2. Cole
Chapter two
Cole
Iknow when Avery Stone watches me. I don’t know why. Maybe men like me learn to notice when attention turns into trouble, because hers feels different from what I am used to. It does not judge. It warms, and that makes it worse.
After dinner, I leave the porch before the house can pull me back inside. The main house glows behind me with voices, laughter, dishes clinking, and the kind of family noise I have no business standing too close to. Stone Ridge does that. It makes a man forget where he belongs.
I cross the yard toward the equipment shed, where Milo waits near the side door with his hands shoved in his pockets and worry all over his face. He is nineteen, maybe twenty, all elbows and nerves, with a habit of assuming every mistake means the floor is about to drop out from under him.
“I jammed the latch,” he says before I get close. “I’m sorry. It stuck, and then I pushed too hard.”
I look at the shed door. The latch hangs crooked. “It’s metal,” I say. “Metal bends.”
His shoulders stay tight. “Preston’s going to be mad.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
I do. Preston has plenty of lawyer in him, but he’s fair. He corrects it, names it, and moves on. That still feels like a trick sometimes.
I crouch and study the latch. “Grab the small toolbox.”
Milo hesitates. “Am I in trouble?”
“For a bent latch?” I glance at him. “No. You told the truth. That counts here.”
I bend the latch back while Milo watches, like I am teaching him something more important than door repair. Maybe I am.
“Try it.”
He lifts the latch and closes the door. It catches right this time, and the relief on his face is almost painful to see.
“See?” I close the toolbox. “Fixed.”
“Thanks.”
I nod, and he heads for the cabins lighter than he was ten minutes ago. I stay where I am because the night is quiet out here, and quiet is easier than the warmth spilling from the main house.
Avery is part of that warmth, and that is the problem.
I rub the back of my hand, right over the place her fingers touched earlier.
Her touch was soft in a way a man does not soon forget.
She looks right at the things I try to hide and waits for me to admit they hurt.
Then there was the tattoo comment, the one she turned pink over after saying it out loud.
I should not still be thinking about that either.
I know better than to mistake kindness for safety or let a pretty woman with sharp eyes and soft hands make me forget how fast good things can turn. I have lived long enough under suspicion to understand that rule.
People like the mystery until they learn the answer.
The shed light buzzes above me. I set the toolbox back on the shelf and reach for the rag hanging from a hook. Grease stains my fingers from the old hinge, and I scrub harder than necessary.
Avery asked Preston about me. I saw it through the window, saw the way she looked out. I knew Preston would not tell her. Not because he would betray me, but because Avery wanted to know.
I can handle curiosity from most people. They want the charge, the headline, the reason I am here instead of somewhere respectable. They want enough of the story to make me fit whatever box feels safest. Criminal. Second chance. Warning sign.
Avery’s curiosity is worse because it does not feel like judgment. It feels personal.
Something about her keeps catching at the back of my mind. I have seen her somewhere, but where? The question rattles around in my head, but I have no answer yet.
When the shed door creaks behind me, I turn too fast.
Avery stands just outside the doorway with her medical bag in one hand and a dish towel over her shoulder. The porch light behind her catches in her hair, turning the loose strands gold.
She lifts one brow. “That was either a guilty reaction or impressive reflexes.”
“Habit.”
The word comes out before I can stop it, and her expression softens. I regret giving her even that much.
“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I absolutely did.”
I look away first. “You need something?”
“Milo came in looking less like the world was ending, so I figured you had something to do with it.”
“He bent a latch. We fixed it.”
“We?”
“He fixed it. I held the pliers.”
Her mouth curves. “Generous of you.”
I should not like the way she smiles. I should not notice that she looks tired around the eyes, yet still steady, like she has spent the whole day carrying pieces of other people and still has room left to stand here with me.
“You always carry that bag?” I ask.
“Pretty much.”
“Expecting someone to bleed?”
“On this ranch? Always.”
Despite myself, my mouth almost moves, but her gaze drops to it, and the almost-smile vanishes before it becomes real. The air is charged with electricity between us.
Avery steps into the shed, and I make myself stay still. She does not crowd me. She sets her bag on the workbench and glances at the repaired latch.
“You’re good with your hands,” she says.
My chest tightens before I can stop it. People have said that before, but not like her. Not with quiet respect. Not like she is noticing skill instead of damage.
“I’ve had jobs where it helped,” I say.
“What kind of jobs?”
There it is, the question beneath the question.
I wipe my hands on the rag again. “Auto body. Welding. Shop work.”
Her eyes sharpen with interest, not suspicion. “You liked it?”
“Yes.”
The answer comes too fast. Too honest.
Avery leans one hip against the workbench. “Do you miss it?”
I look toward the open door, the dark yard, the cabins beyond it, and the mountains standing black against the sky.
Somewhere out there is the life I had before everything broke.
The noise of the shop. The smell of metal, paint, and hot engines.
The satisfaction of making something ruined look whole again.
“Sometimes,” I say.
She does not push, and that should make it easier. It doesn’t.
“Preston told me to ask you,” she says quietly.
My hand stills on the rag.
There are plenty of ways to answer that. I could pretend I do not know what she means. I could make a joke, if I were the kind of man who knew how to use one as armor. I could walk out.
I do none of those things.
“He was right.”
Her breath catches, soft enough that most men would miss it, but I don’t.
“But not tonight,” I say.
Avery nods once. No offense. No wounded pride. No demand dressed up as concern. Just okay, like my answer is allowed to stand. Like it is respected instead of challenged.
That does something to me that I am not prepared for, and then she picks up her medical bag.
“For what it’s worth, I wasn’t asking because I think you’re trouble.”
I almost laugh. “That makes one of us.”
Her eyes meet mine, steady and serious.
“No,” she says. “That makes two.”
Then she turns and walks out of the shed, leaving me with the buzzing light, the smell of grease, and the uncomfortable feeling that some doors do not need force to open.
Some just need the right person standing on the other side.