“I’m sorry for overstepping,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” he said, and meant it.
Honey Baxter was supposed to be bureau through and through—cold, efficient, procedural. Just another person sent to tell him he was doing it all wrong.
But that wasn’t what she was. Not really.
She was a rule follower, sure. But she also wandered into barns, got dirt on her shoes, touched things no one asked her to. She got involved. She cared.
Even when she was annoying as hell about it.
She was the kind of woman who truly believed that rules and order were helpful.
Which meant—he hated to admit it—he respected her.
She probably didn’t need the calamine. Her skin wasn’t even red, and she hadn’t complained, but his hands moved for the bottle anyway, still caught in the thoughts she’d stirred up. He squeezed a bit into his palm and rubbed it between his fingers to warm it before touching her arm.
He could feel her eyes on him, studying as he worked the pink lotion into her skin.
“Marlene told me what happened with your wife. I understand why you’re bothered by someone from the bureau coming in and messing with your life.”
He stiffened at the mention of his ex-wife. Of course, Marlene told her. The thought should have made him angry; his private life was not something for the neighborsto share, but beneath the irritation was an embarrassing sense of relief. He had dreaded the moment Honey would find out, had dreaded having to explain it himself, and now that she knew, he was spared from speaking the words aloud.
He paused, thumb smoothing the last bit of lotion over the curve of her elbow. “I shouldn’t blame you,” he said quietly.
He should’ve told her it wasn’t completely the bureau’s fault Leticia left. After they released her from custody, they didn’t force her to stay away, but he couldn’t help but think she would’ve never left if she’d been looking her daughters in the eyes as she walked out the door.
In the time the bureau held her, she missed Melly rolling over for the first time and her first gummy smiles. She missed Brooke’s first day of preschool, and the way she’d strutted in with her backpack swinging off her tiny shoulders like she owned the place. She missed seeing Emma’s wobbly determination and the whoop of victory as she finally learned to ride that bike without training wheels.
When Leticia finally called, it wasn’t to come home. It was to ask for a divorce. He’d signed the papers while she was still in prison, sitting at the kitchen table with Melly fussing in her high chair and the other girls watching cartoons in the next room. Even then, he’d told himself they were already over long before the bureau showed up. He had still believed she’d want to come back for the girls. That she’d still want to be their mother.
The bureau made her miss so many firsts.
But she’d chosen to miss the rest of them.
Maybe if she hadn’t been gone that month, she would’ve remembered what she had to lose.
“Ethan,” Honey murmured.
He blinked, realizing he still held her arm. He let go and stepped back a little.
“I wasn’t always a jerk,” he said.
“I don’t think you are.” She reached a hand out as if to touch him, and then seemed to catch herself.
She smoothed the front of her shirt, and Ethan wondered if she could see his heart beating away beneath his.
“I really did intend to stick to my business,” she said.
“But?”
“But it’s hard for me to see something I want to fix and not do it. It’s like a compulsion. Not just the orchard, or the house, or your extremely concerning free-roaming animal system?—”
“Hey, now,” he said, lifting a brow.
“—but Emma too,” she continued, voice gentler. “Because I know what it’s like to be her.”
Something in his chest pulled tight. “What do you mean?”
