A guitar case leans beside them. Not the cheap kind. The kind professionals travel with. The kind people take care of, not abandon on a porch like forgotten luggage.
Doesn’t match the rest of her.
Doesn’t match this town.
Doesn’t match someone who looks like she’s hiding in the woods to breathe.
Which is exactly what she’s doing.
You can see it in the way she keeps glancing over her shoulder, like she expects something — or someone—to follow her here.
Breakup?
Running from debt?
Hollywood meltdown, she’s hoping no one recognizes her from?
I don’t know.
And I don’t want to know.
Except I’m still standing here, watching her fight with an axe like she’s never touched one in her life.
She swings too hard, hits the log wrong, and the blade ricochets off the wood, skidding dangerously close to her boot. She stumbles back with a curse loud enough to send a bird exploding out of the tree beside my deck.
Christ. She’s going to take her foot off.
She sets up again. Smaller swing. Worse aim.
“City folk,” I mutter under my breath. “Bloody useless.”
But I don’t move.
I watch her line up another doomed attempt, jaw tight, irritated by how irritated she makes me.
Because if she mangles herself, I know I’ll be the one hauling her to the ER.
Because Lily likes her.
Because she looks like someone one stiff wind away from crumpling.
Because—
No. Not because of anything else.
Not my business.
Not my problem.
But she lifts the axe again, and I can practically feel the disaster coming.
And that’s what finally pushes me off the deck.
I try — I genuinely try — to walk back inside and mind my own damn life.
She’s a stranger. A noisy one. A magnet for trouble, if I’ve ever seen one.
But then she swings again, weaker this time, like the fight’s leaking out of her. The axe thuds uselessly against the log. She huffs, frustrated. Vulnerable.
