Chapter 3
Sleeves rolled, arms already marked with dust. She was staking the ground with a precision that was, if he was being honest, pretty fucking admirable. But he’d be damned if he let her know that. He stood in her line of sight and waited.
Asha didn’t jump. Didn’t startle or even pause, just sighted down her tape and called, “You’re late.”
“It’s seven-twelve,” Gavin said.
She smiled, thin and sharp. “Time is relative.”
He wanted to argue the point, but she’d clearly been here long enough to make him look like the tourist. He tried to ignore how much that stung.
“You already started marking the foundation?”
“Per the plan.” She turned the stake in with a boot heel, checking the line. “Unless you want to redesign the whole thing.”
“No.” He came closer, scanning her work. “Not yet, anyway.”
They stood there, both looking at the flagged outline of what would become a six-person bunkhouse. The sun was climbing now, pulling a faint mist off the grass below. Far off, a pickup engine chugged to life and a chorus of crows bitched at each other from the trees.
He heard the soft thud of tires on dirt and turned to see Andy Harvey coming up the last hundred yards in the Polaris Ranger with a cooler strapped to the back, radio blasting old country from the dash. He killed the engine and dismounted with a groan, waving a folded paper at them.
“Mornin’, you two.”
“Morning,” said Asha, first.
Gavin nodded, already bracing for the social part.
Andy thumped the paper onto the bed of the farm truck. “This here’s the blueprint. You’ve got the stakes laid out?”
“Started,” Asha said. “Ground’s soft, though. Some of it’s gonna shift if we get rain.”
“Use the gravel in the shed, just make sure it’s even. Concrete arrives on Tuesday. Everything else—lumber, insulation, roof trusses—comes in stages.”
Gavin scanned the plans while Andy talked, tracking numbers, jotting notes.
Gavin grunted throughout the entire time.
Andy handed over a battered thermos. “Bee says you’re to hydrate, or else.
She’s got eyes everywhere, so you just need to do what she says.
” He left them there, walking back down the hill toward the main house.
Gavin unrolled the plans onto the toolbox and flattened them with a palm. “Did you check the grade on the northwest corner? That’s where the runoff will hit hardest.”
“I saw it. I figured we dig a little deeper there, pour extra to compensate.”
“You figured.”
Asha shrugged. “I’m not in love with the solution. But we’re not gonna move the ridge.”
He crouched, pressing his thumb into the dirt. “We can re-contour the slope a bit, at least near the build line. Won’t take much.”
She eyed him for a beat. “You wanna dig it out by hand?”
“If it means the footings don’t rot, yeah.”
“Waste of energy.”
“Only if you plan to do it wrong.”
She stepped closer. “I plan to do it the way that lasts.”
Gavin’s jaw tightened. “That’s what I said.”
They stared, both waiting for the other to blink first.
Slowly, Gavin realized she was very pretty.
Her terse tone and no-shit approach made him overlook just how fucking beautiful she was.
His first thought was that she had no business being out here doing this kind of work.
But then he caught himself. She was here for the same reason he was.
Peace. He hated himself for noticing how full her lips were and how her nose turned up at the tip.
Or how the sun shone on her brown skin. Hell, he needed to focus on what he came here to do and get the fuck out of Dodge.
“Fine,” she said. “You want to start with the ground work, we’ll do it. I’ll take the east side.”
He nodded. “I’ll mark the runoff path, get it started. Then we meet in the middle.”
“Meet in the middle,” she echoed, just loud enough for him to know she was making fun of him.
They worked in silence for the first hour, the kind that was so heavy it actually made the shovels seem louder.
She dug with fast, tight motions, tossing dirt in neat mounds and moving quickly to the next.
He liked her technique but said nothing, saving his breath for the labor.
By eight-thirty, his shirt was stuck to his back and his hands already ached from the cold steel of the spade.
He watched her as he worked, the way she sized up each shovel-full, never overexerting, never getting lazy.
She was strong but didn’t show off. She must have felt his eyes on her, because at one point she straightened, wiped her forehead with the inside of her wrist, and said, “You think we’ll hit rock? ”
“Not until the third foot. Andy’s got the geological survey.”
She went back to work, but her pace matched his now. Maybe she was testing him. Or maybe she just didn’t want to lose ground.
