He stared at her, blinking. “Wait. You’re not the reason they’re reviewing us.”
“I am,” she said, almost too softly to hear.
His mouth opened. Closed. “No. No. You wouldn’t do that.”
“I certainly didn’t do it on purpose,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “It really was just a small footnote, nothing that should have mattered.”
“You’re the one who’s been trying to help this whole time, Honey. You—You got the whole thing planned out, the renovation plans, and—hell, you got the free goats Trent is about to deliver.”
“I was trying to help,” she shot back, her voice shaking. “That’s all I’ve been doing since I got here, trying to make things better, trying to prove I could do some good.”
His jaw clenched, and she could see all the words he was biting back.
“I didn’t mean to—” She stopped herself. His anger was misplaced.
It wasn’t her fault that any of this was happening, not really. She made a note of exactly what she saw, a strange path in the ley lines. Her mistake was not realizing the significance until now.
“I didn’t want it to be true.” She stood slowly. “I tried to figure out a way to fix it. But I can’t.”
He stood, too, and this time there was no catch inhis voice, just the sharp edge of betrayal. “You let me hope. You let me think things could get better.”
“They were getting better?—”
“Except for the part where my kids’ home is about to be taken away.”
“I didn’t know it would happen like this.” Her voice trembled. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
He turned away from her.
“The right thing,” he said, and the words sounded like they’d been spat onto the ground. Then he spun back to face her. “You show up with your labels, and your rules and your plans, and you tell yourself you’re fixing things. But you don’t live with the fallout. We do.”
Honey flinched. “I’m sorry.”
And for the first time since she’d arrived, she saw no warmth in his eyes. Just a man who had nothing left to lose.
“Then maybe you should go,” he said, voice low and final, “before you fix anything else.”
Chapter 28
Ethan
He knew he wasn’t being fair to Honey.
It wasn’t her fault that the government was taking the house or that the bills piled up so high he could barely see over them. He knew all that, but that hadn’t stopped him from taking it out on her.
He tore at his hair and kicked at the dirt. She had given him hope, and that somehow made it worse. She’d made him believe there was a way through it all. That maybe the girls could grow up here, safe and rooted. That maybe he could breathe again. She gave him hope that maybe he could be happy.
And now, even if he somehow scraped together every last overdue payment, even if he did everything right, the bureau would still come. They’d still take his home, all because of the damn magic humming beneath it.
The sun heated the back of his neck as he stood at the edge of the driveway, paintbrush in hand. The white letters on the orchard’s welcome sign gleamed against the fresh coat of green. He shouldn’t even bother. What was thepoint of starting something that was about to be ripped out from under him?
But the girls had been talking about this upcoming opening nonstop. They’d argued over which bucket to get for the U-pick stand, strung fairy lights along the fence, and even helped clean out the goat pen in preparation for Trent’s delivery today. How could he tell them it was pointless? How could he let them down before he had to?
As if on cue, the crunch of tires on gravel announced Trent’s arrival. His pickup rattled toward him, the trailer hitch clanking behind.
It stopped in a puff of dust, and Trent hopped out and ambled toward Ethan. “Well, look at you. What’s the matter? Your fed not around to hold your hand?”
Ethan set the brush across the top of the paint can. “Screw you, Trent.”
