Rhys grabs another piece of unsplit wood, balances it on one end on a chopping block made of a thick tree stump, and then makes one smooth, easy arc of the axe, bringing it down precisely in the middle of the log and making it fall off in two relatively even pieces before grabbing the next unsplit log from the pile behind him.
I lean closer to the window, prop my elbow on the ledge, and it promptly slides off, propelling me forward and making my face smush into the glass.
He pauses and looks my way as I straighten.
Our eyes meet, and I realize I’m still rubbing my breast, and that has me bolting up off the bed and out of sight.
I hover against the wall beside the window, silently chastising myself.
Don’t get turned on by your roommate chopping wood. Your roommate who could blow your cover at any minute. Your roommate who clearly wants more from you than just a job.
This is too complicated, and you know better, Margot.
Cyril has reservations about taking Rhys as backup, but it’s a concern born out of the awkward situation more than a concern based on Rhys’s employment history and demonstrated competence.
There’s a knock on the window.
I rub my eyes, stretch my limbs, and then step back into view. “What?” I say through the glass.
Rhys holds up the axe. “You want a swing?”
Whatever I expected, it wasn’t that. “Are you serious?”
“Saw you staring at my…axe. Looked like you wanted to use it.”
I wasn’t staring at his axe, and we both know it, but using it?—
Oh my god.
Yes.
Daph wouldn’t hesitate. She’d already be in the yard by now.
I don’t know why I’m hesitating, because while Daph would do it for the fun, I’d do it to feel like a powerful beast.
I start to smile. “Can you teach me?”
He grunts, then nods.
I fly through changing into jeans and a flannel shirt, and then into my hiking boots, and I take off outside, leaving my fake glasses in the bedroom.
Rhys has flipped on one of the outdoor flood lights so that we can see what we’re doing as the sun dips lower and lower in the sky, and he’s also stacked most of the wood he’s split on the pile near the back of the garage. The temperatures have dropped, and there’s a chilly wind blowing through that doesn’t seem to faze him at all in his T-shirt.
He hands me a pair of work gloves. “Only other pair,” he says when they swallow my hands. “Here. Put on safety glasses too. Then grab a log.”
I slide the safety glasses onto my face, then pick up a log off the unsplit pile.
He sighs. “Not that one.”
“What’s wrong with this one?”
“See the knots? Harder to split.”
He rustles through the pile and selects a different log, this one so gray it’s almost blue, with nary a knot in the sides of it anywhere. “Ever do this before?”
“Nope.”
“Harder than it looks.”
