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"She is the artist here," I tell him. "Not a splash zone. You came into her house and put your hand where it was not wanted. In my mother's country we have a word for a man who does that."

His throat clicks. "L-look, buddy, it's just content, I didn't..."

I lean down until we share the same air. "The word does not translate. But the meaning survives the trip."

I raise the nailer. I do not point it at him. I point it at the ceiling and drive one more nail, straight up, thunk, and drywall dust rains down over his three-hundred-dollar haircut.

Trevin runs.

He runs like the barndominium is on fire, snatching his sunglasses off the floor mid-stride, out the door, across the gravel, keys already jangling, and his fancy car spits rocks as it fishtails down the drive. Quiet floods back in behind him. My pulse slows. My hands unclench one finger at a time.

Patsy stands frozen by the sawhorses, phone half raised. She lowers it.

"So," she says. "We're passing on Sudsy Home."

Jilly hasn't moved. She stands where he left her, one hand at her collarbone, and her cheeks have gone a color I have no name for. I set the nailer down, gently now, and the shame arrives on schedule. I frightened her. I always frighten them in the end. My size, my temper, the nail in the wall. This is the part where the human flinches from what I am.

"I apologize," I say, low. "I overstepped. It is your set. Your channel. I had no right to threaten a man in front of your camera, and if this costs you the account, I will pack my..."

"Oggan." She crosses the plywood. She stops in front of me, tips her whole head back to reach my face, and her eyes are wet and bright and furious on my behalf, not afraid, never once afraid. "Don't you dare apologize."

Her hand finds my forearm. Warm. Small. It rests over the scar there like she's covering a bruise.

"He had his hand on me," she says. "He's had his hand on a lot of people, I'd bet, in a lot of green rooms, and every single one of them just smiled and took it because the account was worth more than the flinch." Her fingers tighten. "Nobody's ever stood between me and a Trevin. Do you understand? In eight years of this. Nobody."

The words go into me and lodge somewhere structural, somewhere load-bearing, and I do not have the tools to remove them and I do not want them removed.

"Then your people failed you," I say, "and I am not one of your people."

Her breath catches.

"I mean." Heat crawls up the back of my neck. "I am on your side. That is what I mean. The grammar got away from me."

"The grammar was perfect," she whispers.

She stays right where she is, her hand still curled over the scar on my arm, and I do the mathematics of my own restraint. If I turn my wrist, her hand slides into mine. Three inches of motion. A lifetime of consequence. I keep my wrist exactly where it is.

Her thumb moves once, absently, tracing the old ridge of scar tissue. "How'd you get this one?"

"A beam that lost an argument with gravity while I stood beneath it." I let her keep tracing. It costs me nothing and I would pay anything. "I caught it. The house across town still stands. So does the arm. Both were close."

"You just, what. Held up a falling roof."

"Someone was under it." As if that explains everything. To me it does. "You do not weigh the odds when someone is under it. You put your body in the gap and you learn afterward whether it was wise."

Her eyes come up to mine, and something shifts in them, some final tumbler falling in a lock. "That's what you did just now. With Trevin. You put your body in the gap."

"He was smaller than a beam," I say. "And I was not worried about the arm."

Patsy claps her hands once, briskly, breaking whatever this is. "Okay! Wow. Great. Terrifying. Genuinely thought I was going to have to give a statement to a nail-gun homicide detective. The good news is I got about nine seconds of that on my phone and it is going to do NUMBERS." She is already typing with both thumbs. "The internet is going to lose its entire mind over the Orc who protects his girl."

Jilly's hand drops from my arm.

"His girl," Jilly echoes.

Patsy doesn't look up. "Trust me. Just wait."

I pick the framing nailer back up because my hands need a job. The nail in the ceiling stands proud of the drywall, crooked, ugly, a hundred-year mistake in a house I swore to build right.