She leaves before I can respond—which is good, because I have no response. I have only the knowledge that my privacy has been collectively dismantled and analyzed like it’s a piece of IKEA furniture everyone’s free to comment on. I have theknowledge that Piper Lockwood is right, which is worse than if she was wrong.
The afternoon stretches out. I work on the desk. The joinery becomes perfect. Too perfect. I start sanding the edges, polishing the surfaces until they gleam. The work keeps my hands busy and my mind fractionally distracted, but not enough.
That evening, Gabby appears at the workshop door carrying the arrival photo on her phone, looking like someone who’s been elected to deliver bad news but decided to make it funny instead.
“I know,” I say before she can start. It’s not fair—she hasn’t said anything yet—but I need to set the pace of this conversation before she can.
“You know that 247 people like a picture of me walking around in heels, borrowed flannel, and absolute desperation?” She sits on the edge of my workbench, mimicking Piper’s posture from earlier—casual, at ease, like she belongs in my space. “You know that the entire town has apparently been discussing my arrival strategy like it’s a marketing campaign?”
I lean back in my chair, getting a better view of her. The photo is still pulled up on her phone screen. That moment—the heels, the windblown hair, the expression of someone who’s made a life choice and is currently regretting it with full-body commitment.
“Welcome to Ashwood Falls,” I say. “You exist publicly now. Photographs get shared. People have opinions. It’s not malicious. It’s just—everyone here knows everyone. And everyone likes knowing about the new person.”
“I exist publicly.” She sounds horrified. “I came to Alaska specifically to not exist publicly. I was supposed to hide in a kitchen and process my emotions in private and have a complete emotional breakdown without anyone actually seeing the breakdown. The plan was simple.”
“How’s that working?”
“Terrible.” She shows me the photo again, and there’s something in her voice that’s shifted—the horror giving way to something like resigned amusement. “My oven won’t cooperate and now a moose has stronger opinions about my work schedule than I do. And apparently I’ve become a meme on the community page. This is—a strong choice, showing up like that.”
And she laughs.
Not a small laugh. Not her careful, polite laugh. A real one—the one Jax had seen, the kind that comes from recognition and irony and the whole ridiculous situation of being seen in the exact moment you least want to be seen. She laughs and her whole face changes. The worry that she usually carries loosens. For a moment she’s someone who’s been caught and is deciding that fighting it is pointless.
She laughs and I look at her and can’t look away.
It’s a problem. A significant, load-bearing problem that’s going to require me to actually think about my life choices.
Because Piper’s right. Because Jax is right. Because Dotty was right from the moment Gabby arrived in those heels looking lost enough that everyone paid attention. Everyone’s been watching this happen but me, and now I’m caught watching her laugh and knowing I can’t unfake the distance I’ve been trying to maintain.
“You’re staring,” she says, still smiling, her eyes meeting mine. “That’s a thing you’re doing right now. Obvious staring.”
“I’m thinking about your oven,” I lie. It’s immediate and smooth and completely false. “Still worried about the temperature gauge. The calibration might be?—”
“Lucifer’s fine.” She’s still laughing slightly, amused by the lie or maybe amused that I tried. “We’ve reached an understanding. He turns on when I ask. I don’t ask him to do anything unreasonable. It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship.”
She hops off the bench with a casual grace that says she’s done here, done with this conversation or maybe just done with this moment. “You build furniture for a living. I talk to kitchen appliances. We’re both weird. At least I know my oven’s name, and we have a productive relationship.”
She leaves before I can respond—before I can say anything about how I know her name too, how I’ve been thinking about her for weeks, how the oven was always just an excuse—and I’m left alone in the workshop with her laugh still in the air and Piper’s words in my head.
The desk is nearly done. Sometime soon, it will be finished. Sometime soon, I’ll need to decide whether to find a buyer and deliver it or keep making excuses about why it’s not quite perfect yet. Whether to have a conversation that matters or keep building things in silence and pretending that distance is a choice rather than a consequence.
I pick up my chisel and get back to work.
The joints need more sanding. The surfaces need more polish. The wood needs to become something it wasn’t before. Transformation requires time and attention and the willingness to understand that the work is about more than just technique.
For now, I sand the joints and pretend I don’t know exactly why Jax is confident enough to take bets on my future.
Because he’s already won.
They all have.
And the worst part is, I think I knew it the moment she arrived.
Chapter 9
Gabby
The salmon croissants have become a phenomenon. It’s funny. It’s also destroying my peace of mind.