The man's voice rose, sharp and aggressive. "You think I'm stupid? You think I don't know when I'm being cheated?"
The vendor, a middle-aged woman with gray-streaked hair, held up her hands in a placating gesture. "Sir, I'm sorry you feel that way, but the prices are clearly marked. If you don't want to pay?—"
"Don't tell me what I want!" The man slammed his hand on the table, making the display of tomatoes jump. Several rolled to the ground.
Brian was already moving when he saw Tessa do the same.
She stepped toward the conflict with the kind of calm, purposeful stride he recognized from his own years of responding to emergencies. Her shoulders were set, her chin lifted. She was going to intervene.
He caught up to her in three long strides and put his hand on her elbow. "Not your problem," he said quietly.
She turned, and her eyes were sharp. "Someone needs to de-escalate before it gets worse."
"And that someone has to be you?"
"I'm trained for this. I've handled worse in the ER."
"This isn't the ER." He kept his voice low, aware of people starting to notice them. "You don't know this guy. You don't know what he's capable of."
Her jaw tightened. "You don't get to decide what's my problem, Brian."
The words landed like a slap. He took a breath, forcing himself to stay calm. "You're right. I don't. But I'd rather not watch something happen because I didn't speak up."
Before she could respond, a man in a Copper Moon Police Department polo appeared beside the arguing pair. He spoke quietly to the man in the cap, his posture relaxed but authoritative. After a moment, the agitated customer threw up his hands, muttered something under his breath, and stalked away.
Crisis averted. By someone else.
Tessa's shoulders dropped slightly, the tension bleeding out of her. She looked at Brian, and something complicated moved behind her eyes.
"I'm not used to standing back," she said quietly.
"I know." He let his hand fall from her elbow. "Neither am I."
They stood there for a moment, the market swirling around them, neither quite sure what to say next.
The drive back to the cottage was quiet. Not the comfortable silence they'd been building over the past week, but something heavier. Tessa sat in the passenger seat with a paper bag of peaches in her lap, her gaze fixed on the trees sliding past the window.
Brian pulled into the driveway and killed the engine, but neither of them moved to get out.
"I'm sorry," he said finally. "For grabbing your arm like that. I shouldn't have."
She turned to look at him. "You were trying to protect me."
"That doesn't make it okay."
"No." She was quiet for a moment. "But I understand why you did it. After what I told you last night... you're worried."
"Damn right I'm worried." The words came out rougher than he intended. "Someone stalked you, Tessa. Someone made you afraid to go home. And now there's a guy in a gray cap showing up everywhere you go, and footprints on my property, and I don't know what any of it means, but I know I don't like it."
She set the peaches on the floor of the truck and twisted in her seat to face him fully. "I've spent the last year being careful. Being vigilant. Checking over my shoulder every time I left the hospital. It's exhausting, Brian. And it's part of why I burned out." She took a breath. "I came here to stop being afraid. I can't do that if you're afraid for me."
The honesty of it hit him in the chest. She wasn't asking him to stop caring. She was asking him to trust her. To let her be strong even when everything in him wanted to wrap her in bubble wrap and hide her from the world.
"I can't just turn it off," he said. "The worry. It's not how I'm built."
"I'm not asking you to turn it off. I'm asking you to trust me to handle myself." She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. "I've been handling myself for a long time. I'm good at it."
He looked at her hand on his arm, at the delicate fingers that had held scalpels and sutured wounds and probably saved more lives than he could count. She was good at handling herself. He knew that. He'd known it from the first night, when she'd stood in his living room with tears on her face and steel in her spine, refusing to crumble even when everything was going wrong.
