“Tabs won’t save you from zucchini.”
“I’m starting to understand that.”
“Zane will keep you alive.”
I found him before I could stop myself.
He stood with Tyler near a crooked row, one hand on his hip, the other pointing at the ground while Tyler nodded with the grave focus of a man receiving instructions from a very muscular judge. Sun hit Zane’s hair and the ink on his arms. He looked stern, capable, and not remotely like a man anyone should fantasize about while holding a weed bucket.
It was already too late.
Birdie’s voice softened. “He looks tough, but he’s fair.”
I pulled another weed. “I wasn’t worried.”
“No?”
“No.” I dropped the weed into the bucket. “I’m mostly concerned about the mulch.”
“Smart girl.”
The next hour proved that the mulch deserved concern.
Zane brought over a wheelbarrow heaped with shredded bark and handed me a rake that was taller than my car’s monthly payment. He showed me how to spread the mulch around the base of the plants without smothering them.
“Thin layer,” he said. “Even coverage. Keep it off the stems.”
“Thin, even, no stem-smothering. Got it.”
“Don’t bury the carrots.”
“Was that on the table?”
“You tell me.”
I looked at the bed, then at the rake, then at the wheelbarrow. “No promises.”
His mouth twitched. “I’ll be over there.”
“Leaving me unsupervised with mulch feels reckless.”
“Then don’t make me regret trusting you with a rake.”
The words should have been about the rake and nothing else.
I knew he meant the rake, the mulch, and the basic expectation that I could follow instructions for more than ten minutes without committing a vegetable crime.
Still, heat crawled up my neck.
“I’ll take the work seriously,” I said.
“I know.” His voice went quieter. “You have been.”
For a second, I couldn’t answer.
Zane held my eyes, not mocking and not cruel, just careful.
I wanted to tell him enough to wipe that measured caution off his face. Not the whole ugly, stupid, mortifying story. Just enough that he’d stop seeing paperwork first.
