Bound by the Ashwright

She charges salt for the crossing and keeps a ledger of every debt. Then the bridge starts to crack, and the only man who can fix it is one nobody in the river towns is allowed to forgive. Cece Mbeki has held the scrap bridge for three winters, and she has never once let it be taken from her. When the span fails under a grain wagon, she has one week and one option: Rhys Ashwright, a scarred metalworker who does not take jobs, does not talk about the past, and does not seem to be afraid of anything. She hires him. He stays for the welding. What neither of them plans is the winter they spend working side by side, or the night he tells her why he came out of the foundry at all — and why half the country wants him dead for it. When a militia colonel decides the bridge belongs to him, Cece has to choose between the structure she built and the man who made it stand. She has a ledger full of debts, a river full of towns who owe her, and the first reason in years to spend something she can't get back. A slow-burn post-apocalyptic romance about crossing fees, cold iron, and the kind of debt two people are glad to owe.