“You absolutely are.”
I tighten the bracket on the underbar shelf I’m fixing. “I’m working.”
Her mouth twitches. “In a six-foot radius.”
“Efficient radius.”
That wins me another small laugh.
I’d tear the whole damn building apart and rebuild it with my bare hands if I could keep hearing that.
Later, when Arlo takes over, and Finn drags Aurora into a debate about whether jalapeño poppers count as a personality trait, I step out the front door to check the new motion light.
Ryder’s already there, leaning against the rail, hands braced on weathered wood, looking out over town like he’s trying to memorize it before someone takes it.
The pines are black shapes against a bruised sky. Main Street glows warm below, small and stubborn, Coyote Glen doing what it always does, holding itself together with gossip, coffee, and sheer refusal.
Ryder doesn’t turn when I step beside him.
“The new sensor’s too sensitive,” I say after a second. “Caught a raccoon twice.”
“Adjust it.”
“I will.”
From inside, faint through the door, I can hear Finn talking and Aurora answering. Her voice is still softer than it used to be. Still careful around sharp edges. But there.
Ryder’s stare stays fixed on the town. “I brought this here.”
I lean on the rail beside him.
Below, a truck rolls slowly past the square. Someone laughs outside Coyote Cup. The world keeps moving because it doesn’t know when to do anything else.
“You didn’t ruin her,” I say quietly. “You saved her.”
His jaw tightens hard enough to show at the hinge. “That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” I agree. “It isn’t.”
He finally looks at me then.
Eyes gone cold in the way they do when he’s trying to cut feeling clean out of the equation.
“I knew what Cole was,” he says. “I knew what he’d do if he got room to move.”
“Yeah.”
“I still brought us here.”
I nod once. Because denying the facts won’t help. “You did.”
He sharpens—he expected an argument and doesn’t know what to do with agreement.
“So did I,” I add.
That lands. I watch it happen. The slight shift. The recalculation.
“Cole didn’t come for The Hollow because he smelled weakness in the walls,” I say. “He came because he couldn’t stand that we built anything at all.”
