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"Warhip," he says, by way of greeting, and his gaze sweeps the space once, top to bottom, cataloging every joist and wire, and I would bet the six figures I do not yet have that he priced out three separate repairs in the span it took me to stand up.

"You came," I blurt.

"I said one conversation." His attention swings to Patsy, and something behind his eyes shutters, a steel door dropping. "I did not say two people."

Patsy rises, hand extended, already selling. "Patsy Johnson. I represent Jilly. And I have a number for you, Mr. Warhip, that is going to make this the easiest choice of your..."

"No."

He has not taken her hand. Her hand hangs in the air between them, orphaned.

He turns to me instead, and the full weight of that dark gold gaze settles on me alone, and my heart launches into the aerobic thing again, entirely without my consent.

"You," he says. "You talk. She stays quiet." A beat. "And no cameras while we talk."

I glance at Patsy. Patsy, for once in her natural life, closes her mouth.

"Deal," I say, before she can pry it open again.

He folds his arms, and the shirt strains, and the whole terrible logic of five million lost minds arranges itself in front of me, and I clear my throat and labor mightily to become a professional.

"Okay," I say. "Let me explain everything."

And behind him, through the open door, Patsy mouths one silent word at the back of his enormous head. Homestead. Like a prayer. Like a threat. Like the price of my entire future, which it is, and which he must not learn until he has already said yes.

CHAPTER 4

OGGAN

The hardware store smells of sawdust and machine oil and, underneath, the burnt tang of the coffee pot Judanna never cleans, and it is the one place in this town where my shoulders come down from around my ears.

I shove through the door with my supply list folded in one fist. Bar clamps. Number-eight screws. A box of the two-inch deck screws I run through the way other people eat peanuts. Ordinary things. Honest things. Things nobody films.

"There he is!"

Judanna's holler carries over three aisles of PVC fittings. She rounds the counter grinning, an orc woman built like a barrel and just as sturdy, an apron over her flannel and a pencil behind one ear, and she holds a tablet in her hand, which she should not, and she raises it toward me, which she absolutely should not.

"No," I say.

"You have not even looked."

"I have no need to look."

She looks anyway, and her grin splits wider, tusks and all. "Oggan. Oggan, my friend, my former husband, light of my platonic life. You are famous."

"I am buying screws."

"You are trending." She turns the tablet toward me, and I make the error of glancing down, and there I stand.

There I stand, on a screen, crossing a stranger's video in soft focus, a water heater on my shoulder, and beneath the little rectangle of me a river of text scrolls upward faster than my eyes can climb it, and Judanna, delighted, begins to read it aloud.

"'The way this man has no idea he is on camera is everything to me,'" she recites. "'Ma'am forget the pipe.' Oh, this one. 'I need him to hang MY drywall and by drywall I mean...'"

"Stop."

"'Those shoulders are load-bearing.'" She wheezes. "Load-bearing, Oggan. Do you get it? Because you are a contractor?"

"I get it." Heat climbs the back of my neck. I set my list on the counter with more force than paper requires. "Ring me up."