CHAPTER FOUR
Hannah
The gray came first. Not light, not yet—just the slow leaching of darkness from the corners of the cabin, turning the log walls from black to a softer shade, a color that didn’t have a name because nobody was awake to name it.
I lay on the cot with my eyes open, watching the ceiling beams materialize overhead one by one like ghosts deciding whether to stay.
The sound came next. Soft. Muted. A blade scraping against wood, then a pause, then the scrape again, rhythmic and low.
Not the fire—the stove was cold. I could feel the morning chill working its way through the flannel shirt I’d borrowed from Mustang’s duffel three nights ago and hadn’t given back.
The sleeves hung past my fingertips. The collar smelled like him: pine sap and gun oil and an unnamed warmth underneath.
I sat up. The cot creaked. The sound from the main room didn’t stop.
He was crouched near the far wall when I pushed open the bedroom door, his back to me, shoulders hunched under the leather cut he hadn’t taken off before bed.
One hand braced against the log, the other working a putty knife along the base of the window frame where a thin sliver of darkness had been letting in cold air since we got here.
Weatherstripping. Gray foam tape, the kind you buy in ten-foot rolls at hardware stores, pressed into the gap with the flat edge of the knife.
His knuckles were white where he gripped the handle, the silver rings catching what little light filtered through the cracked shutter.
I didn’t announce myself. Didn’t clear my throat or say good morning. Just stood in the doorway with the flannel hanging off one shoulder and my bare feet cold against the packed dirt and watched his hands.
They were not gentle hands. Scarred across the backs, the skin thickened and callused, old wounds healed into pale ridges that mapped a history I didn’t want to imagine.
The silver rings sat heavy on three fingers of his right hand, not decoration, but metal that left marks when it connected with an unwilling target.
But the way he worked the putty knife along the gap was different entirely.
Slow. Careful. The blade edge following the contour of the log with a precision built from patience, not force.
Each inch of tape pressed flush against the wood, no bubbles, no wrinkles, the seam disappearing under his thumb as he smoothed it into place.
He finished the section. Sat back on his heels, inspected his work with those steel-gray eyes that missed nothing, then reached for the roll and cut another strip with the pocketknife he pulled from his boot.
The blade flashed once in the gray light, then went to work again, silent, methodical, the scrape of metal on wood the only sound in the cabin besides my breathing and his.
I could have spoken. Could have mentioned the cold air, or the fact that he was fixing a problem I’d complained about exactly once, two days ago, in passing, while shivering over my coffee.
He hadn’t responded then. Hadn’t nodded or acknowledged or given any indication he’d heard me at all.
Now he was on his knees at five in the morning with weatherstripping and a putty knife, sealing the gap because he’d noticed it was there and decided it needed fixing, and the fact that he hadn’t mentioned it,hadn’t made it a thing, hadn’t waited for gratitude or recognition,lodged in my chest like a bite I couldn’t swallow.
He moved to the kitchen without looking at me.
Crossed the room in three strides, reached for the screwdriver on the shelf above the sink, and addressed the cabinet hinge that had been drooping since day one.
Two turns of the screw. Tight. Secure. The door sat flush against the frame when he closed it, the whine of the loose hinge gone as if it had never existed.
He set the screwdriver down, reached for the coffee tin, measured grounds into the pot with the same easy economy, and set it on the propane burner.
Lit the flame with a match struck against his thumbnail.
The hiss of gas, then the blue glow, then the first gurgle from the pot, and he was already moving toward the door, pulling his cut straight, checking his phone with his brow furrowed the way it always was when he looked at that screen.
I stayed in the doorway. My hair was loose and tangled from sleep, falling over my shoulders in a mess of red that caught the growing light from the window.
The flannel hung open at the collar. My feet were freezing.
None of that seemed important compared to watching the way he moved through this space—like the cabin was an extension of his body, each problem already known to his hands before his brain had to think about it.
Later, after the coffee had brewed and I’d drunk mine standing at the counter because sitting felt too much like admitting I was comfortable, I found the chair.
The wooden chair near the table. The one with the wobble, the leg that had been loose since I’d first tested it days ago, rocking slightly whenever I put weight on the right side.
I hadn’t mentioned it. Hadn’t complained.
Had just learned to sit carefully, to distribute my weight, to accept the subtle instability as part of the cabin’s landscape the way I’d accepted the cold and the canned food and the man with the gun who’d brought me here.
The wobble was gone.
I ran my fingers along the underside of the leg where it met the seat.
Metal. A bracket—simple, steel, used to reinforce joints in furniture that’s seen too many years.
Wood glue had seeped around the edges, dried clear overnight, holding the bracket flush against the wood.
The repair was clean. Professional. A fix that wouldn’t be visible unless you were looking for it, which I was, because the chair felt different under my palm—solid, rooted, the way things are supposed to feel.
I looked across the room.
Mustang stood near the door with his back to me, pulling on his cut to adjust the fit across his shoulders with that same deliberate motion I’d watched a dozen times now.
His phone was in his hand, screen lit, thumb scrolling through whatever messages had come in while the coffee brewed.
He didn’t turn. Didn’t acknowledge the chair, or me standing beside it with my fingers on the bracket he’d installed while I slept.
Didn’t offer an explanation or wait for thanks or make a production out of the fact that he’d fixed a problem I hadn’t even asked him to fix.
The contradiction hit me square in the chest, harder than it had any right to.
I’d expected a man who breaks things. A man with scarred knuckles and silver rings and a voice that could drop a room to silence with a single word. A man who walked through back doors with guns and zip ties and the cold certainty of someone who’d done terrible things and would do them again.
I had not expected a man who seals window gaps at five in the morning.
Who reinforces chair legs before they splinter.
Who moves through a space fixing what’s broken without announcing himself, without asking to be seen, without needing anyone to notice that the cold draft is gone or the hinge doesn’t whine or the chair sits steady now under the weight of a body.
I stood there with my hand on the bracket and my throat tight and nothing coming out of my mouth because what do you say to a man like that?
Thank you feels too small. Why did you do this feels too obvious.
The questions I actually wanted to ask,who are you, really, and who taught you to take care of things this quietly, and has anyone ever taken care of you the same way,those questions sat in my chest where the tightness was, heavy and unformed, and I didn’t have the words for them yet.
So, I said nothing. Just let my fingers trace the edge of the bracket one more time, feeling the cool metal against my skin, and watched his broad back as he finished with his phone and reached for the door handle, and the silence between us held everything I couldn’t say.
“Supply run.”
Two words. Delivered while he was already moving toward the door, his phone tucked into his back pocket, keys in hand. No elaboration. No are you coming or do you need anything. Just supply run, flat and final, the way he said everything that wasn’t up for discussion.
I was at the sink, washing the coffee mugs. My hands paused under the cold water from the pump. “Now?”
He was already through the door, the screen banging shut behind him. I heard the truck’s engine cough to life outside, the rumble settling lower, patient, waiting.
The cab smelled the way I’d come to expect: motor oil, old leather, the stale mustiness of a vehicle that had carried too many things for too many years without anyone bothering to clean it.
The dashboard was cracked in three places.
The radio didn’t work—or if it did, Mustang hadn’t turned it on, and I wasn’t about to reach across and try.
The seats were vinyl, cracked along the seams, and the springs underneath had given up somewhere around the turn of the century.
I settled into the depression my body had already made over the past few days of sitting here, watching trees go by, and braced one hand against the door as Mustang put the truck in reverse and pulled us onto the gravel track that led away from the cabin.