And even while she knew it, she couldn’t stop herself.

Because there he was, shirt off, swinging an ax down onto a vertically set hunk of wood.

He looked...

She’d seen his body. Right before he’d stitched himself back together, and she’d been aware of the muscle then. But this was something else entirely. Though she was concerned about the homegrown stitches popping open.

But also distracted by his body. But also horrified he might hurt himself. Or be seen.

“I don’t want you bleeding everywhere again!”

He straightened, breathing hard, and she was mesmerized. By his sweat-slicked skin. By the way his muscles shifted with the motion. His abs, his... Everything.

And she felt in that moment every inch what she was.

An odd bird raised in a strange nest. Who had kept all of her weirdness wrapped around her as insulation when she’d gone into the world, because defying the way she’d been raised only felt good to a point, and beyond that she’d been worried.

Worried her mother might be right. Worried at least that she could become distracted from her focus. Worried she might validate what her mom thought about her by messing up, and she had done everything in her power not to mess up.

But here she was now, with her degree, a house, a job, and by some stroke of luck, a very handsome man chopping wood for her, and she had to ask herself what she was really afraid of.

Getting hurt.

Getting hurt really badly.

All that masculinity, because when have you ever been around that?

Also getting hurt.

Well, that was the truth of it. She’d used her childhood as an excuse to hold people at a distance, and here Clayton was. He’d literally crashed into her house, her life. And she felt close to him even though it had been days, and if she felt this much for him now...

“I’m fine,” he said, indicating the line of stitches still holding his side together.

“You could have hurt yourself.”

“But I didn’t.”

The stitches were indeed straight, and he was stunningly beautiful. And all of it was combining to create a situation, a moment that felt out of her grasp. That felt out of her realm of experience. Everything that he was stood completely outside of her life. And yet... Did it? Because he was the kind of man who had questioned what was in front of him, even though he had never been shown another way. And she had questioned what she had seen around her, as well.

They were fugitives from their families, as much as he was a fugitive from the law. And maybe it was abnormal to feel so much of a connection to a man that she had only just met, but nothing about them was normal. And yet, somehow they seemed to have plenty in common with each other.

“Well, you could’ve been seen.”

“And I would have said that I was doing some work for you around the place.”