Chapter Four #3
I should’ve stepped back.
I didn’t.
Daphne lifted her gaze to mine.
The heat between us didn’t need touching to work. It had the shed, the clipboard, the dust moving through the sunlight, the memory of lake water under a dock, and the small scrape of her breath when I leaned one inch closer before I caught myself.
My phone rang on the workbench.
Daphne startled.
I looked at the screen.
Fletcher.
The shed cooled in the wrong places.
Daphne saw the name. Her face didn’t change much, but her fingers closed around the strap of her tote.
I silenced the call without answering.
“You can take that,” she said.
“I know.”
The phone stopped ringing.
Outside, Birdie laughed. Gus said, “Kid, step away from the bin.”
Daphne shifted her tote higher on her shoulder. “I should go.”
I wanted to tell her not to.
That would’ve been a bad idea for more reasons than I could count, and the first one still sat under her initials on the hours sheet.
I picked up her water bottle from the bench and handed it to her. “Take this. Stretch tonight.”
Her mouth curved. “You’re very invested in my hamstrings.”
“Your hamstrings keep making poor decisions.”
“My hamstrings are victims of unfamiliar labor.”
“They can tell me that after they stretch.”
Her smile softened again. “You always make stretching sound serious.”
“Your hamstrings started it.”
She took the bottle. This time, she let her fingers brush mine on purpose.
It lasted one second.
It lasted long enough.
“I’ll see you for the last four,” she said.
“I’ll be here.”
She walked out of the shed into the white noon light. I stayed where I was with my hand still half-open, like an idiot who hadn’t learned a thing from the pipe cap.
At the gate, Birdie lifted her basket. “Daphne, bring that kneeling pad back tomorrow if he lets you steal it.”
Daphne turned. “I’ll return it in excellent condition.”
“I’ve heard promises before,” Birdie said.
“Then I’ll keep mine vague.”
Tyler pointed toward the shed. “Should I ask what happened in there?”
Daphne glanced back at me, and her smile hit hard enough that I had to put one hand on the workbench.
“Ask Zane,” she said. “He’s had a rough morning.”
Then she stepped through the gate and headed toward her car.
The phone rang again.
I waited until Daphne was past the P-Patch sign before I answered.
“What?” I said.
Fletcher exhaled into the line. “You know, most people start with hello.”
“Most people stop calling after the first time I don’t answer.”
“Then I suppose we’re both disappointing each other.”
I walked out of the shed and crossed toward the south fence. The repaired drip line darkened the soil in even spots along the row. Daphne had done that work, and it held.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“A serious conversation.”
“We’ve had it.”
“We’ve had the part where you say no and pretend that counts as strategy.”
I stopped near the fence. Past the scrub grass, my land rose in pines and hard summer shade. Beargrass Lake flashed blue through a break in the trees.
“No is a strategy when the question is whether I’m selling,” I said.
“Nobody’s asking you to sign anything today.”
“You say that like it’s generosity.”
“I say it because timing matters. The people at the table are getting impatient.”
“Tell them to stretch.”
Fletcher went quiet for half a beat. “That might be funnier if you weren’t standing in the way of a real opportunity.”
“The P-Patch doesn’t need your kind of opportunity.”
“It needs more than tomatoes and stubbornness.”
My grip tightened around the phone. “Careful.”
His voice smoothed out. Fletcher could sand an insult until it looked like advice. “I’m not attacking your garden, Zane. I’m saying there’s a bigger picture here.”
“I know the picture. You keep trying to draw my property into it.”
“You own the natural access point.”
“I own land I’m not selling.”
“Access can be structured without a sale.”
“There it is.”
“I’m trying to give you options before people stop asking nicely.”
I looked toward the gate where Daphne had left. Four hours remained on her sheet. One more shift, and she’d be done with the court side of this place.
I wasn’t done with her.
I also wasn’t letting Fletcher put his hands on the one thing he’d been circling all week.
“You can stop asking now,” I said.
“That’s not how this works.”
“It works that way with me.”
Fletcher sighed. “Fine. Then I’ll stop asking.”
I stopped walking.
“That better mean what it sounds like,” I said.
“It means you don’t get to pretend your no ends this for everyone else.”
“Fletcher.”
“Sleep on it, little brother.”
I turned back toward the south fence, toward the pines, toward the flash of blue water he kept talking about like it belonged to him.
“My answer won’t change by morning,” I said.
“Then maybe your morning will.”
The call went dead.
I stood at the edge of the garden with Daphne’s work drying dark in the soil, my brother’s threat cooling against my ear, and Beargrass Lake bright through the trees.
Then I closed my hand around the phone and looked at the water, done letting Fletcher decide what I kept.