Shame didn’t come. Only the surprising, painful truth, I wanted him.
Twenty-Eight
Wyatt
Iknew I crossed a line the second I pulled into her driveway with the feed bags in the back of my truck. I knew it, and I did it anyway.
Tessa's barn door was open when I parked, and I could see her inside mucking stalls with the kind of aggressive focus that meant she was pissed off about something. The late afternoon sun cut through the doorway and caught the sweat on her neck, and I forced myself to look away before I started thinking about things I had no business thinking about.
I grabbed two feed bags and headed toward the barn before I could talk myself out of it.
She looked up when my shadow fell across the threshold, and the expression on her face went from surprised to wary in half a second.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, and there was no welcome in her voice.
"Brought you feed," I said, hefting the bags slightly. “John mentioned you were running low when I saw him at the co-op."
Tessa set down the pitchfork and wiped her hands on her jeans. "I didn't ask you to do that."
"I know."
"So why did you?"
Because I can't seem to stop myself from trying to take care of you, even when I know you don't want me to. Because watching you struggle with things I could easily fix makes my chest tight in ways I don't want to examine. Because every time I see you, I want to be closer to you, and bringing you feed was the only excuse I could think of that didn't involve admitting any of that.
"Because you needed it," I said instead.
Her jaw tightened. "I was going to pick it up tomorrow."
"Now you don't have to."
"Wyatt.”
"Just let me help," I said, already walking past her toward the feed storage.
"I didn't ask for your help," she called after me.
I set the bags down harder than necessary. "You never ask. That's the problem."
When I turned around, she was standing right behind me, close enough that I could smell the hay and horse and something underneath that was just her. Her eyes were flashing with anger, and colour had risen in her cheeks.
"The problem," she said, her voice low and tight, "is that you keep deciding what I need without asking me first."
"Someone has to," I shot back. "You're running yourself into the ground trying to prove you can do everything alone."
"That's my choice to make,” she shouted at me.
"It's a stupid choice."
The words came out sharper than I'd intended, and I saw her flinch before her expression went hard.
"Yeah no, we’re not doing this. Get out."
"Tessa.”
"I mean it. Take your feed and your unwanted opinions and get the hell off my property."
Something hot flared in my chest. "Our property dispute doesn't mean I can't help you when you need it."
