Page 176 of The Fire Line

The corner of Harris’s mouth shifted, and that small reaction was enough to keep Jay there for the next hour. They worked without much conversation, and the repetition helped: carry the post, hold the wire, tighten it, move on. It gave Jay somewhere to put the pressure building beneath his ribs as Sunday drew closer.

He caught himself wondering how long the western fence would take to finish, then the barn, then everything else the fire had interrupted. Harris would not do any of it alone. He had Evan, Walt, ranch hands, neighbors, people who had arrived with food and equipment before the roads fully reopened. Jay was not necessary, but he wanted to stay anyway, and that was the part he did not trust.

Wanting had made temporary arrangements look sustainable before. He could stay a few weeks, work remotely, tell himself they were only buying time. Then he would leave for New York, another shoot, wherever work sent him next, and perhaps come back when he could. Harris might learn to expect him in pieces.

Miles had done that for years.

Jay had loved him and still built the relationship around his own departures until Miles stopped asking for more because there was no point. He would not do that to Harris merely because leaving hurt.

The knowledge should have stopped him. It didn’t.

“I could stay for a while,” he said.

Harris’s hands stopped on the wire.

“A couple weeks. Maybe longer. Priya can start the assembly. Most of what I need can happen from a laptop.”

Jay had checked. He had looked at flights, meetings, editing space. This was not an offer that had occurred to him spontaneously in a pasture.

Harris stared at him. “You got work.”

“So do you.”

“Ain’t your work.”

“No.”

Harris looked down at his bandaged hand. “You don’t need to stay because the ranch burned.”

“I know.”

“Or ’cause of what happened on the mountain.”

“I know that too.”

When Harris looked up, Jay saw the answer before he managed to hide it. The want was plain enough that Jay’s chest tightened, and for one second he thought Harris might finally say what neither of them had been willing to name.

Instead Harris looked away.

“You should go home Sunday.”

The words landed with almost surgical precision.

Jay lowered the post. “Is that what you want?”

Harris said nothing. A few yards away, Noah worked with his back to them, and farther uphill a truck moved along the ranch road. They had privacy only in the technical sense.

“Sunday’s the right call,” Harris said.

It still wasn’t an answer.

Jay could have pressed him. He could have made Harris look at him and say either stay or go, but some mixture of pride, self-preservation, and the memory of Miles accepting less and less until there was nothing left worth asking for stopped him.

“All right.”

“Jay.”

He waited. Again Harris looked close to saying something, and again nothing came.