Fakers
fakers
a novel
Meg Collett
Copyright 2014 Meg
Collett
Smashwords Edition
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table of contents
dedication
To those who struggle with a
darkness.
one
T
he Jeep ran over the
curb and came to an indelicate stop, rattling the assortment of
surfboards strapped to the top and leaving the large U-Haul trailer
poking slightly into the road. Neighbors walking on the quaint road
slowed to catch a glimpse of the new owner of 22 Gardenia Street;
others simply peered out of their kitchen windows and waited with
pursed lips. Finally, the car’s door opened and a leggy blonde
sprung out.
Kyra Aberdeen whipped off her aviator
sunglasses and peered up at her new digs.
“I own a freakin’
house
,” she said,
her voice full of wonder. She’d never bought a home before, let
alone a house that needed a bulldozer more than a fresh coat of
paint.
It was a tall Victorian with turrets and
crooked shutters that had paint peeling off in clumps. Some windows
were boarded up, and some were just broken shards. Thin, scrappy
trees grew along the base of the house, uprooting the foundation
and making the poor house look like it had hairy legs. The grass
was overgrown and patchy behind the collapsing picket fence line,
where powerfully fragrant confederate jasmine vines had taken
over.
It was a total disaster, which was fitting,
because Kyra was a wreck too.
Her shoulders slumped, and the wonder of
being a homeowner crumbled away almost faster than it had come.
Staring at the house left her with a powerful knot of buyer’s
remorse tightening in her stomach. Sure, it had seemed like a good
idea to buy her mother’s childhood home on Canaan Island when it
had come up for sale, but now…now it felt like one of those
colossal mistakes that make people cringe to think about years
later.
It’s not like Kyra had boatloads of money to
sink into restoring an old home. She uploaded videos to Youtube for
a living. Granted, they were pretty popular. Her tutorials on
makeup and health tips had millions of views each. Since she’d
started college, her channel had grown to over three and a half
million subscribers. She could be funny, sexy, or easygoing at the
drop of a hat. People proposed to her over the Internet, which
wasn’t weird at all. But she sure as hell didn’t know how to use a
jackhammer. And this house needed a jackhammer.
Thank God she’d had the foresight to hire a
contractor.
And the contractor in question just pulled
up. His white work truck parked in front of her Jeep, carefully
aligned to the curb. Kyra turned and watched as a tall man with
light brown hair emerged, carrying an armload of rolled up papers.
His impressive grin widened when he caught sight of Kyra.
“Hey!” She called, shoving her queasiness
away. She flashed her perfect white teeth. “You must be Mr. Cooper.
I’m Kyra.”
The man was all legs and arms, making him
seem more like a gangly teenager than a business owner, but he
stuck out his hand with confidence. “Nice to meet you, Kyra. Please
call me Cade.” His smile hooked in the corners, revealing the
cutest set of dimples. “Welcome to Canaan. We may be the most
boring little island of the southern states, but we are the
prettiest!”
Kyra laughed, shaking his hand and noting
the way he carefully enunciated every word he spoke, as if he had
to think about how his tongue moved to form the words. “Thank you!
Is that the town’s motto?”
“It should be,” Cade said with an eye
roll.
Kyra felt the smoothness of his palm before
she released his hand. “You’re the contractor?” she asked. No man
who worked in construction had such soft hands.
Cade flushed a little, showing a chink in
his confidence. “Actually, my brother is the contractor. I meet
with clients and go over plans.”
“Ah, I see,” Kyra nodded, keeping her words
playful. She looked back up at the house and sighed. “I bought a
piece of poop, didn’t I?”
Cade’s green eyes widened as a laugh escaped
his lips. “Well,” he said, drawing out the word. “It is going to
need some work. How about I show you around and go over some
ideas?”
“Sounds good!” Kyra took a deep breath and
headed toward the gate, which hung from its rusted hinges, the wood
rotten and warped. She had to kick it open.
“So, you will see the front garden is quite
overgrown,” Cade said, indicating the tangled forest of shrubs and
vines.
She stopped and looked around. The garden
was a mess, but she saw the potential after what would likely be
hours of pruning and hacking. The jasmine was lovely, if not a
little overpowering. Wisteria weaved around the broken porch rails.
Some of the flowers had taken over, but most were drowned by
weeds.
