Birdie smiled sweetly. “I did.”
“Community still works,” Zane said.
His voice was blunt, but the corner of his mouth moved. The almost-smile hit me harder than it should’ve. I turned back to the beans and guided another vine around the twine before my face could give me away.
For a while, I managed to work.
I didn’t manage it gracefully or with the easy competence Zane seemed to bring to every living thing, broken tool, or questionable volunteer decision. But I tied the bean vines without strangling them, asked before touching anything that looked vegetable-adjacent, and drank water when Zane set a bottle on the bed rail beside me without saying a word.
The morning heated fast.
July settled over the P-Patch in bright layers. The sky was a hard polished blue. The pine shade shrank by inches. The tomato leaves gave off that sharp green smell every time the breeze moved. Somewhere beyond the south fence, past Zane’s land, Beargrass Lake flashed between the trees.
I kept catching glimpses of it.
A strip of blue and a scatter of light flashed through the trees, too pretty to be thinking about while I wore court-ordered dirt on my knees.
Zane caught me looking the third time.
He stood beside the drip-line crate, one hand braced on his hip, sun along the tattoos on his forearm. “You need a break?”
“No.” I pulled another vine toward the trellis. “I was admiring the view.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction, but not like he was annoyed. More like he was trying to decide whether to ask which view.
I absolutely wasn’t going to clarify.
“The lake’s that way, right?” I asked, because apparently I had chosen ruin.
Zane’s gaze moved past the fence, through the pines. “Beargrass.”
“It’s closer than I thought.”
“Through my land, yes.”
My fingers tightened around the twine.
His land. His lake access. His voice saying it like the words had roots.
The way he said it tugged at something low in my chest. Zane was the P-Patch director. He signed my hours. He moved through the city garden like a man responsible for every hose, fence board, and tender green thing inside it. But the land beyond the fence was different. It was his, and the space between us sharpened around the word.
Tyler wandered too close with a bucket of screened compost. “Are we talking about swimming? Because I support that direction for today’s labor.”
“We’re not swimming,” Zane said.
Tyler looked genuinely wounded. “Not even as rehabilitation?”
“You painted a parking meter. You don’t need aquatic rehabilitation.”
“It was artistic civil disobedience.”
“It was orange.”
“It had a lightning bolt.”
Gus shook his head without pausing over the fence repair. “City should’ve made you paint all the meters. At least then you’d have a skill.”
Birdie lifted her basket of peppers. “Nobody is swimming during crew hours.”
