Page 2

Then everything isn't.

The top crate tilts. My weight shifts backward. The pumpkin, which I am now holding against my chest like a baby I refuse to drop, comes with me, and the stack of crates goes sideways in a slow, grinding collapse that sounds like furniture falling down stairs.

My left hip hits something hard. My elbow catches the fence. The dress, already stretched past its limits by the climb, meets a fence post on my way down, and the fabric gives with a sound like a page ripping out of a book.

I land on my back in the dirt between two rows of butternut squash, the pumpkin on my chest, the sky very blue above me, my dress torn from the hem to somewhere I don't want to think about.

Cool air on my left thigh. My entire left side, actually. From hip to mid-rib, the dress has separated from itself in a way that suggests reconciliation is not possible.

I lie there. Stare at the sky. The pumpkin is still in my arms.

"Okay," I say. "Okay, Poppy. This is fine. You're fine. Get up."

Getting up would require putting the pumpkin down, assessing the damage, and figuring out how to walk back to my car without giving the goats a show they didn't ask for. So I stay down for another three seconds.

That's when the boots appear.

Tan leather. Worn at the toe. Laced tight. They stop about two feet from my head, and the shadow they bring is tall enough to block the sun.

Then the voice.

"You're on my property."

Deep. Flat. Not angry, exactly. More like a man stating a fact he finds personally inconvenient.

I tilt my head back and look up. Upside down, he's all jaw and shoulders. Dark auburn hair. Hazel eyes squinting against the light. Flannel rolled to his elbows. Forearms that look like they've been built by actual labor, not a gym membership.

A knife in his right hand.

My breath catches.

"I can explain," I say, from the ground, holding a pumpkin against my ruined dress, looking up at a man with a blade.

He stares down at me. His eyes move from my face to the pumpkin to the destroyed crates to the gaping tear in my dress and then back to my face. Something shifts in his expression. Not softness, exactly. Something closer to resignation.

"Stay still," he says.

He crouches beside me, and I get a better look. Strong nose. A small scar on his chin. Stubble that's past casual but not quite committed. He smells like wood shavings and cold air, nothing sweet about it. His hands are big, calloused at the fingertips.

He takes the pumpkin off my chest with one hand like it weighs nothing and sets it on the ground beside me. Then he looks at the tear in my dress, and his jaw tightens.

"You're showing a lot of leg right now."

"I'm aware."

"Fence post got you?"

"The fence post and I had a disagreement."

Something flickers at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. More like a smile thinking about whether to show up for work today and deciding against it.

He flips the knife open. My whole body tenses, and he must see it because he stops.

"For the pumpkin," he says. "Not for you."

"That's reassuring."

"Wasn't meant to be." He picks up the pumpkin, turns it in his hands, finds a spot near the top where the shell is thinnest, and drives the knife in. The blade sinks through with a wet crunch. He cuts a wide, curved section free, scrapes the inside clean with two efficient strokes, and holds it out.