We moved around each other in a weird, careful dance after that, hyper-aware of every near-touch. When I stepped past him to get to the breaker panel, my shoulder brushed his chest again. This time, neither of us pretended we weren’t aware it.
My phone chimed in my pocket, making me jump. I checked the screen—Pepper, a reminder about something completely ordinary, like dinner and the real world existed outside this barn.
“I need to get back,” I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears—hoarse, a little unsteady. “Vendor call in an hour for the Twelve Stops.”
“Right.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, like he didn’t know what else to do with them. “We got a lot done.”
I glanced around. Outlets marked. Wires run. Notes scribbled everywhere. The bones of my future taking shape under work lights and donkey hair.
“We did,” I said. The plural seemed… right. Dangerous, but right. “Thank you.”
The corners of his mouth tipped up. “Same time tomorrow?”
I hesitated.
For the first time in ten years, the automatic no didn’t come.
Instead, there was this humming awareness low in my stomach and the undeniable, treacherous truth that I liked beinghere with him. I liked the way we worked together, the way he listened, the way he watched me like I mattered.
His gaze dropped, just briefly, to my mouth.
My heart did a slow, heavy roll.
He jerked his eyes back up, guilt flickering across his face like he’d been caught doing something indecent.
Oh.
Oh.
It wasn’t just me.
The floor was a little less solid under my feet.
“Yeah,” I said finally, because my mouth had apparently decided to betray me too. “Same time.”
I climbed down out of the truck, Esmerelda trailing me to the barn doors. Powell walked with us. At the threshold, the cold air hit my sweaty skin and made me shiver.
“Jess,” he said.
I glanced back.
He wasn’t smiling this time. His expression was open, earnest, stripped down in a way I didn’t know what to do with.
“You’re not alone in this,” he said quietly. “No matter what you think. We’ve got you.”
The words landed deeper than anything else that day. I had a sudden, vivid memory of his arms around me, firelight flickering on the edges of my vision, the steady weight of his voice telling me I was okay.
I should have brushed him off. Snapped. Made a joke. Something to shove him back into the “problem to manage” box where he belonged.
Instead I just nodded, because anything else would’ve cracked me open.
“See you tomorrow.” And I escaped before I could do something truly reckless.
Like step into him instead of away.
ELEVEN
POWELL
