Iwoke up hard.
Not the gentle morning kind—the frustrated, interrupted kind that reminded me exactly where Hog's mouth had been six hours ago before his ribs turned traitor. I lay there staring at my ceiling, replaying the weight of him on top of me and the rough scratch of his beard.
The shower didn't help.
By the time I made coffee, the sun was barely up, and I'd checked my phone twice to see if he'd texted. Nothing. Which was fine. We'd agreed to pause. He needed to rest. I wasn't some desperate—
My phone buzzed.
Hog:Morning. Ribs still hate me but less than yesterday. Ice helped.
I stared at the screen, thumb hovering. I could invite him back to the apartment. Safe. Private. Pick up where we'd left off when his body allowed it.
But that wasn't what I wanted.
I wanted him in my actual life—not only the parts I'd cleaned up and made presentable. I wanted him in the messy, real spaces I'd built with my own hands.
Rhett:Come to the workshop. I'm working on something. Want to show you.
The dots appeared immediately. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Hog:Your workshop? Like where you actually work?
Rhett:That's the one
Hog:You sure? I'll probably break something. Bull—workshop
Rhett:You won't. Be here in an hour.
I sent the address and didn't overthink.
The workshop sat behind Murphy's Hardware on a street most tourists never found—corrugated metal roof, roll-up door thatstuck in winter, windows so dusty they turned morning light amber.
I'd inherited the lease along with the business when Dad's mind started to go. Some days it felt like a gift. Most days, it felt like a cage I'd built around myself.
The cabinet I'd been restoring sat on my central workbench—1940s oak, beautiful bones, but some idiot had painted it institutional beige. I'd been stripping it for three days, revealing the grain beneath, each layer giving way inch by careful inch.
I pulled on my work gloves and picked up the plane, testing the blade angle against my thumb. Sharp enough. I set it to the wood and pushed.
This I understood. Grain and angle, pressure and patience. The wood told you what it needed if you bothered to listen.
Unlike every other overly complicated thing in my life.
I set the plane down long enough to hit play on the battered Bluetooth speaker on the shelf. The opening chords of Pete Townshend's"Rough Boys"rattled out, tinny but insistent, filling the corners of the workshop. Not The Who—the solo stuff Hog probably wouldn't even know.
This one was mine. The jagged guitar lines felt like sandpaper against my ribs, the lyrics scraping at something I couldn't quite name. I let it play low while I worked, the song haunting the space like a secret I'd never bothered to explain.
With a clatter of hinges, the side door swung open forty-eight minutes later.
Hog appeared wearing his Storm hoodie and ragged jeans. His beard still had pillow creases, and he carried two Tim Hortons cups like peace offerings.
"Coffee?" His voice was rough. Sleep-gravel or nerves, I couldn't tell. "I didn't know how you took it, so I got—" He glanced at the cups. "Actually, I forgot what I ordered. It's been a morning."
I set down the plane and stepped close to him, taking one of the cups. Our fingers brushed.
"Black's fine."
"Good, because I think that's what this is." He looked past me at the workshop, taking it in—the organized chaos of tools on pegboards, half-finished projects stacked against walls, and sawdust coating every horizontal surface. "Holy hell. You actually keep your workshop cleaner than your apartment."
