They’re right there, staring you right in the fucking face like they never left.
I lean back on my heels and squint at the line of the roof, hammer hanging loose in my hand.
The late afternoon sun beats down on the Jersey Iron Ranch, lighting up the fresh-cut wood and the clean angles of the house I’ve been working on for the past three weeks.
My house.
The thought should feel good.
Hell, it does—in a way that’s hard to explain.
Solid. Earned. Real. Not handed to me by some bastard who thinks money makes him God.
I built this.
Me. Sawyer. Micah.
Every beam. Every nail. Every goddamn inch of it.
A place that belongs to us.
I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my forearm and take another look, scanning for imperfections out of habit.
There’s always something.
A crooked line.
A loose joint.
Something that needs fixing.
Same as everything else in life.
“Looks good from here.”
Sawyer’s voice carries across the yard, low and steady. I don’t turn right away. I don’t need to.
I know he’s leaning against one of the fence posts, arms crossed, watching everything like he always does.
Man’s built like a wall and thinks like a general.
There’s a reason he’s running point on this whole operation.
“Yeah,” I grunt. “Good ain’t done.”
He huffs out a quiet laugh.
“You been up there since dawn, Benji. At some point you gotta call it.”
I finally glance down at him. He’s got that look—half amused, half assessing.
But always watching.
Always calculating.
“Since when do you settle for ‘good enough,’ DeWitt?”
His mouth twitches. “Since I realized perfection gets people killed.”
