She closes her notebook. Sets it aside with deliberate care.
"My family's farm went under when I was sixteen."
I turn to look at her.
"Dad held out as long as he could. Took loans. Worked himself half to death. Mom picked up shifts in town. They did everything right. Followed all the advice. Diversified crops. Cut costs. Sold at farmers markets." Her voice stays level. Clinical. Like she's reciting facts. "It didn't matter. The margins were too thin. The competition too big. One bad season and we lost everything."
"Ivy—"
"I watched my father sit at the kitchen table and cry. Watched my mother pack our lives into boxes. Watched strangers walk through our house deciding what they'd keep and what they'd auction off." She picks at a piece of hay. Twists it between her fingers. "I swore I'd never let that happen again. To me. To anyone."
The rain fills the silence she leaves behind.
I want to say something. Anything. But words feel useless against that kind of loss.
"I'm terrified," I say instead. Quiet. Raw. "Every day I wake up and think this is it. This is the day I prove everyone right. That I'm just some city cook who doesn't know what the hell he's doing. That I took this place from my aunt and destroyed it."
Ivy shifts. Her shoulder presses against mine.
"I can't fail her." My throat tightens. "She left me this place because she believed I could do it. And I don't know if I can."
"You can."
"You don't know that."
"I do." She turns. Looks at me straight on. "You're chaotic and reckless and you make decisions that give me hives. But you care. About the food. About the people. About doing it right even when right is hard."
"That's not enough."
"It's everything." Her hand finds mine in the space between us. Fingers threading through fingers. "Caring is what makes the difference. It's what separates you from Webb and every other vulture circling this town."
Her palm is rough. Callused from dirt and tools and work. It fits against mine like we've done this before. Like it's easy.
"I'm scared too," she whispers. "Of losing the land. The seeds. Everything I've built here. But I'm more scared of not fighting for it."
The lantern on the workbench flickers. Casts her face in gold and shadow.
I should pull back. Should keep the distance. Should remember that this is complicated and messy and we don't even like each other most of the time.
But her eyes are on my mouth.
And mine are on hers.
And the rain pounds the roof and the world shrinks to just this. Just us. Just the way her breath catches when I lean in.
"Rogan—"
I stop. An inch away. "Tell me to move and I will."
She doesn't tell me to move.
She closes the distance instead.
Her lips meet mine and it's nothing like I imagined. Not soft. Not tentative. It's fierce. Hungry. Like she's been holding back as much as I have and the dam just broke.
I cup her face. Angle deeper. She makes a sound low in her throat that travels straight through me, lighting every nerve on fire.
Her hands fist in my shirt. Pull me closer. We're too close already, pressed together on hay bales in a drafty barn with goats as witnesses, but it's not close enough.
