"Two."
"Three."
We pulled.
The heavy canvas rippled. It slid down, pooling on the pavement with a heavy whoosh.
The crowd gasped.
The wall—the entire side of the historic library—exploded with color.
It wasn't just a picture of the town. It was a symphony.
The buildings were there, rendered in my signature chaotic style, leaning and twisting like dancers. The streets were rivers of light. The sky was a swirl of violet and tangerine.
But weaving through it all, connecting every building, every tree, every figure, were veins of metallic gold.
Kintsugi lines.
They highlighted the cracks in the pavement. They traced the outlines of the people. They turned the imperfections of the city into a glowing, interconnected web of resilience.
And in the center, unobtrusive but essential, was a figure. A man sitting on a bench, reading a book. He was painted in shades of slate and steel, solid and unmoving amidst the swirling colors.
And sitting on his shoulder was a bright orange cat.
"It's beautiful," someone whispered in the front row.
Then the applause started.
It wasn't polite applause. It was a roar. It washed over us, loud and messy and wonderful.
I didn't look at the crowd.
I looked at Ethan.
He was staring at the mural. He was staring at the figure on the bench.
He turned to me. His eyes were wet.
"You put Charlie in it," he said, his voice thick.
"He insisted. He threatened to shred the curtains if I didn't."
Ethan laughed. It was a free, open sound.
"And the man..."
"He's the anchor," I said. "He's the reason the colors don't fly away."
Ethan grabbed me.
He didn't care about the Mayor standing three feet away. He didn't care about the cameras.
He pulled me into his arms and kissed me.
His mouth tasted of coffee and the autumn air. It pressed against mine with the weight of every fight, every painting, every night spent holding back the dark. It tasted of paint fights in the kitchen and quiet nights holding hands in the dark. It tasted of the fear we had overcome and the family we had built.
"I love you," he whispered against my mouth.
"I love you too."
"Let's go home," he said. "Leo is waking up, and I think I left the stove on."
"You never leave the stove on. You're efficient."
"I'm distracted," he corrected. "By you."
We walked down the steps.
Sadie handed me the baby. Leo blinked up at me, his blue eyes wide.
"Did we do good, bug?" I cooed.
He yawned.
"He's impressed," Ethan translated.
We walked through the crowd. Hands touched my shoulders. Voices congratulated us. The town that had once whispered about my eviction was now celebrating my triumph.
But the real triumph was walking beside me.
We reached the truck. It was parked illegally, of course.
Ethan opened the door for me.
I climbed in, settling Leo into his car seat.
Ethan got in the driver's side. He started the engine.
He didn't drive away immediately.
He looked at me.
"You know," he said, "we have that empty wall in the nursery."
"The gray one?"
"Yeah."
"I was thinking," he said, "maybe we need some clouds. Or dragons. Or..."
"Or chaos?" I suggested.
He smiled.
"Yeah. Chaos."
He put the truck in gear. He reached over and took my hand, lacing our fingers together.
The ring on my finger—the diamond he had eventually bought me, set in a band of hammered gold—clicked against his wedding band.
We drove out of the square, past the mural that glowed in the sunlight.
I looked at him. My husband. My partner. The man who had learned to love the noise because it meant he wasn't alone.
He was steady. He was solid. He was the line that defined the shape.
He's the frame to my chaos, and I'll paint our story forever.
THE END
Afterword
Thank you for reading The Grumpy Landlord.
Reviews are the lifeblood of any author. Without you, I couldn’t keep bringing your favorite romance novels to life. Would you be willing to leave a quick review? It would mean so much to me and help others find their next binge read.
Thank you!
Anna May Grace
About The Author
Anna May Grace
Anna May Grace is the romance novel Pen Name of Grace Ann Hansen.
Grace writes typically about identity, resilience, and personal transformation. But romance is fun, so why not?
Even though she writes romance novels for straight girls, her work is informed by her journey as a queer woman, and her direct, personal style gives a voice to marginalized and love-sick characters navigating societal challenges and their own demons.
She draws on a diverse background in IT and healthcare, as well as 36 years in a regional rock band. A mother and grandmother, Grace is a passionate advocate for the transgender community. She uses her platform as an author and public speaker to craft narratives of hope that foster understanding. Grace works in Healthcare IT and lives in the Midwest with her wife of 30 years, in a red state, because that's where all their family lives.
Anna May Grace, The Grumpy Landlord
