When he passed the candied yams without taking even a spoonful, Kit looked at him like he was a lunatic.“Aren’t you going to have any?”she asked, her eyes wide.Nate smiled sadly at the little girl who was basically his niece now that her mother, Parker, and his brother Travis were engaged and shook his head.“Hmm.Can I have yours?”
Nate chuckled at her and nodded.“Go for it.”Kit piled her plate high with more yams than even he could put away, but his attention was drawn away from the mountain of food and over to the conversation at the other end of the table.
“Do you know when she’s going to start up the newsletter again?”His mom asked Willa.Cora Kemp was one of if not the most avid reader of Lottie’s town paper, so her asking about it wasn’t surprising to Nate, but the fact that she’d apparently stopped running it altogether was definitely news to him.“I haven’t seen her at the senior center in a while either, and I know everyone in our water aerobics class misses hearing her laughter echo around the pool.”
Willa flicked her gaze to Nate a moment, her mouth turned down in the corners, before she met his mother’s gaze once again.“I’m not sure.I think she just worked herself a little too hard and needed a break, but I’m sure after a little time to herself she’ll be up and at it again.”Even to Nate’s ear, Willa sounded completely unconvinced by her statement.
Nate’s mom sighed and passed the platter of turkey over to his father.“I hope so.”She smiled at his dad in the same way she always did, like there was no one else in the world but him and he looked back at her in the exact same way.“She does deserve a break though.That girl works almost as hard as you do, Nate.Maybe even harder.”
Nate swallowed the ball of dry turkey that he’d managed to chew and washed it down with some water.“Yeah,” he agreed, his voice raspy.“She seems to do a lot around town.”More than he realized apparently.
“Ha.”His dad barked a laugh.“That’s an understatement.”He scratched at his mostly gray beard and stabbed a clump of sausage dressing with his fork.“You know, I’m surprised you haven’t asked her for help with your town project, Nate.You two were always working on something or other together in high school.”
Nate nodded absently, thankful when Kit belched and drew the attention away from him and the woman he couldn’t get his mind off of.What was Lottie doing today?Did she have anywhere to go?Nate remembered hearing that her parents moved down to Bend or somewhere else in Oregon, but he hadn’t paid much attention, too annoyed that Lottie hadn’t gone with them while incredibly grateful that she had stayed at the same time.
The conversation continued around him, mostly talk of Felix and Autumn’s now cancelled trip to Las Vegas.Since Felix no longer had his back-up manager at the brewery, they had to postpone their trip, much to the delight of their mom who had worried the two would elope while they were there.Nate’s stomach continued to drop the more he heard the group speak.Had he made a colossal mistake in driving Lottie away again?He’d needed to focus and she was the most distracting person he’d ever met, but maybe he’d gone too far.Every time he told her to leave him alone, he’d never really meant it, but it seemed that he’d been a little too believable this time.Feeling too sorry for himself and a little sick at what he’d done, Nate pushed away his plate and stood from the table.
A few eyes turned to him quizzically and Nate tried his best to smile reassuringly even though his stomach was sour and his heart ached.“I just need a little fresh air.”
“Take your coat,” his mom commanded.“It’s barely over thirty outside.”Nate nodded, grateful that the air would have some bite to it.He needed the cold to snap him out of his stupor and help him make sense of the mess he’d made with his life.
Like the dutiful son he was, Nate slipped his thick jacket over his flannel, threw on a scarf for good measure, and stepped out onto the back porch.The air was crisp and pricked at his face like tiny needles, but it wasn’t enough to detract from the pain he felt in his chest, the hollowness that he’d carved out himself in order to protect what he saw as his legacy.Well, that legacy was turning into a failure to start, so what had it all been for anyway?
Stepping down from the extensive wooden porch, Nate found himself wandering over to the one place on his family’s farm he tried to avoid and the one he almost always ended up in when he was there.The storage building looked the same as it always had, not much changing over the years besides the amount of rust on the metal bins holding equipment, but ever since he’d been with Lottie up in the loft, itfeltdifferent.It felt like it should be some sort of historic landmark, a place that was to be revered and remembered even if by only the two of them.Nate sometimes wondered if she thought of that night as often as he did, but with the way he’d ended things, he doubted it.Even if she did, it was undoubtedly with less fondness than he held for that memory.He’d tainted the past with his behavior in the present.
