Set back from the road maybe fifty yards, tucked into the oaks like it grew there.
Two bedrooms—I can tell from the footprint.
Stone foundation, wood siding that’s been weathered to silver, a porch that wraps around two sides.
It needs work—the porch railing is sagging, one window has a crack, and the yard is more weeds than grass—but the bones are solid.
The roof line is straight.
The chimney is intact.
It’s the kind of place that was built by someone who understood that a house should sit on its land like it belongs there.
“Phantom agreed to sell it to me.” Lee’s voice behind me. Close. He’s moved from the truck to stand at my shoulder, and I can feel the heat of him in the late-afternoon air. “Two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom that needs a new floor. Plumbing’s good. Electric’s been updated. Foundation’s sound. I figure we can add two more bedrooms before we move in officially, and make any updates you’d like.”
He sounds like he’s giving a property assessment.
Road Captain reporting on a structure.
Factual. Measured.
Except his hand finds the small of my back and stays there, and the steadiness of his voice doesn’t match the slight tremor in his fingers.
“Lee.”
“I’m tired of sleeping in a room on the compound that smells like oil and looks like a bunkhouse. Fuck, at least I’m not stuck in the bunkhouse with the full patches and prospects, but it’s not much better.” He turns me to face him. Both hands on my waist now. “I’m tired of you driving back and forth between here and Earl’s. I want a place that’s ours. A door we lock at night. A kitchen where you leave your coffee mug in the sink and I pretend to be annoyed about it.”
My heart is doing something structurally unsound.
“I want to start our life, Bex. Here. Together. In a house with a porch and enough room for your tools in the barn and my horses in the pasture and whatever comes next.” His thumbs are tracing circles on my hips. His bare left hand—still bare, the tan line fading now, the groove filling in with new skin. “Move in with me.”
I look at the cabin.
At the sagging porch and the cracked window and the live oaks bending over the roof like they’re trying to hold it together.
At the pasture stretching out behind it, green from the fall rains, the kind of land that could hold horses and a life and the accumulated weight of two people deciding to build something permanent.
I look at Lee.
The man who couldn’t answer a phone call six months ago is standing in front of me asking me to share a home.
“The porch railing needs replacing,” I say.
“I know.”
“And the bathroom floor.”
“I know.”
“And I’m going to need a proper forge setup if you expect me to work from here.”
He’s trying not to smile. Losing badly. “Is that a yes?”
“That’s a yes, but I’m still going to be at Earl’s checking up on him. He hasn’t been doing good lately, Lee. I’m worried.”
He kisses me under the oak tree with the cabin behind us and the evening light going gold across the pasture.
I blink, and it’s Wednesday.
