Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
DESI
DESI
Three days without him is enough to confirm what I already knew. The cabin feels wrong.
Not broken. Not empty. Wrong. The coffee tastes the same from the French press but I'm pouring it into the cactus mug because it's the only mug that feels right now, and every time I wrap my hands around it I think about his face when I gave it to him.
My kitchen table has too much space. My bed is too cold on the left side where he slept.
The garden wall where he kissed me keeps catching my eye through the window above the sink.
Thursday morning the water heater delivery doesn't come.
He cancelled it. The roofing company doesn't call either.
He cancelled that too. Both confirmations arrive in my email because apparently he gave them my address for follow-up, which means even in retreat, even doing what I asked, Beckett Rhodes is making sure I know he listened.
The trench we dug together is holding perfectly.
Irrigation line running clean through every emitter, feeding the new beds.
Every time I walk past it I think about his blisters.
How he dug for three hours before I noticed.
How he didn't complain. How he sat on the edge of the trench with his massive hands open in my lap while I put antiseptic on the raw skin, and the look on his face wasn't pain.
It was wonder. Like nobody had ever cleaned a wound for him before.
Thursday night I eat leftover rice standing at the counter because the table feels too big for one person again. It didn't feel too big before Beck. It seated one just fine. Now the empty chair across from mine has a specific shape to its emptiness. Broad shouldered. Six foot two. Whiskey eyed.
My cousin Margot calls while I'm scraping the bowl.
"So. The billionaire."
"How do you know about the billionaire?"
"Nadia told Zara who told Venus who told Sage who texted me. Small town, Desi. You knew this when I told you to move out here."
Margot Dubois, my mother's niece, the woman who told me about the Vancouver mountain area in the first place, who connected me with her real estate contact, who referred me to the client I just landed.
She's in Crimson Hollow running a restaurant that's become the heartbeat of the town.
Declan Ridge, her man, built her kitchen and apparently her entire world.
She understands building things from nothing.
"He called a roofer for my house while I was gone. Ordered a water heater without asking."
"And you sent him home."
"Yes."
"Good." Pause. "Was he sorry?"
"He said I was right. Cancelled everything."
"Also good." Another pause, longer. "You gonna let him come back?"
"I don't know."
"Yes you do." Margot's voice goes soft. Rare for her. "You called me, Desi. You don't call me for advice. You call me when you've already made a decision and you need somebody to tell you it's okay."
"He tried to fix my life."
"Did he? Or did he see a leaky roof and do the only thing he knows how to do? Because from where I'm sitting, watching Declan learn how to love me without fixing me, these mountain men aren't broken. They're just using the wrong tool."
I'm quiet for a long time.
"He cancelled it, Margot. Both things. Before I even asked. He just cancelled them."
"Because he heard you."
"He heard me."
"So now the question is whether you heard him."
She hangs up without saying goodbye because Margot considers goodbyes a waste of perfectly good silence. My phone sits on the counter. The screen goes dark.
What did Beck actually say? In between the apology, the acknowledgment that he was wrong. The thing underneath.
I'm thirty-seven years old and I couldn't name a single person outside my company who'd notice if I disappeared.
A man who's never been valued for anything except what he can provide. Who's never been wanted for something money can't buy. Who showed up at my door in the rain because I was the closest light.
He didn't call a roofer because he thinks my house isn't good enough. He called a roofer because solving problems is the only language anyone's ever taught him for love. And I punished him for speaking the only language he knows.
Was I right that he overstepped? Yes. Was he right to cancel everything the second I told him? Yes. Did he hear me? Yes.
Did I hear him?
Friday morning I wake up at five thirty. Old habit. My feet hit the cold floor. The cabin ticks with its familiar sounds, the stove pilot clicking, the pipes humming, the roof settling. My roof. With its leaks. With its damaged shingles. With its imperfections that I chose.
By six I'm dressed. Work boots on. Hair wrapped. Standing in my garden looking at the stone wall where he kissed me.
My mother called yesterday too. Didn't mention Beck because she doesn't know about Beck yet, but she talked about the restaurant the way she sometimes does when the catering business has a slow week. Not sad. Just remembering.
