"Same thing as today. Rebuilding this place. You and me."
He finishes collapsing the table and stacks it with the others. The last of the light is catching his hair, turning the blonde almost gold. He's standing in the middle of a destroyed parking lot surrounded by hurricane debris, and he looks like he belongs here.
"You and me," he says. Like he's testing the words. Feeling the weight of them.
"Yeah, that's right."
He nods. And for the first time, when he turns to walk back into the bar, he doesn't check the exits first.
Chapter 8: Stormy
I can't stop worrying about what happens when Tex doesn't need me anymore.
This low hum of dread that sits in my chest is the first thing in my head when I wake up and the last thing before I fall asleep.
The bar is getting better. Every day we fix a few more things, clean a lot more, and rebuild a little more. And every day the bar needs me a little less, and that thought makes me sick with a fear I can't shake.
I don't have anywhere to go.
The bike is stolen and every mile I ride on it is another mile of risk. I have forty-three dollars in my duffel bag, no ID, and no one I can call without putting myself back in the place I ran from. If Tex tells me to go, I go back to standing under an overhang somewhere, waiting for the next storm.
So, I work as hard as I possibly can. Not because I have a strategy. Because I'm terrified.
I clean things before he notices they're dirty. I organize shelves he hasn't looked at yet. I anticipate what needs doing next so I'm already doing it when he turns around. I don't sit down. I don't rest when he's watching. I don't stop moving because the moment I stop being useful is the moment Tex realizes he doesn't need a stranger living in his spare room eating his food, and then the kindness ends.
It always ends.
The only question is when.
Every time he says a kind word to me, every time he says he's glad I'm here, there's a part of me waiting for the rest ofthe sentence. The "but." The "however." The "listen, Stormy, you've been great, but..."
I can hear it coming even when it isn't, and I work harder to push it further away. To buy myself one more day, one more meal, one more night with a door that stays closed.
It's mentally and physically exhausting.
I'm so tired, but it's the only way I know how to survive.
The other problem is Tex's back.
He's on the first floor pulling waterlogged drywall off the interior walls, and he's been at it since early this morning. From the other room, I hear him narrating his demolition work to nobody. "And this piece right here. This is what we call a load-bearing grudge. This drywall has been holding a personal vendetta against me since 2019, and it's time for it to go. Say goodbye. Nobody's going to miss you. You were ugly before the hurricane and you're ugly now."
Now, it's mid-morning and his shirt came off approximately three hours ago and I've been having trouble with basic cognitive function ever since.
I'm supposed to be sorting salvageable supplies in the storage room behind the bar. I have a clipboard. I have a system. The system requires me to look at shelves and count things and write numbers. Instead, I keep looking through the doorway at Tex, who is currently reaching up to pull a section of drywall from near the ceiling.
His back is broad and mapped with tattoos I still haven't been close enough to read. The muscles move under his skin, smooth and powerful, shifting and flexing as he grips the drywall and pulls. His shoulders are so wide they seem impossible, like they belong to a different species, and theway they taper to his waist makes a shape that my eyes keep tracing.
There's sweat running down his spine in a line that catches the light coming through the open doors, and I watch it travel the length of his back and disappear below the waistband of his jeans.
I look away. Hard. Fast. Back to the numbers, back to the work that keeps me here.
I can't do this. Not now. Not here.
I don't notice men. It's the first rule, the foundational one, the one that everything else is built on. Don't look at men. It always gets used against you, twisted, exploited.
Except, I can't stop looking at his back.
I force my eyes to the closet and count bottles of hot sauce. There are fourteen. I write fourteen. I count them again to make sure because I don't trust my brain right now. Still fourteen. Good. Fine. Hot sauce. Accounted for.
