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"Here's what I know about Harper Coleman," she continues. "She moved to this town five years ago with a business plan, a bank loan, and zero safety net. Her parents told her the pumpkin patch was a hobby. Her ex told her the baking was cute. Every person she's ever loved has treated the things she cares about like they're small and temporary. And then you called her a favor. To a man on the phone. The morning after she slept in your bed."

The silence in my workshop is the kind that rearranges furniture in your chest.

"What do I do?"

"The festival opens tomorrow at ten. She'll be in the south field by six setting up. I'd suggest showing up with something better than eggs."

Sage leaves. I sit on my workbench and stare at the wall and think about every mistake I've made in the last twenty-three years that led to me being a thirty-nine-year-old man who is very good at cutting down trees and absolutely terrible at not cutting down the people who get close to me.

My father sold the family land because he was too proud to ask for help. He called it a business decision. It was surrender. He couldn't hold onto what mattered, so he let it go and told himself it was strategic.

I've been calling it protection. Keeping the field. Keeping the distance. Keeping the walls. All strategic. All justified. All a variation of the same surrender, just without the auction paperwork.

Harper Coleman walked into my kitchen with a basket of muffins and the audacity to tell me I was going to change my mind. She was right. About the field, about the festival, about everything. She was right about me. I changed my mind about her before I finished the first muffin.

I'm not my father. I don't have to lose everything because I'm too stubborn to say what something means to me.

I stay up until two in the morning. Working in the workshop. Not timber. Something else. Something I haven't made in years.

The festival morning is cold and gold. Frost on the grass, steam rising from the pumpkin displays, the sun coming over the ridge like it's showing up for the occasion. Harper is in the south field with a clipboard and a headset, directing a crew of volunteers who showed up at six to help with final setup.

She's wearing my flannel. The one she took yesterday morning. She probably didn't mean to keep it. Or maybe she did. Either way, seeing her in my clothes in my field does something to my heartbeat that I'm choosing not to analyze.

I walk across the property line carrying a wooden sign.

It's hand-carved. Black walnut, which I selected for the grain pattern and because it's the most beautiful domestic hardwood I've ever worked with. The letters are deep-cut and clean, finished with tung oil. The sign reads:

Coleman's Pumpkin Patch at Drake Field

She sees me coming. Her clipboard lowers. She moved headset from her ears.

I plant the sign at the entrance to the south field. Two posts, deep in the ground, level and true. When I step back, it looks like it's been there for years. Like it belongs.

"What is that?" she says.

"A sign."

"I can see it's a sign. What does it mean?"

I turn to her. The volunteers have stopped working. Sage is standing by the coffee station with her arms crossed and a look on her face that says this better be good.

"It means the south field isn't empty anymore. It means my family's land finally has a purpose that would make my grandfather proud. It means you're not a favor, Harper. You're not temporary. You're the best thing that's happened to this property since the day my grandfather broke ground on it, and I was too stubborn and too scared to say that because the last time I cared about something on this land, I watched my father give it away."

Her eyes fill. She grips the clipboard so hard the plastic cracks.

"You're not your father," she says.

"No. I'm the guy who almost lost something good because he was too busy guarding an empty field to notice it was already full."

She sets the clipboard on the ground. Walks to me. Puts both hands on my chest. The volunteers are watching. Sage is watching. Bear is watching from his spot by the elm tree. The entire pre-festival setup crew is witnessing a lumberjack fall apart in his own field.

"I'm going to kiss you now," she says. "In front of everyone. And it's going to be a thing."

"Make it a thing."

She pulls me down by the collar of my flannel and kisses me in the golden-hour light with pumpkins at our feet and half of Crimson Hollow pretending not to stare. Sage starts clapping. The volunteers join in. Bear barks. Someone whistles.

I wrap my arms around her, lift her off her feet, and hold her against my chest. She's laughing and crying and her arms are locked behind my neck and she whispers against my mouth, "You carved me a sign."