“Right now, I’m not so sure.”
“You know my insults always come from a place of love.” His grin widened. “How’s the farm?”
“Fine,” I said without hesitation.
Truth be told, my back could be having an active spasm and shooting pain down my legs, all while I was trying to put out a barn fire, and I’d still say everything wasfine.
The silence that followed was short but pointed, along with the look he gave me.
“I know that tone. It’s the same one you used when you’d just thrown out your back. Again. And continued harvesting the honey like it was no big deal.”
“Itwasno big deal. I got it done, didn’t I?”
“Willa.”
“Don’t. I’m fine, really. How’s life on the Ivory Coast?”
He narrowed his eyes on me like he was deciding whether he wanted to push, but something in my expression must’ve clued him into the fact that I wasn’t talking. Not yet.
“Busy. Chaotic.” He smiled then, soft and satisfied. “But rewarding. I trained three local doctors in neonatal resuscitation this week.”
“Wow. It wasn’t enough to be a doctor? Now you’re a teacher too?”
“Purely out of necessity. That way, they can train others when I’m gone.” He scrubbed a hand down his exhausted face and let out a sigh. “Speaking of… I fucking love my job, but I can’t wait to be home.”
Home.
The word dropped a boulder on my chest, and I swallowed against the rising lump in my throat. A home I’d had to rent out for the summer just to bring in some much-needed cash flow.
“We’ll be here, waiting.” I hoped.
“I know you will.” His teeth flashed bright on the dark screen as he shot me a tired smile. “I’m beat, so I’m gonna call it a night. But I’ll talk to you next week.”
“Sounds good.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too,” I murmured as the screen went black, the silence returned, and I was alone. Again.
My chest suddenly felt too tight, this space too fucking small and the reality of what I was facing breathing down my neck. Heart pounding, breath caught somewhere between a scream and a sob, I shoved back from the desk and paced the small office.
“Fuck,” I bit out, wanting to yell and kick and punch my way to a different future. One where I wasn’t watching the legacy my dad left circling the drain. One where I wasn’t failing. “Fuck, fuck,fuck.”
One of the stacks of overdue bills toppled, and I glared at them, only barely stopping myself from shoving them straight into the shred bin.
I grabbed the calculator again, punched in the numbers I knew by heart. The numbers I’d been trying to finagle into something I could make work. But the totals didn’t lie.
Neither did the pit in my stomach.
Exhaling a deep sigh and closing my eyes, I braced my hands on the desk and hung my head. It was time I faced the truth of the situation—I was between a rock and a hard place with no way to fix this on my own. No matter how desperately I wanted to.
Which meant I had exactly one option.
“Are you seriously doing this?” I whispered to the empty room, and I answered myself as I reached for my phone with a trembling hand.
I clicked on my messages and scrolled to the name of the one person I knew would make everything infinitely worse before it had even a flicker of hope of getting better.
This was insane. Absolutely unhinged.
