Chapter 8 #2
I return my attention to the desk. The joinery is nearly impossible to mess up now. I’ve done this long enough that my hands know the steps even when my brain is elsewhere, scattered across a conversation I didn’t ask to have.
“She’s not staying,” I hear myself say. The words come out flat. Factual. Designed to close this down. “She came for sixty days to deal with her inheritance. She has a life in Austin. A life. An apartment. People who know her.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, but—”
“So you’re just assuming?” Piper shifts her weight, getting more comfortable like we’re settling in for a long conversation.
“You’re assuming she’s leaving and protecting yourself in advance by fixing ovens instead of talking to her?
By building mystery furniture instead of doing literally anything about the actual situation? ”
“It’s not protection. It’s—” I set down my tools. This conversation is clearly not happening while I’m occupied with something else. Piper won’t allow it.
“Basic cowardice disguised as practicality?” Piper offers, the tone not unkind but direct. “Classic Jace move. Very typical for someone who lost his parents and then lost his grandfather and spent the last few years learning that everyone eventually leaves.”
I set my chisel down on the bench.
“Are you a therapist now?” I ask quietly.
“No, but I’m married to a firefighter/hockey player, and I’ve heard enough station talk to know that you’ve been alone for seven years by choice.
” She hops off the bench, moving to the window that overlooks the main road.
“You’ve turned down every date that’s been offered.
You’ve made yourself deliberately inaccessible.
And I watched you decide that a temporary woman was the exception to that rule—watched you decide that maybe she was worth the risk of breaking your own pattern. ”
She glances back at me. Her expression is gentle, which makes it worse somehow. Pity is easier to defend against than understanding.
“And now someone interesting is here and you’re terrified,” Piper continues.
“Terrified she’ll either stay—which requires actual vulnerability, which requires showing her the part of you that’s still grieving—or she’ll leave, which confirms what you already believe.
That people don’t stay. That love is temporary.
So instead you fix ovens and build furniture and wait for her to make the decision for you. ”
She drinks her coffee like she hasn’t just diagnosed the entire architecture of my emotional damage with the accuracy of a blueprint.
“Gabby’s different,” Piper adds, almost conversationally.
Like we’re discussing the weather and not the foundational structure of my personality.
“She’s funny and smart and she’s terrified too.
That’s not weakness, by the way. That’s actually the thing that makes someone worth the risk.
The fact that she’s scared means she hasn’t shut down her feelings.
Means this matters to her. If she decides to stay, it’ll be because she actually chose it. ”
She leaves before I can respond—which is good, because I have no response.
I have only the knowledge that my privacy has been collectively dismantled and analyzed like it’s a piece of IKEA furniture everyone’s free to comment on.
I have the knowledge that Piper Lockwood is right, which is worse than if she was wrong.
The afternoon stretches out. I work on the desk. The joinery becomes perfect. Too perfect. I start sanding the edges, polishing the surfaces until they gleam. The work keeps my hands busy and my mind fractionally distracted, but not enough.
That evening, Gabby appears at the workshop door carrying the arrival photo on her phone, looking like someone who’s been elected to deliver bad news but decided to make it funny instead.
“I know,” I say before she can start. It’s not fair—she hasn’t said anything yet—but I need to set the pace of this conversation before she can.
“You know that 247 people like a picture of me walking around in heels, borrowed flannel, and absolute desperation?” She sits on the edge of my workbench, mimicking Piper’s posture from earlier—casual, at ease, like she belongs in my space.
“You know that the entire town has apparently been discussing my arrival strategy like it’s a marketing campaign? ”
I lean back in my chair, getting a better view of her. The photo is still pulled up on her phone screen. That moment—the heels, the windblown hair, the expression of someone who’s made a life choice and is currently regretting it with full-body commitment.
“Welcome to Ashwood Falls,” I say. “You exist publicly now. Photographs get shared. People have opinions. It’s not malicious. It’s just—everyone here knows everyone. And everyone likes knowing about the new person.”
“I exist publicly.” She sounds horrified. “I came to Alaska specifically to not exist publicly. I was supposed to hide in a kitchen and process my emotions in private and have a complete emotional breakdown without anyone actually seeing the breakdown. The plan was simple.”
“How’s that working?”
“Terrible.” She shows me the photo again, and there’s something in her voice that’s shifted—the horror giving way to something like resigned amusement.
“My oven won’t cooperate and now a moose has stronger opinions about my work schedule than I do.
And apparently I’ve become a meme on the community page.
This is—a strong choice, showing up like that. ”
And she laughs.
Not a small laugh. Not her careful, polite laugh.
A real one—the one Jax had seen, the kind that comes from recognition and irony and the whole ridiculous situation of being seen in the exact moment you least want to be seen.
She laughs and her whole face changes. The worry that she usually carries loosens.
For a moment she’s someone who’s been caught and is deciding that fighting it is pointless.
She laughs and I look at her and can’t look away.
It’s a problem. A significant, load-bearing problem that’s going to require me to actually think about my life choices.
Because Piper’s right. Because Jax is right.
Because Dotty was right from the moment Gabby arrived in those heels looking lost enough that everyone paid attention.
Everyone’s been watching this happen but me, and now I’m caught watching her laugh and knowing I can’t unfake the distance I’ve been trying to maintain.
“You’re staring,” she says, still smiling, her eyes meeting mine. “That’s a thing you’re doing right now. Obvious staring.”
“I’m thinking about your oven,” I lie. It’s immediate and smooth and completely false. “Still worried about the temperature gauge. The calibration might be—”
“Lucifer’s fine.” She’s still laughing slightly, amused by the lie or maybe amused that I tried. “We’ve reached an understanding. He turns on when I ask. I don’t ask him to do anything unreasonable. It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship.”
She hops off the bench with a casual grace that says she’s done here, done with this conversation or maybe just done with this moment. “You build furniture for a living. I talk to kitchen appliances. We’re both weird. At least I know my oven’s name, and we have a productive relationship.”
She leaves before I can respond—before I can say anything about how I know her name too, how I’ve been thinking about her for weeks, how the oven was always just an excuse—and I’m left alone in the workshop with her laugh still in the air and Piper’s words in my head.
The desk is nearly done. Sometime soon, it will be finished.
Sometime soon, I’ll need to decide whether to find a buyer and deliver it or keep making excuses about why it’s not quite perfect yet.
Whether to have a conversation that matters or keep building things in silence and pretending that distance is a choice rather than a consequence.
I pick up my chisel and get back to work.
The joints need more sanding. The surfaces need more polish. The wood needs to become something it wasn’t before. Transformation requires time and attention and the willingness to understand that the work is about more than just technique.
For now, I sand the joints and pretend I don’t know exactly why Jax is confident enough to take bets on my future.
Because he’s already won.
They all have.
And the worst part is, I think I knew it the moment she arrived.