“You’re saying I don’t care?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying.” It was both wonderful and awful to carry on this conversation without being able to see the expressions on her face. I had no idea how she was reacting but that granted me the freedom to continue. “You care a whole hell of a lot. You wouldn’t be here, trying to give Lollie’s farm a fresh new life, if you didn’t care. You never would’ve married me and—for fuck’s sake, you moved into this madhouse for the farm. You care more than anyone else I know. But there’s a difference between caring and letting yourself care, and I don’t think you want to let yourself.”
“And why is that?”
“Shay, I have the emotional range of a rock. I’m not qualified to answer that but I will say that you shouldn’t think about this place as a stop on the road back to your life in Boston. This doesn’t have to be temporary.”
“Whatdoesn’t have to be temporary?”
Everything. Your hands on my shoulders, your things in my house. The business we’re building. The family we’re building. Our marriage. Everything.
“Anything. All of it. Whatever you want.”
“I’m going to have to think about that,” she said. “Although now I realize you’re going to tell me I’m dragging my feet on something else.”
“I’m not going to say that.” She sniffed—or was it a sniffle? I wasn’t sure but now I was concerned I’d hurt her feelings. “Shay—”
“Leaving has always been the goal,” she said. “Wherever I was, whatever I was doing, there’s always been an end on the horizon. When I was little, I bounced between different cities, countries, schools. An endless stream of nannies. Then it was boarding schools. Then it was Lollie’s farm. Don’t you remember how it was back then? Getting out of this town was the only thing we could think about. It was the only thing we wanted.”
“I remember.” If there was anything in the world I remembered, it was conspiring with Shay about our post-Friendship lives. Those days had been a life raft for me.
“And then it was all about finishing school, finding a job, finding a—” She stopped herself to get more lotion. “The only place I’d ever stayed and put down roots was my school in Boston. Jaime is one of the only real, deep roots I have.”
I couldn’t stop myself from adding, “And me.”
“Of course you.” A small shiver moved through my shoulders as she spread the cool lotion down my spine. It was the lotion. Only the lotion. “My point is that I’m terrible at attachments. I want to be attached. I want to stay somewhere and have—god, there are so many things I want. Or I think I want them. I’m still trying to figure all of that out.”
“Then stay here and figure it out,” I said. “Help me build this damn event center because I have no clue what I’m doing without you.”
“You’d manage just fine. And before you can argue, may I point out all the businesses you’ve opened without me? You built a market from your parents’ old house, a bakeshop from another old house, a cannery from an abandoned cider mill, and an ice cream stand from god only knows what. And you spiced it all up with some goats and yoga. Don’t pretend that you need me for this.”
“Just because I can plow through by myself doesn’t mean I want to,” I said. “Fuck, Shay. Let me need you, okay?”
A quiet minute passed before she whispered, “Okay.”
It wasn’t lost on me that she hadn’t agreed to stay. “You’re the one who looks at Twin Tulip and sees a wedding venue. I look at it and I see the footprint of an event facility but nothing more. I can’t see outdoor ceremonies at sunset or gardens designed to be the backdrop for wedding photos. Like I said, I’m a rock.”
“You might be a rock but I have you beat. The only reason I can talk about beautiful, happy things like weddings is because I’m scary-good at acting like everything is fine and I’m not dead inside.”
I glanced over my shoulder and shot her a sharp glare. “I’ve been inside you. I promise, you’re not dead.”
She brought her hand to the back of my head and pushed me down to the duvet. “I’m not finished yet. You can move when I tell you to.”
“That’s cute,” I murmured. “Get it out of your system now, wife.”
“Ohhhh, someone put on his bossypants.”
“If you like that, you’ll love it when I get these pants off.”
“Look at this funny guy,” she mused. “I’m old enough to remember when all you’d do was growl and glare at me.”
“That was a different time.”
“A time when you didn’t like me very much?” she asked, laughing.
If only she knew how much I’d always liked her. That there was no one else for me. My world started and ended with her sitting beside me on those dark morning rides to school, and it started up all over again when I found her on my farm. But she wasn’t ready to hear that. She was barely able to imagine a future where we didn’t dispose of this marriage nine months from now and never speak of it again. I couldn’t tell her that Ilovedher. Loved her so completely, so thoroughly, that no one else in the world could compare. Maybe someday I’d be able to tell her this but not yet. “A time when you didn’t let me say perverted things to you or fuck you in barns.”
“Was that the reason for the growling? And the glaring? You wanted to fuck me in one of your many barns? Huh. Never would’ve guessed that.”
