SECOND DRAFT: Hard Bank Left

38

Krys stood back to admire their handiwork. With the plaster walls set, she and Graham had installed the support structures for her bed and raised library. The platforms were were cantilevered into each if their respective walls, but they had installed supportive legs all the same, just to be safe.

The shelves went up first, and sure enough, the platform supported the weight. Graham bolted them to the wall. Krys set to work loading up the books while Graham put together her bed and then her desk. He had installed the heat lamp by the time she was finished and had moved on to arranging and bolting down her dresser and wardrobe. He had decided against putting the wardrobe under the stairs. It would be too much work. Maybe another time.

Together, the two of them swept up the last of the debris and bolted the domed window back into place. Krys mopped her brow after cranking the last bolt. The manual labor finally complete, and paint long since dry, it was time to bring in her personal effects, which had been sitting out for the better part of the last few days. Graham helped as best he could, working through the pain in his knee and shoulder. From what Krys could tell, he was recovering quickly, but she was no doctor. For all she knew the constant use was just making it worse in the long run.

At night she took the time to help him rub out the kinds in his shoulder and back, ignoring her own aches and pains as best she could. For whatever she felt, Graham felt it more. Besides, soothing his pains relieved her own. She tried not to read too much into it, after all, half of being an empath was dealing with feeling on behalf of other people. Feeling Graham's ache was nothing new to her, and represented nothing abnormal. Though, it struck her that she only felt his pain. Surely the other men in the complex were stiff and sore as well, and yet she felt little more than their coming and going moods. Again, she wasn't going to read too much into it.

As she lay in her loft bed, surrounded by the mirriad familiar pillows and blankets, Krys looked around the gray and lavender room and, at last, felt as though this place belonged to her. The way it had been configured before made it constantly feel as though it were on loan to her from somewhere else, like she was borrowing it. But this space? This was a gift, one designed for her, made to fit her needs.

"Ma'am?" Celeste had been knocking at the door for several minutes and only just then did Krys notice. "Ma'am, are you up there?"

"Yeah," Krys mused, not looking away from the blank patch of ceiling she'd been staring at.

"Oh good. I've been looking everywhere for you."

"Well, here I am. What can I do for you?"

"Graham was looking for you. He is needing help putting in the water ducts to heat his floor."

"He's doing what?"

"I don't know, he couldn't be more specific."

Gingerly climbing down the freshly bolted ladder to the floor below, Krys meandered to Graham's room. She found him on the platform below his bed, at the base of the dome. He'd been threatening to put a turret there for years, never having followed through. Most of the time he avoided the platform, the heights being more than too much for him.

"What on Earth are you doing?" she mused, opting to stand by the ladder, hands on her hips.

"I am attempting to get open this access panel so that I can pipe hot water from our boiler through the floor and then back into the shower, but the damned panel is stuck."

"Why didn't you do any of this when you built her?"

"Ha!" he exclaimed as he managed to pull down the large panel. He then paused, listening to his earpiece. "Apparently, it's because somebody was missing while I was putting her together."