Running his hand along the weathered pine of the railing, Nate ascended the steps and moved up into the loft.When his eyes grazed the corner where a flannel blanket had once laid, he let himself look at it through his mind’s eye, seeing what could have been the start of something good, like Lottie had said.They would have gone to college together, conquering one corner of the university after another until as they both grew into the people they were always meant to be, then they would have returned to Applewood and made the town better together.It could have been beautiful if it weren’t for the voices in his head he’d always let drown out the shouting of his heart.Nate huffed, a little angry at himself and the situation he’d put himself in.Was there a way to dig himself out of it?He wandered over to the open window and stared out onto the orchard, searching for an answer to that very question.
When heavy footsteps sounded on the ground beneath him and then on the stairs, Nate sighed, knowing that one of his brothers was descending upon him.Not bothering to look over his shoulder for confirmation, Nate merely dropped his head slightly as he continued to stare out into the cloudy gray sky just above the tree line.“If you’ve come to yell at me about being an asshole, don’t bother.I’ve known that for a while now.”
“Then why do you continue to act like one?”Nate spun around, surprised to see his father standing in front of him.The older man cracked a smile before stepping up next to him.“Surprised to see me?”
Nate huffed, his breath visible in front of him.“Honestly, yeah.I thought that one or more of the others might come up here to chew me out.”
Nolan Kemp chuckled, the sound raspy from old age and use.Hearing something so comforting and familiar helped ease Nate’s discomfort.“Oh, they wanted to.Felix especially was ready to come out here and tear you a new one.”
Nate scoffed.“He’s just pissed because he had to cancel his trip.”
Nate’s dad clucked his tongue.“Maybe a little, but I think he’s more upset about losing a good employee, and more than that, a good friend.”He stared out onto the orchard for a minute and sighed.“Want to tell me what happened between the two of you?”
Nate wiped his hand down his face.It was stiff from the cold but he considered the numbness in his fingertips penance for being such a jerk.“How much do you know?”
Shrugging, his dad smirked slightly.“It’s a small town, made even smaller when you have as many kids floating around as I do.”He bumped Nate with his shoulder.“Felix told me you and Lottie disappeared into the back room of the bar and when you came out, you tore out of there looking pissed and she went back to work looking like she was barely holding it together before quitting two days later.No one has really seen or heard from her since.”
Nate turned away from his dad, hoping the older man wouldn’t see just how much what he’d said had affected him.He’d known he’d been harsh, but Lottie was strong and had always taken it in stride in the past.God, even thinking that made him feel like shit.He knew his reasons for why he acted the way he did, but she hadn’t, and they didn’t seem as important now that she’d up and disappeared from his life and everyone else’s.Lottie was someone he thought would be there no matter what, but clearly he had taken her good nature and care for him for granted.
“I messed up,” he admitted, his voice watery.Nate wasn’t sure what he wanted, but knew he definitely didn’t deserve another shot with Lottie.He also knew that he had to at least make things as right between them as they could possibly be.
Nate’s dad slung an arm over his shoulder.“Why don’t you tell me a little more about that and we’ll see what we can figure out?”Nate nodded, blinked away the moisture that had gathered in the corners of his eyes, and proceeded to tell his father everything, only leaving out the sex in the loft because that was something that he wanted to keep just for himself.As he spoke, he worried that talking about how the world disappeared around him when he was with Lottie would sound strange to his dad, but to Nate’s surprise, the older man nodded along like he understood every single word.When he finished, Nate’s dad looked at him with a raised brow.“Is that it?”
Looking at his dad like he was a crazy person, Nate shook his head.“Yeah, I mean, isn’t that enough?Didn’t you hear the part about how the world could burn down around me and I wouldn’t care as long as I was with her?”
Nate’s dad nodded.“I heard it, and so what if it does?”
Confused, Nate blinked at his father.“What do you mean so what?I can’t just lose myself in a whole other person.That’s crazy.”It was also frightening, though not as scary as the thought of living in a world without her had become over the last few weeks.
“That’s love, son.”Nate’s dad shook his shoulder slightly and pointed out toward the orchard.“I love this land.It’s been in our family for five generations, but if I had to choose between tossing a match out into that field of kindling and your mom, I would choose her every time.”
Nate nodded.“I get that, but that’s different.”His parents were as madly in love now as they had been in high school.That was rare and he wasn’t sure he was capable of maintaining something like that.
