sheltered for him

*Chapter 1: The Man Down the Street* I knew better than to stare at men like him. My mother had spent twenty-two years drilling it into me: _Men only want one thing, Summer Davis. Keep your head down, your skirt long, and your heart locked._ The romance novels I hid under my mattress didn’t help. Every hero in those pages was a liar in a nice suit, and every heroine who trusted him ended up ruined by the last chapter. So when Chris looked up from his forge and caught me watching him, my entire body went on alert. He was forty-seven. Twenty-five years older than me. Too old. Too broad. Too much. Sweat made his plain t-shirt stick to his back as he hammered steel down the street. The shop smelled like fire and iron and something warm I couldn’t name. He wasn’t handsome like the men in my books. He was rougher. Scarred knuckles. A jaw that looked like it had been carved by work, not genetics. Dangerous in a quiet way, the kind that didn’t need to raise his voice to be obeyed. “Your father’s daughter?” he called out, voice rough from smoke. I was halfway past his shop, clutching my graduation folder to my chest like armor. I should’ve kept walking. Mama was waiting with lunch. But his eyes were on me, and for some stupid reason, my feet slowed. “Yes,” I said. Too fast. My voice came out higher than I wanted. He wiped his hands on a rag and stepped to the doorway of the shop. The bell above it didn’t ring. He didn’t need it to announce himself. “Summer Davis,” he said, and my stomach flipped because I’d never told him my name. He knew it anyway. Of course he did. He knew everything about everyone on this street. That was the problem with men like Chris. They paid attention. “Sheltered,” he said next. It wasn’t a question. My cheeks burned. Sheltered. As if that wasn’t another word for _untouched_. As if he couldn’t hear it in the way I held myself, in the way I wouldn’t meet his eyes for longer than two seconds. My books had warned me about men who looked at girls like me – men who took what was soft and ruined it for fun. So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I snapped. “I’m not naive,” I said, and immediately hated how my voice shook. His mouth curved. Not a smile. Something worse. Amusement. Like I was a child pretending to be grown. “We’ll see, Summer Davis.” I should’ve walked away then. I really should have. But I stood there, frozen, because he said my full name again, and it sounded different in his mouth. Not like my teachers saying it during roll call. Not like Mama calling me for dinner. It sounded like he was testing the weight of it. “Don’t you have work to do?” I asked, gesturing vaguely at the forge behind him. “I do,” he said. “And you don’t.” It wasn’t cruel. It was just… true. I’d graduated last week. No job yet. No plans except helping Mama at home until something came up. Dad said I shouldn’t rush. Good girls don’t rush. “Go home, Summer,” Chris said, softer now. “Before your mother starts wondering where you are.” How did he know about Mama? Of course he did. Everyone on this street knew everyone’s business. That was the other problem with men like him. They knew too much. I turned to leave, because that was the right thing to do. The safe thing. The thing Mama raised me to do. But then he said, “You’ve been watching me for three days.” I stopped. My back went stiff. “I haven’t—” “You have,” he cut in, not unkindly. “Every afternoon at four, you walk past with your books. You slow down when you get here. You pretend you’re not looking.” My face went hot. He was lying. He had to be lying. Except… he wasn’t. I _had_ been slowing down. I _had_ been looking. Not because I wanted to. But because the sound of his hammer was the only thing on this street that made me feel something other than bored. “That’s not—” I started, but the words died in my throat. Chris stepped back into his shop and came out holding something small and metal. A rose, but not a real one. Made of twisted iron, delicate in a way that didn’t match his hands at all. “For you,” he said, holding it out. I didn’t move. “I can’t take that.” “Why not?” “Because my parents—” “Won’t like it,” he finished for me. “I know.” Of course he knew. He knew everything. “I’m not going to hurt you, Summer Davis,” he said, and for the first time, his voice wasn’t amused. It was low, steady, like he meant it. “But I’m not going to pretend I don’t see you either.” My heart did something stupid then. It sped up. Not from fear, exactly. From something else. Something my books never described right. I should’ve said no. I should’ve told him to keep his iron rose and his knowing eyes and his forty-seven years to himself. I should’ve walked home and told Mama I’d seen nothing. But my hand reached out anyway. The rose was warm from his palm. Heavy, but not in a bad way. Real, in a way nothing in my life had felt in a long time. “Thank you,” I whispered. Chris nodded once. “Go home, Summer.” And I did. But I didn’t throw the rose away. I slipped it into my folder, where Mama wouldn’t see it, and I kept walking, with his eyes on my back the whole way.