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Walking with a stranger who’s already identified my life as a badly managed project and somehow convinced me he’s being helpful is objectively unwise.

Naturally, I'm doing it anyway.

Ashby Knox walks beside me along the Redwood River like he belongs here in a way I never did. As though the town arranged itself around him years ago and never bothered to move him.

Everything about Ashby Knox irritates me.

He’s tall, over six feet, I guess, composed, and annoyingly well-dressed for a man walking a damp river path before noon. Broad shoulders fill out his dark blue shirt, which is buttoned neatly beneath an expensive looking wool coat. His boots stay bafflingly clean despite the mud. He’s clean-shaven, his short dark hair tidy, with only the faintest wave at the front.

With his air of quiet strength, reflected in his strong jawline and penetrating moss-green eyes, he looks like the kind of man who could balance a budget, bury a body, and remember everyone’s coffee order without blinking.

I don't find that appealing.

At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

I only agreed to this walk because Redwood Run Café had too many eyes, too many ears, and Lorna Pike’s face was doing something dangerously close to tenderness every time she looked at me.

I can handle suspicion and judgment. Tenderness is harder.

The river path curves beneath thick redwoods, the ground soft with moss and fallen needles. Morning fog clings between the trunks, turning everything silver green and quiet. The river moves beside us, swallowing the sounds of the town until it feels like we’ve stepped out of the world.

I used to know this path.

Maggie and I raced here as kids, before we learned we were different kinds of people. Before every conversation became a negotiation, a competition, or a silence.

Ben used to throw rocks from the bank and call them “scientific river tests.”

I never asked what he was testing.

Probably whether he could get me to roll my eyes.

He could, every time.

Ashby seems content to let silence do its work. Which is inconvenient, because silence gives me room to think, and thinking is currently a hazardous activity.

I look at him sideways. “Are you always this quiet?”

Ashby steps over a fallen branch without looking at it first, like he’s already mapped the path in his head. “No.”

“Unconvincing.”

The corner of his mouth shifts slightly before settling again. “I’m quiet when information is still arranging itself in my head.”

Fair enough.

Fog curls across the river beside us, muting everything except the sound of water against stone.

“You asked what I know,” he says.

“I did.”

“I don’t know Maggie.”

My stomach tightens, though I expected that answer. “Right.”

“But Ben mentioned her.”

I keep walking. The mud sucks slightly at my boots. A raven calls somewhere overhead, harsh and unimpressed. “What did he say?”