The site wakes before the sun does.
By the time I pull in, steel is already ringing against steel, generators humming like something alive beneath the ground. The smell hits first—dust, diesel, fresh timber, and coffee strong enough to strip paint. It’s loud, as construction usually is, but underneath the noise, there’s a rhythm. Controlled chaos. My kind of environment.
I step out of the truck, hard hat already in hand, and do what I always do first—walk the perimeter, check the scaffolding lines, make sure the temporary fencing hasn’t shifted overnight. A loader rolls past me, the operator lifting two fingers in greeting. I return the greeting with a nod.
Six months.
Six months of this. Of longer hours than necessary, of projects taken back-to-back, of saying yes to every contract that crossed my desk because idle time was dangerous. Idle time meant thinking. Thinking meanther.
So I worked.
I worked until my shoulders burned, until the days blurred into each other, until my crew started joking that I’d forgotten how to take a day off. They weren’t wrong. Work was easier than wondering whether she was okay, whether she missed me, whether the silence between us was healing her or slowly cutting us both open.
I round the corner of the temporary office trailers when something out of place catches my eye.
Rodriguez, one of the younger guys on the crew, calls out, “Miss? Hey! Miss, are you lost?”
I almost keep walking. It happens all the time. Delivery drivers, inspectors, someone’s girlfriend looking for the wrong site.
I look up from my clipboard and see…her.
My heart leaps into my throat.
Piper is standing at the edge of the gravel lot in a yellow dress. That specific yellow dress.
Christ, she’s a beauty.
The world goes quiet in a way that makes no sense when jackhammers are going ten feet away.
She stands just inside the entrance, sunlight catching the edges of her hair, and for a second, my brain can’t process what I’m looking at.
Her hair is shorter now, brushing just past her shoulders, the color softer in the morning light, falling in natural waves that curl slightly at the ends. It frames her face and moves when she shifts or when the breeze touches it. Her smile is small, nervous, fucking beautiful, and it hits me square in the chest. I wasn’t braced for it.
Something breathtaking in the middle of all this concrete and noise.
When she smiles at Rodriguez, I want to punch the fucker in the throat for smiling back.
“Um, I’m looking for…” She looks past him and finds me.
My boots slow. Rodriguez glances between us, clearly realizing this woman isn’t lost at all, and mutters something about getting back to work before disappearing.
I see the moment recognition lands. Her fingers tangle briefly in the strap of her bag, knuckles going white for a second before she forces herself to relax them. She chews her bottom lip, eyes flicking everywhere except directly at me.
God, I’ve missed her.
I hand my schedule to someone and head down the walkway. We meet at the boundary line.
I stop a few feet away, close enough to smell the faint hint of whatever shampoo she’s using now, and for a moment neither of us speaks.
“Hi,” she breathes, tucking her hair behind her ear.
I can feel the tension I’ve been holding for six months ease just a little. “Hi, Pipes.”
“I got your flowers,” she says. “Thank you… for being there.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it. You were incredible.”
The blush hits fast, climbing her cheeks, and she looks down again like she doesn’t quite know where to put the compliment. That was always her—brave on a stage, fearless when it mattered, but shy when someone praised her for it.
