Chapter 4: Barn Burn
The barn held the cold of the night long into the afternoon. Sera breathed in the scent of damp earth and old timber, the blueprints now smudged with both their fingerprints, pinned to a relatively clean stretch of wall with a couple of rusty nails. The echoing space was a cathedral of potential, every groan of a beam a song she was learning to translate.
“So this supporting post,” she called out, her voice bouncing in the hollow quiet. She tapped the solid oak column they’d nearly destroyed. “It stays. We build the pass around it. Makes it a feature.”
Cas was across the space, methodically prying rotted boards from the loft floor with a crowbar. Each crack and splinter sounded like gunfire. He didn’t look over. “A feature.”
“Yeah. You know, character. A story. ‘The chef works around the original 1902 post.’ People eat that up.”
He grunted, leveraging another long plank free. It crashed to the ground in a cloud of dust. “People are easily impressed.”
“Says the man with a full sleeve of botanical illustrations under his flannel.” The words were out, light and teasing, before she could reconsider.
He paused, the crowbar hanging in his grip. He finally looked at her, a slow, assessing glance from under the brim of his work-worn cap. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. “Says the woman who talks to heirloom tomatoes.”
She laughed, the sound unexpectedly bright in the gloomy space. “They have complex personalities! The Brandywines are divas.”
She picked up a smaller pry bar and moved to a section of wainscoting, working near him. The rhythm found them. The scrape of metal, the sigh of yielding wood, the companionable silence punctuated by practical comments. He’d point to a stubborn nail head; she’d pass him a different tool. Their hands brushed during the exchange. A knuckle grazed her wrist, right over the scar. Each touch was a tiny spark, a live filament in the dusty air.
He was closer now, clearing the debris she created. She could feel the heat of him at her back, a solid presence like a furnace. She focused on a nail, twisting the bar.
“That contractor of yours,” Cas said abruptly, his voice low near her ear. “The one who called. He reliable?”
The question was casual, but the undercurrent wasn’t. It was about the phone call that had shattered the kitchen, about the world pulling her away.
“Leo? He’s the best. Also a notorious flirt and chronically fifteen minutes late.” She wrestled the nail free. “Why?”
“Just wondering how deep your fantasy is dug in. If you’ve got real foundations, or just pretty drawings.”
She turned to face him, leaning against the beam she’d just exposed. “The foundations are my life savings, Cas. And a frankly terrifying bank loan. The drawings are just the map. This,” she gestured around them, “is the territory. I’m not playing here.”
He held her gaze, his green eyes unreadable in the slatted light. He seemed to be searching for a lie, a crack in her resolve. He took a step closer, closing the distance between them. The air grew still.
“And what happens,” he said, his voice dropping to a murmur that vibrated in her bones, “when the territory fights back? When it’s not just rotten wood, but… complications?”
Before she could ask what he meant, before she could breathe, a sharp, sickening crack echoed from above. A shower of dust and splinters rained down. Instinctively, Cas moved—not away, but into her. His arms went around her, his body curving over hers as he spun them both, pinning her back against the solid, unforgiving post. A heavy, foot-long chunk of timber from the loft’s edge slammed into the floor exactly where she’d been standing, exploding into fragments.
The impact of him was absolute. The hard plane of his chest crushed against her, his thigh wedged between hers for balance. Her face was buried in the worn cotton of his shirt, smelling of sweat, pine soap, and pure, adrenaline-fueled man. His heart hammered against her cheek, a wild, frantic drum. Hers matched it, beat for beat.
For a suspended moment, there was no sound but their ragged breathing, the slow sift of settling dust. He didn’t let go. His hand was splayed against the small of her back, holding her firmly to the post and to him. The other was braced beside her head, his forearm flexed. She could feel every ridge of his abdomen, the powerful line of his legs. The memory of the tattoos beneath the fabric was a searing brand in her mind.
She tilted her head back. His face was inches from hers, his eyes wide, pupils blown dark with shock and something far more urgent. Dust clung to his dark lashes. A smudge of dirt grazed his jaw. The air wasn’t just thick; it was combustible, saturated with the near-miss and the unbearable fact of his body.
“You okay?” The words were a rough scrape against her skin.
She couldn’t speak. She nodded, a minute movement. Her hands, trapped between their bodies, came to rest on his chest. She felt the furious rhythm of his heart, the heat burning through the cotton.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. His breath hitched. The hand on her back slid up, just an inch, his fingers pressing into the notches of her spine. A low, desperate sound escaped him, and he began to close that final, infinitesimal distance.
The blaring, electronic riff of her ringtone—a pop song she’d forgotten to change—shattered the spell like a brick through glass.
They flinched apart as if scalded. Cas took a full step back, running a hand through his hair, leaving it standing on end. Sera fumbled for her phone in her back pocket, her fingers clumsy.
It was Leo. The contractor. Reality, in all its demanding, tedious glory.
She swiped to answer, her voice breathless and shaky. “Leo. Hi.”
“Serafina! Bellissima! I have the numbers on the custom vent hood. You will not believe the cost of stainless steel now. It’s a crime. Are you sitting down?”
She turned away from Cas, leaning a trembling hand against the post. “Um, not really. Can I call you back?”
“Five minutes. This is time-sensitive. The fabricator needs a deposit.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. The ghost of Cas’s body still pressed against hers, a phantom imprint of heat and strength. The taste of what almost happened was metallic on her tongue, like blood or lightning. But Leo’s voice was the cable tethering her to the real world, to the dream that was supposed to be everything.
“Yeah. Okay. Five minutes.” She ended the call.
The barn was silent again, but the silence was now a wound. She turned around.
Cas was already several feet away, picking up the large fragment of wood that had fallen. He examined it, his profile stern and closed off. The moment of vulnerability was gone, locked away behind a wall of pragmatic assessment.
“Rotted through,” he said, his tone flat, professional. “Gonna have to check the whole loft edge before anyone works underneath it.”
He was talking about the barn. Only about the barn.
Sera’s phone felt like a lead weight in her hand. The choice was suddenly, painfully clear: the urgent call of the future she was building, or the molten, present pull of the man who owned the ground it stood on. You couldn’t have both feet in different worlds forever.
“I have to take this,” she said, echoing his words from the kitchen the night before.
He gave a single, curt nod, not looking at her. “Do what you have to do.”
She walked out of the barn, the sunlight assaulting her eyes. At the threshold, she glanced back. He was still holding the piece of wood, staring at it as if it held all the answers, his shoulders tense under the weight of more than just timber. She knew then, with a cold certainty, that the mysterious phone call he’d received, the “complication,” was already in motion. And it was coming for them both.