I wanted to ask him if he was sure and to give him the out if he wanted, except I didn’t. I wasn’t really sure why, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud.
“Do you fix fences?” I asked instead, the words falling out of me unexpectedly. Was I trying to keep him around? Or trying to talk him out of it? I wasn’t sure which. “Because we have that fence around the property, and it needs fixing. Not a lot, but some spots need it.”
“Um.” He blew out a long breath of air as he ran a hand through his hair. His gaze tracked the horizon. “I mean… it kind of depends on the damage. I could take a look at it. If I do it, that’s going to take longer. And I’d need to know where the gas, water, and power lines are on the property.”
“Understandable.”
“How about we start by walking the fence line and figure out what’s going on?” he suggested.
“Okay.” I nodded. That was the logical thing to do. It was probably the only logical thing going through my head, because no good could come of this whole situation. If history had proven anything, this was a train wreck waiting to happen, but I couldn’t seem to get off while it was the smart thing to do.
CHAPTER 81
maverick
Why I took the job was beyond me. The smart thing would’ve been to tell him that I couldn’t do it and move on to the next thing. Apparently, I wasn’t all that smart. In fact, I was a little stupid with a side of masochist. The truth was, I could’ve walked away. There were plenty of other jobs in Wilde Bay, and I wasn’t hurting for work. Hell, I had no doubt Roxy had inquiries in her inbox that I could’ve used to fill my time.
But instead, I’d stood there and said yes to Harley fucking Lowell. Truly, I never expected to see him again.In fact, I’d explicitly asked not to see him again, but who was keeping score?
It’d been seven years. That was long enough to build a new life. Long enough to get comfortable in said new life. I’d told myself I was over him a long time ago—that whatever we’d had belonged to a younger version of me. And mostly, that was true.
Mostly.
Still, standing there earlier, something had shifted inside me. Not painfully. Not in an overwhelming way. It was just a subtle, simple reminder that some things didn’t disappear as neatly as we liked to pretend they did.
So, yeah, maybe taking the job wasn’t the smartest move for me, but I’d taken it anyway. Tomorrow me could deal with the consequences, if there were any.
I sat in my office with a copy of his assessment, building a client profile, when my phone rang. Roxy’s name flashed on my homescreen, and I just knew the woman was dying on her day off. She was about as good at them as I was.
“Don’t you know how to be alone?” I demanded, answering and putting the phone on speaker. “It’s your day off. I’m hanging up on you now.”
“Fine! You win! I don’t know what to do! I got a coffee, I cleaned so much, and I went for a walk,” she exclaimed. Jesus fuck. I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet. “And he still has four more hours of school. I need something to do, Maverick, before I start planning to murder someone.”
“Fine,” I said. “Come into the office, you busy bitch.”
“Oh, I don’t want to do that. It’s my day off, asshole,” Roxy retorted, and I laughed. This fucking woman. “Tell me about the farm. How bad was it?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I told her. “The barn won’t take too long, but the fence will require more work.”
“You took the job?”
“Yes, I took the job. I’ll start on the barn next week. That’ll give me time—”
“You took the job?” she repeated, having the audacity to sound dumbfounded.
“You told me to take the job!” Because it was more reasonable to blame her for me taking the job than my own masochistic ways. “So, I took the job!”
“Shit, this Holly woman must be hot.” She whistled.
“What?” I frowned.
“You have to be hot as fuck to get a gay man to do a job he doesn’t want to do,” she said. “I want to be that hot.”
Right. The name on the inquiry email was a woman’s. That single piece of information chipped away at the thing that had shifted inside me. Of course, Harley was married. Why wouldn’t he be? Had I really expected that to change? That was almost seven years of memories—of a life built together around holidays, vacations, and more.
Still, the realization sat strangely with me. It wasn’t quite enough to hurt, but rather a dull reminder of how things had ended between us. The choices he’d made. The life he’d built that had never included or even considered me.
I shook my head slightly, shaking the thought loose before it could settle in too deeply.
