The house creaked like it breathed. All old bones and older wood, warmed by the fire and softened by the hush of dusk. Roy stood in the narrow space between the back door and the kitchen table, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hands stained with earth from the fence post he’d spent the day digging in your field. There was a dull ache in his shoulder, but he welcomed it…something solid. Something earned.

He hadn’t expected you to take him in. You still remember the night. The way the rain had had come down jagged and hard, like it meant to drag your tin roof straight down into the wet earth. And there he was, stood there like something out of a fever dream—hat low, shirt soaked through, water sluicing down the line of his jaw and clinging to the edges of his lashes. Roy Goode. Quiet, wet, and bone-tired. The kind of tired that lived in the eyes, not the limbs. The kind of tired that had nothing to do with the storm. And when you’d stepped aside, let him in? Everything had shifted.

The air inside was warm with oil and ash and the faint, sweet steam of lavender crushed beneath your mortar. The kitchen smelled like rain had just left it—cleansed, heavy, good. Roy watched you work from where he stood by the door, one shoulder propped against the frame, his arms crossed tight across his chest like it could stop the pounding of his heart.

He watched the way your fingers moved. How you measured things by feel, not weight. How you wiped your hands on the same apron you swore you were going to mend last week. How you exhaled slow through your nose when something wasn’t going the way you wanted. Little things. Small things.

Things that made his throat tighten.

He should’ve gone upstairs. Should’ve cleaned off the dirt caked around his boots, the blood dried under his fingernails. Should’ve said goodnight like he always did—quietly, politely, like a man keeping to the corners of someone else’s life.

But he didn’t—couldn’t, when you looked every piece of perfect, so instead he stood, head tilted and arms crossed, tentative gaze meeting the span of your back. Roy shifted his weight, unfolded his arms. His boots creaked against the floorboards as he stepped forward into the warmth, into you

His voice was gravel-soft, low like he meant for it to stay between just the two of you. It wasn’t a joke. Not really. There was something darker in the words. Wounded.

“Y’always this kind to strays?”