“We’ll make up the time on the water,” he said, already moving past me toward the canoe pulled up alongside the dock. “Full day on the river. Good conditions for it.”
I watched him crouch down and check something on the hull. I didn’t know what he was looking for. His hands worked the boat with the kind of certainty that came from doing something a thousand times. And then he was done, with the easy finality of a man who hadn’t needed to think about it at all.
I wanted to still be annoyed. I was working on it.
He looked up at me from where he crouched, and something in his expression shifted—just slightly, like he’d caught something he hadn’t expected.
“You can leave your bag in the box up by the building,” he said. “Or I can stow it in the dry bag if there’s anything you need on the water.”
“I’ll keep it close,” I said.
“Sure.” He stood and moved to hold the canoe steady against the dock. “Whenever you’re ready.”
I looked at the canoe. I looked at the water. I looked at the man holding the boat like he had all morning and intended to spend it right here.
I took off my sandals, tucked them in my tote, and stepped in.
The canoe rocked once, gently, and then settled. Cade pushed off from the dock without a word, and the current took us, slow and easy, out into the wide green morning.
My watch said 9:02.
I tucked it into my bag and made myself leave it there.
2
CADE
She’d been ready to chew me out.
I’d seen it the second I came around the corner—the set of her jaw, the way she was standing at the edge of the dock like she was braced for something.
Four minutes. She’d clocked every one of them and she’d had something prepared. Then I looked at her and whatever it was didn’t make it out.
I knew the feeling.
I’d been doing this job long enough that customers blurred together after a while. Not in a bad way. Just in the way of a man who’d seen enough mornings on this river that he’d stopped looking for anything new. Most days, that was fine by me.
Today, I hadn’t expected her.
She was standing there in a cover-up and sunglasses with her bag over her shoulder and her chin up, and something in me went still the way it did right before the river did something the map didn’t account for. I knew it immediately. Didn’t question it. I wasn’t built for questioning things I already knew.
She’d called me out on the four minutes, and I’d let her. And now she was sitting in the bow of the canoe with her shouldersslowly unknotting and her eyes on the water like she was seeing it for the first time.
I kept my paddle moving and watched her without making it obvious.
She was trying to relax. I could see the effort in it, which meant she hadn’t done it in a while. There was a difference between a person resting and a person attempting rest like it was a task on a list. She was the second kind. She held herself like someone who was used to being needed, used to being the one who knew what came next.
Out here, there was no “next.” Just the current and the tree line and the way the light moved on the water.
It would either settle her or drive her crazy. I was betting on settle.
“You do this every day?” she asked. She was still watching the river.
“Most days.”
“Must be nice.” She said it quietly, almost to herself.
“It is.”