"Your father never fixed anything I didn't ask him to fix," she said. "But he was always in the room when I fixed it myself. Holding the flashlight. Handing me the wrench. Eating my cooking while I worked."
"Is that the secret, Maman?"
"The secret is finding someone who understands that being present is more useful than being helpful. Those are two different jobs."
I think about that now. Standing in my garden at six a.m. with dew on the stone wall, staring through the trees toward Beck's property. Present versus helpful. Showing up versus solving.
Tuesday he dug my trench with bare hands until his palms bled.
Didn't hire a crew. Didn't suggest a machine.
Picked up a shovel and dug wrong until I taught him to dig right.
Wednesday he pushed my grocery cart while I argued about squash, listened to every word, ate three bowls of my soup.
Thursday he held still while I put my freezing feet on his legs at dawn and didn't complain because my comfort mattered more than his.
That's presence. That's showing up. And the second I left town on Friday, he reverted to the old tool because the new one still feels unfamiliar in his hands.
He's learning. Slowly. Badly. The way he digs trenches and plants groundcover. But he's learning.
The mortar between two of the lower stones in my wall needs repointing. A small crack. Nothing structural. Just time and weather doing what they do.
Everything worth keeping requires maintenance. Even walls. Even people.
Especially people.
By seven I'm walking next door. His driveway crunches under my boots.
The construction crew isn't here yet. The house is further along than the last time I saw it up close, the framing filled in with walls now, windows installed on the south face.
It looks less like a monument and more like somewhere a person might actually live.
He's on his knees in the dirt.
My brain stalls. Beckett Rhodes, billionaire, is kneeling in the garden bed along his unfinished front walkway.
Jeans dirty. Grey T-shirt streaked with soil.
He's got a flat of seedlings beside him.
Small ones. Groundcover. My fingers recognize the variety before my head catches up.
Creeping thyme. Hardy to this elevation, drought tolerant once established, will spread between flagstones and bloom purple in summer.
He's planting them wrong. The spacing is too close, the holes too shallow. He's holding a trowel in a way that suggests he Googled "how to plant groundcover" at two a.m. and the YouTube video let him down.
"Your spacing's off."
His head snaps up. Dirt on his jaw. Soil under his nails. Those whiskey eyes wide, startled, and then something I can't look away from. Hope. Raw, unguarded, stupid hope on the face of a man who could buy this entire mountain.
"Desi."
"The thyme needs six inches minimum or they'll compete for root space once they spread." Crossing the distance between us, I crouch beside him. Take the trowel. "And you're not breaking up the root ball. If you put them in like this they'll stay pot-bound."
"I watched a video."
"The video lied." Turning the seedling out of its plastic cell, my thumbs work the roots apart, loosening the tight spiral, giving them room. "You have to break them up. It feels rough but it's how they establish."
He watches my hands. Studies the motion. Picks up the next seedling. Tries it. Does it wrong. Tries again. Gets closer.
"Why are you planting groundcover?"
"Because I want my walkway to look like something.
Because I realized I have a house with no garden and a neighbour who builds living things for a profession and I didn't once ask her what she'd plant here.
" He sets the seedling in the hole at the right depth.
Pats the soil. "Because I figured if I can't buy my way into your life, maybe I can dig. "
My throat tightens.
"Beck."
"I cancelled the water heater. Cancelled the roofer.
Cancelled the board meeting in Vancouver because none of it mattered as much as figuring out how to show you that I'm more than a checkbook.
" He's still kneeling. Dirt on his hands.
Looking up at me. "I don't know how to do this, Desi.
Every relationship I've ever had was built on what I could provide.
Nobody ever wanted the part of me that doesn't come with a price tag.
And then you gave me a cactus mug and poured coffee and told me about your parents' restaurant, and I wanted to be someone worth more than what I can buy.
But the only tools I had were the old ones. "
"So you're learning new tools."
"I'm trying." He holds up the seedling. "I'm terrible at it."
"Your spacing's still off."
"Teach me."
Two words. Simple. Stripped of every defense he has. And they break through the last wall I was holding.
"You can't fix my roof."
"I know."
"You can't fix my stove or my water heater or my life."
"I know."