“I think that’s an understatement,” Kyra
said. She reached down and snapped off a pretty blue iris.
Carefully tucking it behind her ear, she glanced back at Cade. “I
can tame it, though.”
The sound of his laugh was rich and warm,
and the more she heard him speak, the more she liked the odd
cadence of his voice. Kyra smiled, wiping her hands on her frayed
jean shorts. “Hold on to that optimism,” he said. “The structure of
the house is actually pretty good. We will need to examine the
foundation thoroughly and replace some of the beams. In houses this
old, they were just set into the ground. So most of the time, the
beam’s wood will be eroded by moisture and be unstable.”
“But it’s safe to live in, right? I want to
live here during the renovation.” Kyra said she wanted to, but the
truth was, she needed to. She made a good living with her videos
and her blog, but most of her savings had gone into the purchase of
this house. After setting aside some for renovations, she didn’t
have much left.
“It is safe, but things will just be noisy
and dusty for a while.” Cade looked at her like he pitied her.
“Living in a house being renovated is torture, but if you want to,
you won’t be in danger.”
Kyra nodded thoughtfully. “Where will you be
starting?”
“Let me show you.” Cade took her elbow
before she stepped onto the rickety step. “Watch these porch
stairs. They may be a little rotten.”
They carefully made their way up the house
and onto the porch. Even though some floorboards were missing and
vines ran like snakes across the porch, Kyra pictured herself here,
swinging and sipping tea. She smiled even as her loose teal tank
top snagged on a thorn.
“Here,” Cade said, plucking the thorn from
her shirt.
“Thanks.” She shot him a grin before she
pulled out her keys and unlocked the door. Cade had to shoulder it
open before they stepped inside.
The entry was dark and musty. A set of
stairs swept up in front of Kyra. To the left was the parlor with
murky windows and giant, swooping cobwebs hanging from the ceiling.
To the right was a dining room, and through an archway, she just
made out a tiny kitchen. All the walls were coated in peeling,
faded wallpaper. Dusty, dated light fixtures hung lopsided from the
ceiling, where large water stains added their own form of
décor.
“That’s bad, right?” Kyra asked, pointing to
a particularly large stain.
“It is not good. But most of the things you
see can be fixed. They are typical in an older home like this.” He
walked farther into the space, showing her through the dining room
and into the kitchen. They walked through the entire first floor,
weaving through tiny rooms filled with more dust and cobwebs.
“What we will do first is make sure the
foundation and beams are solid, like I said earlier. Once the
structure is sound, we can start opening up these walls so there is
more of an open concept from the kitchen into the dining room. All
these back rooms will be converted into a large living room and
office space for you,” Cade said. They stopped at the kitchen
counter, where he laid out his floor plans. He pointed to one
drawing and walked Kyra through the technical aspects of
load-bearing walls and where they’d need to add support beams in
the ceiling.
Kyra tried to listen, but she was already
looking around the space, taking in the wide windows. The room
would be flooded with natural light if it were open. Already she
could picture her eclectic, beachy style in this place.
“And this is where we will put in a small
powder room…”
Cade trailed off as she walked away from him
midsentence. She spied a back door leading out of the kitchen.
Prying it open, she stepped onto the back porch and took in her new
backyard.
“Oh, shoot yeah!”
The ocean was just beyond the reach of her
entangled, wild backyard that was dominated by two large magnolia
trees. The crashing waves of the Atlantic Ocean and salty air
instantly soothed Kyra’s frayed nerves. She took her phone out and
snapped a few pictures for her social media sites. Cade was right;
with its Spanish moss-laden trees and bright houses along her
street, Canaan Island was the prettiest island off the coast of
Georgia that she’d ever seen. She imagined the town of Canaan would
be just as picturesque.
“It does have great views,” Cade offered
from behind her.
She laughed. “Man, I want to be out in the
water so bad.”
“I saw your boards. You will fit right in
here.” He leaned against the doorframe, watching her.
A familiar darkness descended in the pit of
her stomach at his words of fitting in, but she brushed it off with
another laugh. She came here to get rid of all that. “Do you
surf?”
“No, but my brother does. I do not like…”
Cade’s voice stumbled slightly, and he stuttered the tiniest bit,
“…the water much.” A shadow passed over his eyes, but he brightened
up as fast as Kyra had. “So what made you want to move out
here?”