“You keeping warm?” I ask, rubbing her all over the head and nuzzling my own into her. It’s amazing how warm she actually is. Jake blankets the older horses at night, but he doesn’t want to baby Shawnee. She gets more than enough hay, and he assures me she’s acclimated to the frigid winter temps as long as she doesn’t get her winter coat wet. And so far, so good. I guess it’s all relative. A forty-degree day feels better than a nineteen-degree day, but a nineteen-degree day feels a hell of a lot warmer than ten below, too.

I give her a half-smile. “Reality is fickle, isn’t it?” I ask. “We can get used to almost anything.”

We all acclimate. We learn, we resolve, we come around—it’s not that anything really gets easier or harder. We just get better at rolling with it. I’m not sure these men will be different because of me, but I’ll be different because of them. I like that.

And I don’t.

I pull out another juice pop, and Shawnee immediately stomps her hooves and bobs her head. I smile, tearing open the tube. There’s so much I love about my days now.

I finish feeding and tending to everyone, making sure the three horses have plenty of hay and water, and then I put my glove back on and roam into the barn from the stable. Noah left the buckets I need in here.

I check every corner, behind bales of hay, and all the hooks on the walls, but I don’t see anything. Stopping, I absently shake my head. How does he lose stuff so easily?

But as I start to head out, a loud thud hits my ears, and I jump. I thought they were in the shop.

Three more pounding sounds hit, and I peer around the stalls, not seeing anything or anyone. What…

Forgetting the buckets, I veer left and head down the row of stalls, the sound getting louder the closer I get to the door. Another thud hits, and I blink, slowly reaching out and laying my palm against the door. It doesn’t latch, and even though I see movement behind the cracks and I know who it is, I push the door wide anyway, the hinges whining as the room beyond comes into view.

A large stove burns in the corner of the dark room, fire spitting from its vents as Kaleb stands at a table with his back to me. He raises his ax, coming down hard. Blood splatters, he removes the leg, and then he grabs his hunting knife. A lump rises in my throat, and I can’t breathe.

Oh, God.

I rear back, but I don’t escape in time. The sounds as he tears into the hide of whatever animal he bagged, the serrated edge carving through the skin, muscle, and rib cage, hits my ears as blood immediately spills at his feet.

I swallow the bile down.

He turns, seeing me, and his green eyes hold me frozen as he raises his fingers. Sweat covers his chest and arms, his hair sticking to his temples, and I watch as a small grin curls his lips, and he sticks a finger into his mouth, licking the blood off.

He grips the knife in his other hand, lowering his chin and looking at me as if nothing else exists in the world, and there’s no way they’d hear me out here beyond the machines they’re running in the shop if I screamed.

Yeah, no.

I grab the door and pull it closed as I scurry back out of the room. His light chuckle carries as I quickly disappear from his sight. Asshole.

But then I stop, noticing. He laughed. Out loud.

It wasn’t much, but I heard his deep voice. He’s growled or grunted a few times, but he let me hear him laugh. I narrow my eyes, lost in thought. I wonder if he even realizes.

He let me hear him.

I shrug, shaking it off, and take a step toward the exit. But then something catches my eye, and I look to my right, noticing a ladder. I’m not in the barn much, especially since this is where Kaleb likes to lurk.

Glancing at the door again, behind which he still works, I approach the ladder, placing my boot on the bottom rung and gripping the one level with my head.

I climb, coming up through a door in the floor and stand up in a small room, filled with sheet-covered objects.

Furniture?

I reach out, grab one of the pieces of cloth and pull.

Tiernan

“What do you want to do with it?” Jake asks me.

He and Noah each hold a side as they carry the three-drawer chest into the shop, and I smile at the feather-and-filigree carvings in the wood.

“Anything you’ll let me, I guess.” I shrug, not really knowing yet. “It’s a great piece of furniture, and there’s so much more up there.”

There were more chests, a couple of dressers, some end tables and a bedside table, a couple of doors, and a desk. None of the furniture was in good shape, but as soon as I saw it all, my heart leaped. Everything in our house growing up was so new.

I walk over, running my hand over the grainy wooden top of the chest. There’s no history in new. No mystery. I like old.

Jake stands back, looking at the piece with me. It almost looks like something out of Beauty and the Beast. The Disney version. The wood curves, the chest widening as it goes up, and there’s lots of detail around the edges and feet. This was probably a stunning piece in its day.

“My ex and I collected a bunch of stuff from yard sales for when we finished building this place,” Jake says, “but then shit happened, so…”

I open the drawers, checking the functionality.

“So yeah, it’s all yours,” he adds. “It’s one other thing to keep you occupied this winter.”

I turn my head over my shoulder, shooting him a look.

One other thing.

He smirks.

Noah nudges my arm. “Let me show you the paints.”

I follow him.

Hours later, Noah and I work away in the shop, our empty dinner bowls of Jake’s chili sitting on the cement floor. The wind howls outside the bay door, but the wood-burning stove crackles in the background, and I don’t even need a coat out here.

Although, I’m wearing two pairs of cozy socks inside my slipper clogs as I putter around in my jeans and Noah’s flannel.

Pushing up my sleeves, I dip the rag in the turpentine and bring it up, slopping it across the top of the chest and scrubbing off the remnants of the finish.

“Doing okay?” Noah asks.

I look up, seeing him digging in a coffee can, the nuts and bolts inside jingling.

“Yeah.”

“What’s the sudden interest in furniture rehab?”

I laugh under my breath, sloshing the rag into the can again. “Maybe it’s an excuse to be where you guys are,” I tease. “All of us working together.”

His white teeth peek out as his smile spreads.

“Or maybe I just don’t want to be left alone inside with your brother’s wrath,” I mumble.

I’d had to wash my hair after the oatmeal this morning. Kaleb helped with the bikes sometimes, but I caught on very early that Jake didn’t make the same demands of him that he did with Noah. Probably because he couldn’t push Kaleb around and didn’t want to risk pushing him too far.

Sometimes Kaleb helped here in the shop. And sometimes he took care of the animals, chopped wood, repaired various equipment around the property, hunted, played with the dogs, or shut himself up in his room. He didn’t stick to only things he wanted to do, but it usually had to be things where he could be left alone. I knew that much.

I continue, my two low pigtails bobbing against my chest as I rub the wood down to its natural color.