The wood splits clean under the axe.

Thwack.

I set another log on the stump. Raise the axe. Bring it down. The impact reverberates up through my shoulders, settles in my chest like something solid. Something real.

Thwack.

November in South Texas means the mornings are cool enough to work without sweating through your shirt by nine a.m. The sun's just clearing the live oaks behind the B&B, painting everything gold and amber. My breath comes out in little clouds. My hands are steady on the axe handle.

Three weeks ago, they wouldn't have been.

"You're gonna stay another week, aren't you?"

Her voice drifts up from my memory. Day four, standing in her front hallway with my duffel packed, keys to room four sitting on the desk between us.

"I should probably move on."

"Probably. But you won't. Because you slept last night. Really slept." She'd wiped her hands on her apron, given me that sunshine smile. "And because you ate three helpings of my biscuits this morning."

I hadn't known what to say to that.

So I'd stayed.

Thwack.

She'd offered me work that same afternoon. Shutters, porch steps, fence posts. Said she'd knock my room rate down to nothing if I was willing to help out.

"I think you need somethin' to do with your hands," she'd said. "Somethin' that ain't just sittin' in that room countin' ceiling tiles."

She was right.

I'd fixed the shutters. Replaced the porch boards. Spent two days mending fence, working until my shoulders burned and my mind finally went quiet.

And now I'm here. Chopping wood at seven in the morning while the rest of Crimson Ridge sleeps.

Cyrus Thayer. Former Delta Force operator. Former team leader. Former everything that mattered.

Ten years active duty, eight in special operations. Deployments I can't talk about, doing things that'll stay classified for the next fifty years.

Then Syria. Bad intel. An explosion that took out half my team before we breached the door. I'd gotten three men out. Lost four.

Should've been the other way around.

The Army gave me a Purple Heart, a handshake, and a quiet suggestion that maybe I'd done enough. So I took the discharge. Took the pension. Took the pill bottles they handed me like party favors.

Left Bragg three months later with no plan. Drove south because north felt too cold and west felt too empty. Ended up in Texas because the highway led here.

Pulled off 281 somewhere between San Antonio and the border, hands tremoring so bad I could barely grip the wheel. Saw the crooked vacancy sign hanging off that butter-yellow Victorian and thought, Two nights. Get your head straight. Keep moving.

Should've kept driving.

But she'd opened the door before I could change my mind. Took one look at me standing there with my duffel and my scars and said, "You look like you could use some rest, honey. Come on in."

Room four had lavender-scented sheets and a window overlooking the courthouse square where nothing ever happened and nobody was trying to kill me.

I'd planned to stay two nights.

That was a month ago.

Thwack.

"You tryin' to split the entire tree, or just that log?"

Her voice cuts through the rhythm. I look up, heart rate spiking for half a second before my brain catches up. Not a threat. Just her.

She's standing on the back porch in a robe and boots, coffee mug in hand. The sunrise's caught behind her, turning her into pure light.

Sunshine incarnate.

"Just the log, ma'am."

"What'd I say about that ma'am business?"

I lean the axe against the stump, wipe sweat off my forehead. "Sorry. Habit."

"Uh-huh." She sips her coffee. "You been out here since dawn?"

"Yes."

"You eat breakfast yet?"

"No."

"Mm." She shakes her head, smiling. "Come on inside. I made migas and there's fresh coffee. You can finish that later."

"I'm almost done—"

"Cyrus." She says my name firm, the way a general says dismissed. "Wood'll still be here in an hour. Your stomach won't wait that long."