By ten o’clock, they’d finished the first pass on the perimeter and were down to fine-tuning the grade. Asha pulled the tape and double-checked the widths while Gavin used the line level to mark the points for the footings.
He glanced up, catching her watching him this time.
She didn’t look away. “I was told you run a consulting firm. How’d you end up swinging a shovel and digging up dirt out here?”
He flicked a bit of dust off the top of the level. “Pays to know how things work on the ground. Not everything runs on Zoom calls and spreadsheets.”
She took that in. “You could’ve just said you like the exercise.”
“I don’t.”
She laughed. Not a big laugh, just a short, surprised burst that made him like her for one second before he remembered he wasn’t here for that.
He scanned the site. “We’ll need at least two more hands when the real materials get here. No way we set the beams with just the two of us.”
She agreed, nodding her head in agreement.
They broke for water, sitting on the tailgate of the Polaris, not quite next to each other but not distant either.
Gavin poured a little into his palm and wiped it over his neck, cooling the skin. He could feel the sun heating up, the air turning from crisp to sharp. Cows called to each other below, a sound so familiar it almost faded into the background.
When the water break was done, they dug into the framing.
The rest of the plywood went down easily.
They set up the wall plates, squared the corners, then started the slow, brutal work of raising the first studs and nailing them off.
Heat swarmed around them like hornets, the only wind coming from the sudden gusts whenever a cloud moved to block the sun.
They spoke even less than before, but something had shifted in the silence.
Less edge, more rhythm. He found himself wanting to close the gap, to tell a joke, or maybe just a comment about the weather, but every time he opened his mouth the words dried up.
He watched Asha run the tape, her thumb pressed against the metal tang, eyes squinting as she checked the measure against the print in her other hand.
Just after eleven, she called for a wrench. “Box end, three-eighths. Should be in my bag.”
Gavin walked over, careful to keep his shadow off her workspace, and found the tool bag open beside her knee. The wrench was right on top. He grabbed it, but his hand hesitated when he saw the scrap of paper wedged next to the side pocket.
It was torn from a notebook, ink faded but readable: Breathe. One count at a time.
He stared for a second too long, then handed over the wrench. She took it with a quick “thanks,” not meeting his eyes.
He recognized the trick. It was a fallback from panic training.
It was combat breathing, taught to steady a blown-out nervous system.
He used it himself, sometimes in meetings, more often in the dark when the shit started swirling around in his brain.
Seeing it in her bag tightened something in his chest. Not pity, exactly. More like kinship.
He watched her torque the anchor bolt, forearms flexed and sure. Saw the tiny tremor of fatigue in her hand as she backed off the pressure. She’d worked just as hard as him today, maybe harder. He wondered what kind of ghosts followed her at night that forced her to Silver Creek Ranch.
He wanted to say something to ease the tension.
Instead, he started predicting what she’d need.
He measured twice before she could ask. Fetched the box of nails when he saw her eyeing it.
Cut lengths of rebar for the anchor straps before she could even walk to the saw.
She noticed, too. After an hour of this, she stopped and said, “You running logistics now?”
He shrugged. “I can multitask.”
She rolled her eyes, but softer this time. “You should see my toolkit at home. My brothers used to call it the arsenal.”
He didn’t know what to do with that. So he just said, “You got siblings?”
“Four. All boys. Marines. Well, except for the one who got smart and went into the Air Force.”
He smiled, a real one, and it didn’t even feel forced. “Sounds like family holidays are intense.”
She hammered a stud into place, put her weight into it, then said, “You don’t know the half of it.”
The noise of shovels, tape snaps, and the slow groan of rakes filled the next hour.
They didn’t speak except when necessary, but somehow their pace synced.
By noon, the foundation trenches were squared, the grade held true, and all that was left was waiting for Andy’s okay before they started mixing gravel.
Asha packed up her gear first. “You got anything else before lunch? I’m starving.”
He shook his head. “Nah. Go grab some food.” Asha looked as if she were going to say something, but shook her head and turned away to walk down to the mess hall.
He wiped his hands on his pants, checked his phone for messages, found three missed calls from the Senator, and ignored them. The only thing he wanted to think about was wood, grass, horses, and how to not to lose his damn mind.
He walked down the ridge in silence, and for the first time in weeks, the voices in his head were just background static.