“Um... send it to my agent, I guess.”
“No, I mean what will youdo?”
“What I did before. The book thing isn’t my normal, thank God, because I’m starting to hate it. I’m due back at the hospital clinic in a few weeks, whether it’s finished or not.”
“Right.”
Joe’s expression was unreadable, and the implication of what I’d said took a beat too long to sink in. But when it did, it was like the bottom had dropped out of my world. The last twenty-four hours had been so intense that I’d somehow forgotten my temporary status on the farm. That returning to my real job—my reallife—meant that I’d be leaving for good in a couple of weeks.
Leaving Joe.
I felt sick. Joe took my hands and curled his fingers around them. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Joe, I—”
“Don’t.” He put his finger to my lips. “Don’t say anything, okay? My head’s fucked, the farm’s fucked... I’ve got nothing to offer you, but I need you to know that I love you. I don’t need you to say it back.”
He got out of the van before I had a chance to respond. I watched him jog across the yard and disappear around the barn before the words formed on my kiss-swollen lips.Oh, Joe. I love you too.
Chapter Nineteen
Joe
I didn’t expect Harry to come after me—to chase me down and match my pound-shop declaration—but I was kind of taken aback when I came back from the barn to find his car gone.
“Peeled out of here an hour ago,” Sal said. “Didn’t say where he was going, but he had a bag with him.”
My heart sank. Deep down, I knew Harry would never up and leave without telling me, but the fear was still real.
I spent the afternoon catching up on the little jobs around the farm that never seemed to get done. Keeping busy kept my mind quiet and my heart steady, but when I returned to the house that evening and found Harry still gone, the disquiet came back.
Exhausted, I threw myself into a chair at the table and slumped forward with my head on my arms. Sal brought me tea and rubbed my shoulders, but her comforting touch wasn’t enough for me anymore, and she seemed to know it.
“Any news from your dad?”
As if on cue, the phone rang. I hauled myself up to answer it and listened to Jonah as he reeled off his dire straits. “So they’re not giving you bail?”
“Nope. Just as well, though, eh? ’Cause I reckon Dicky will have burned my place down by now.”
I couldn’t figure out if he was talking metaphorically, and I didn’t much care. Jonah had long ago lost, broken, or pawned anything that meant something to him. “What about the horse he was going to kill? Do I need to do something about that?”
“Don’t expect so. Reckon the geezer had time to sell his horses while Dicky was coming after me.”
Was that your plan all along?But I didn’t bother asking. Jonah’s plans never panned out. Any positive outcome was a stroke of pure luck. “How long will you be on remand for?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Do you need anything?”
“Nothing that they’ll let me have down the prison, lad. Look after your ma, like you always do. Everything else will come right.”
And then he hung up, leaving me with another rock of despair in my gut. I put the phone back and closed my eyes, trying to claw back the bliss I’d felt with Harry on the edge of the cliff. When he’d pushed inside me and speared me with a gaze so piercing I’d felt it scrape my bones.
But I couldn’t find it, so I retreated to the table and went back to sulking until I remembered my own phone in my pocket. It was switched off, my newfound habit when I was with the horses. I powered it up and tossed it on the table to sort itself out—damn thing was running an operating system so old that it took about a week.
Sal came to the table with a sandwich and tutted when I pushed it away. “You’re getting as bad as Harry, going off your food when you’ve got a flea in your ear.”
“He doesn’t have a flea in his ear, Ma. He just doesn’t like food when he’s stressed.”
