Freedom is a funny thing.

You fight for it. Defend it. Wrap your whole life around, never giving it up—until you wake up one morning and realize notmitting to a rtionship doesn’t feel like freedom anymore.

It feels like being motherfucking alone.

It had been three months since she let me go because I couldn’t be who she wanted me to be.

Ny-some days since I had a good night’s sleep.

Over twenty-one hundred hours and then some since I gotid.

Was it any surprise that I was in a fucked-up mood?

I parked my truck on Chartres Street, just off Ursulines, the summer morning heat already pressing down like a wet towel.

My crew was unloading lumber, swearing in rhythm. Someone had cranked up the radio to WWOZ, letting old-school brass fill the air between hammer strikes and table saws.

We were restoring a Creole townhouse from 1838. Three stories, wrought-iron balcony, brick walls thick enough to withstand damn near anything except time and termites.

It had weathered two fires, a hundred hurricanes, and five separate owners who’d all loved it a little less than the one before.

Now, it was mine. Or at least, mine to bring back to life.

“Boss.” Delphi, my site foreman, nodded as he handed me the morning’s inspection log. “Wiring passed. Framing’s next.”

“Good.” I slung my duffel on one shoulder and began to flip through the screen of the tablet. “We’ll need to get the city out here for a visual on the joists before we close the ceiling.” I looked up at the exposed beams—beautiful, old cypress, worn and gray but still strong. “These might be original. If they are, we’re preserving them.”

Delphi smirked. “You’re the only guy I know who gets romantic about wood.”

“That’s because?—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Delphi groaned, cutting me off. “The wood tells the truth,” he added, doing a terrible impression of me, somewhere between a cowboy and a history professor.

Delphi and I had worked together for over a decade now, and he’d been with me since I started Walker Construction nearly eight years ago. He was steady, good at his job, and had no clue when to shut the hell up.

As a restorer, working in New Orleans was an honor and a gift. It also paid damn well.

We didn’t just build—we brought history back so it could live with us longer, so future generations could respect it as it was meant to be.

Restoring buildings here wasn’t just about wood and mortar—it was about memory, and these constructions had been rebuilt and restored through the years, tempered, literally, in fire.

The Quarter had burned down twice. First in 1788 and then again in 1794.

The second fire took out over 200 buildings, and after that, the Spanish rewrote the rules. y tile roofs reced thatch, courtyards were brought inward, and ironwork became the signature that people wouldter call French, even though they were Spanish with a Haitian touch.

The townhouse we’d been contracted to restore had Spanish walls and French bones, with American mistakesyered on top. Vinyl tile over heart pine. Drywall hiding hand-painted ster. Modern windows where arched casements used to live.

My job was to strip away the bullshit and find what was worth saving. And if we did it right, you wouldn’t even know we’d been here. It would feel like stepping back in time, but with modern plumbing and electricity.

I walked into the house, Delphi behind me.

In the parlor, we’d ripped up decades of garbage to reveal an old cypress floor, stained and scuffed, but intact.

I knelt, running my palm along one of the long boards, my fingers finding the burn mark near the edge—probably from a coal ember, not a cigarette.

“I’ll get overalls on, and we can get started on the windows,” I told Delphi and walked into the bathroom.

I opened the duffel and pulled out my dungarees. I was looking for my dust mask when my fingers touched…silk.

I froze. I knew exactly what it was even before I pulled it out, could see it in my mind’s eye.

A silk robe. Deep plum. Soft as sin.

Naomi’s.

It had gotten mixed into myundry thest time she stayed over. I’d meant to bring it back but forgot. Then things went south, and I shoved it in a drawer to avoid thinking about it.

Apparently, it had found its way into my duffel this morning.

I held it in my hands, suddenly winded.

The smell of her—orange blossoms and something sweeter underneath—rose up from the fabric like a fucking ghost.

I stood too quickly, blinking against the memory, clutching the silk.

Memories assailed me.

Naomi in that robe, hair damp from the shower, teasing me as she leaned against my kitchen counter and stole thest of the café auit I’d made for myself.

“You drink it so sweet,” sheined, looking so damn cute.

Iughed. Pulled her into my arms. Kissed her neck because it made her sigh in that way that made me forget everything else.

Goddamn it.

“Hey, Gage?” Delphi out. “Got a question about the ster molding—looks like the original frieze under the paint.”

I tucked the robe back into the duffel bag and shoved it under the sink like it hadn’t just sucker-punched me.

“Give me a fucking minute, will ya?”

I stormed out, angry that she still affected me—horrified that I’d been sniffing her robe.

What was I? A fucking teenager?

“Here.” Delphi pointed to the molding he wanted me to inspect.

He was right, it was indeed original—Spanish Colonial, with hints of Baroque curl and edge. I traced it with my thumb and nodded.

“Preserve it. Tell Matty to use hand tools only—no sanding block,” I instructed.

“Copy that.”

As Delphi walked off, I stood there a minute longer, letting my fingers rest on the edge of the detail. Naomi would’ve loved this. She always got a dreamy look when I talked about the buildings, like she could see what I saw.

She’d ask questions, thoughtful ones—about airflow, about paintyers, about how long it would take to strip away the decades and reveal what once was.

I never had to dumb anything down for her. She wasn’t just smart—she listened.

No other woman gave a shit except thinking that I looked good in overalls and a toolbelt. I’d heard pretty much every blue-cor construction joke and innuendo there was. But they didn’t care about the nuance of what I did.

But Naomi cared about the details.

We worked through the morning and then broke for lunch, after which we went right back to it. At the end of the day, sweating like a pig and feeling even more ornery than I had when I came in, I checked my phone.

Hoping against hope!

It had be a foolish habit.

There was a time when I didn’t even bother reading messages from women I dated—let alone the ones I left behind. And now I was the one waiting.

Waiting for a woman who’d told me to take my hat and get gone to reach out.

Waiting for some kind of sign—anything—that said I wasn’t alone in this.

That she was hurting, too.

How the mighty had fallen!

No texts. No calls.

Not from her, not from anyone I actually wanted to hear from.

I opened her contact. Stared at it.

Naomi – Royal Trouble with a picture of a pair of silky panties.

She’d saved it for me when I asked her to give me her number. I’d almost deleted it after our first fight when she’d stormed away and told me I needed to stop being such a “bourbon-soaked dickhead” because I’d behaved like a possessive ass.

It had shaken me, hard, that I didn’t like seeing her with another man. I had never had that problem with any other woman before.

I’d fucked her until we both forgot we were mad.

I slid the phone back into my pocket and looked up at the townhouse.

A building like this didn’t get restored by rushing. You had to peel it back, piece by piece,yer byyer, until the truth showed itself.

Maybe rtionships were the same way?

Maybe I’d thrown something away before I even understood what it was.

I shook my head at that thought.

Hell no!

I wasn’t signing up for that kind of heartache. Once was enough. I’d rather be alone, jack off to memories of Naomi, than start something that would end up with me in the kind of pain that I never wanted to experience again.