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“Ground’s still soft from that irrigation line,” Deacon says. “You want the spar down today or you saving it?”

“Tomorrow. Do it right.” I drink half the bottle. “Don’t rush a stump forty feet off her canopy.”

He grins at me. I don’t grin back, and he lets it go, because that’s the deal we’ve had for six years. Deacon talks enough for the crew. I sign the checks.

Talk was my father’s whole trade. He could stand in a kitchen and build you a future out of nothing but his own voice—the boat we’d get, the trip we’d take, the man he was about to become on Monday. Monday never showed.

By the time I was ten, I’d learned that a promise said out loud is worth nothing. Talk is easy. Anybody can stand in a kitchen and swear the world’s about to change.

So I quit trusting words and started trusting what a man does instead. Watch what I do—that’s the only promise I’ll make. It kept me honest. It kept me alone. I never minded the second part.

I mind, a little, that she read the quiet as a door shutting in her face. I saw it happen. She squared up and got brighter and louder. I did that to her without opening my mouth, and I didn’t have the first idea how to undo it with the tools I carry.

So I do the thing I know how to do. I watch.

By the time I’ve drained the water, I’ve caught it—the cider kettle behind her plank counter, the way it rocks a quarter inch every time she leans on the rig. One leg’s short. Gravel’s shifted under it. She has a stand full of open flame two days out and a burner that’ll walk itself off a wobbling frame the first busy morning she turns her back.

I don’t tell her. Telling her would mean a conversation about it, and she’d thank me too much, and I’d stand there with nothing to say back.

I find a flat cedar shim in the truck bed, walk it over, and crouch at the corner of her rig.

“Oh—hey.” She’s there in a breath, crouched down beside me, close enough that I get a lungful of clove off her apron. “You don’t have to do that. That thing’s been possessed since I bought it.”

“Leg’s short.” I work the shim under, test the frame with my palm. Solid. “Gravel, not the frame. Won’t wobble now.”

“You just—” She rocks the kettle rig, finds it steady, looks at me. She goes still. Her gaze drops to the shim, comes back to my face, drops again. Whatever she’s thinking, it doesn’t make it to her mouth. “Huh.”

“What.”

“Nothing. You fixed a thing I didn’t ask you to fix and told me why in six words. It’s efficient. I’m processing.”

“Nine words,” I say, before I can stop it.

Her mouth opens. Then she laughs, full out, head back, and my hand closes hard around the shim I don’t need anymore. I’d like to hear that laugh again, but I don’t know how to ask.

“He counts,” she says, to the strip at large, delighted. “The man counts his own words. Wade, that is the most useful thing anyone’s told me about you all day.”

“Not much to tell.”

“See, I don’t believe that.” She settles back on her heels, studying me, and I let her, which isn’t a thing I do. “Guy who won’t spend a spare syllable, but he’ll crawl under a stranger’s burner on his lunch so she doesn’t set herself on fire Thursday. There’s a whole book there. You’re just refusing to read it out loud.”

I don’t have an answer that fits. I stand up instead, and she stands with me, and for a second we’re close enough that I have to decide not to notice.

“Wade.” Deacon, from the chipper, saving me. “You training tonight or you skipping again?”

“Training.”

Nikki looks between us. “Training for what?”

“Regional’s Thursday.” Deacon’s enjoying this. “Timber sports. Springboard, hot saw, underhand chop—your boy here’s the two-time defending. Whole valley comes out. He’d tell you himself but that’s too much talking for him.”

“Thursday.” Something flickers over her face, there and gone. “As in two days from now Thursday? As in my opening?”

“Morning events, then finals,” Deacon says. “He’s gone at dawn.”

“Well.” She recovers, bright again, but I clocked the flicker and I don’t like that I clocked it. “Then I guess I get you two more days before the valley steals you. Better make them count.” She points at the kettle. “Nine-word man. I’m keeping you.”

I’m keeping you. She means the burner. She means the joke. It hits somewhere deep in me it has no business hitting, and I feel the drop of it before I’ve decided one thing about what it means. That’s not how I run. I always decide first.