The wildflowers. God, the wildflowers. I told Kitty—not Daniel, just Kitty—about how our mother used to keep a mason jar of wildflowers on the kitchen table when we were kids. How the smell of black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace still made me feel safe, even after all these years.
But Kitty tells Tom everything. And Tom talks to Daniel.
“I need more potatoes from the larder,” Miss Maggie says, and her voice is so light, so utterly unconcerned, that it takes me a moment to register the words. “The small ones. Better for roasting.”
I walk to the larder on autopilot, my mind racing faster than my feet.
The truck. He moves my truck to the shade every single day. Cracks the windows so the steering wheel won’t burn my hands when I need to drive somewhere. I thought it was a coincidence. I thought I’d just forgotten where I parked.
He’s been taking care of me this whole time. Every single day. And he never said a word about any of it.
The larder is cool and dim, the smell of dried herbs and root vegetables wrapping around me like a familiar blanket. I find the small potatoes in their mesh basket, and I stand there holding them while everything I thought I knew rearranges itself into a different picture entirely.
He’s been telling me. For weeks. In the only language he knows how to speak.
I press my forehead against the cool wooden shelf and let out a breath that shudders through my whole body.
You idiot. You complete and utter idiot. He’s been shouting it from the rooftops, and you had your hands over your ears.
I’m not sure how long I stand there. Long enough for my heart to stop racing. Long enough for something that feels terrifyingly like hope to take root in my chest.
When I step out of the larder, I walk straight into a wall of flannel and warm muscle.
Daniel catches my elbows to steady me, and the touch sends sparks shooting up my arms. His brow furrows as he scans my face, cataloging, assessing, checking for damage the way he always does.
“You okay?”
“Fine. Just—” I hold up the mesh bag. “Potatoes.”
He takes them from my hands without asking. I let him, which makes his eyebrows shoot toward his hairline.
“You gave those up easy.” He weighs the bag in his palm, studying me with open suspicion. “I was bracing for a fight. Maybe a tackle. You feeling all right? Got a fever?” He reaches out as if he’s going to check my temperature.
I swat his hand away. “I’m fine.”
“You just handed me something without arguing. That’s not fine. That’s a sign of the apocalypse.”
“Maybe I’m trying something new.”
“Cooperation?” His mouth twitches. “Doesn’t suit you.”
“Shut up.”
“There she is.”
We walk into the kitchen together, and I’m so aware of him beside me—the heat of his body, the smell of hay and soap and something underneath that’s justhim—that I barely register Miss Maggie at the counter. She’s doing something with the carrots, her back to us, and I have a vague impression of her wiping her hands on her apron before my entire attention narrows to Daniel.
He sets the potatoes on the counter and pulls out his phone, frowning at something on the screen. I reach for my coffee cup, but before my fingers make contact, his hand is already there—sliding it away from the edge to a safer spot near the wall.
He doesn’t look up. His thumb keeps scrolling.
Then he crosses to the window and adjusts the blind, angling the slats so the afternoon sun won’t hit the spot where I was working.
Still scrolling. Still frowning at his phone like it contains the secrets of the universe.
Then he notices the potatoes are too far from the cutting board, and he moves them closer. Positions them right where I’ll need them.
Three things. Maybe forty seconds. He hasn’t looked up once.
