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He took long enough that Chester lost interest in us. “I was my father’s best project,” he said. “Not his son first. His succession plan. He had me on crews at fourteen and in meetings at nineteen, and what he was teaching under the framing and the concrete was how to look at a place and see what it would be worth once the people in it were gone.” He rubbed his thumb across the tape on his palm. “I decided at twenty-four that I’d use the same skills for the opposite purpose. Better language. Revitalization instead of assemblage. Community investment instead of extraction.”

“Those are real differences.”

“Are they?” He looked up. “I tried to erase forty years of Mrs. Morrison’s life because a light maze looked better on a spreadsheet. Then I used the drawings you trusted me with, and I never warned you.” He looked down at the tape on his palm. “That sounds a lot like my father.”

The horses moved. Outside, the wind had settled into one long note.

Every answer I could give him would be a lie.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ve known you for fifteen days, and right now we’re trapped in a barn while you sit close enough to ruin my judgment.”

“That’s fair.”

“So don’t ask me tonight. Show me.”

“What does it look like?”

“You tell me.”

He shook his head. “If I choose the test, I’ll choose one I already know I can pass. You choose.”

“All right. I’ll stop treating every proposal like an attack. You stop deciding what I can handle.”

“How?”

“Tell me the bad news the day you get it. Don’t wait until you’ve solved it or made it presentable. Tell me that day.”

Griffin went quiet. He looked at the phone lying face down on the hay bale. For a moment, I thought he might reach for it. He didn’t. “Agreed,” he said.

“Say it.”

“I’ll tell you the bad news the day I get it.” He held my gaze. “And if I hurt you or get something wrong, tell me. Don’t shut me out.”

“You get to add a rule?”

“Only if we’re doing this together.”

My pulse stopped respecting the agenda. “Fine. I’ll tell you.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth and returned to my eyes. He stayed where he was, leaving the choice to me.

I crossed the eighteen inches of cold barn air and kissed him.

For one awful heartbeat, he didn’t respond, and I was certain I had misread everything and would still have to live in this county afterward. Then his hand came to my face.

The barn wall was cold against my back. Griffin wasn’t. He held my waist with one hand and cupped my jaw with the other. The storm hammered the roof, and I stopped hearing it.

When we pulled apart, we were both breathing hard.

“That was—” His voice had gone rough.

“Overdue.”

“And probably unwise.”

“I can live with that.” I stayed where I was. “Tomorrow, though, I have to face Pearl.”

“What will you tell her?”