“Still. Cheating sucks. My high school boyfriend cheated on me,” she confesses.
“Austen Henley?” I say and when she nods I laugh, but I don’t mean it merrily. “Well just like Alisha, that douche did you a favor. He was not worthy of you.”
“Shut up.”
“Seriously. He’s destined to live in his parents’ basement for the rest of his life.”
“He’s at Syracuse. Pre-med,” Maggie tells me.
“He’ll end up in that basement. Mark my words,” I reply confidently. “And I don’t care if we’re fifty and you’re living six states away, I will find you and knock on your door and tell you I told you so when it happens.”
“I’ll be right here. Well, not in the hockey house with my sworn enemy but in Vermont. On my farm, Clyde willing,” Maggie replies and pauses to look up at me with quizzical eyes before adding. “And if you get what you want, you’ll be right next door. Unless you changed your mind.”
“About keeping the farm? No. I mean I have moments of frustration where I want to give up.” I sigh and think about the fight I had a couple days ago with my grandfather. “My grandfather got us into this mess by listening to my aunt Louise’s advice on the apple trees. And no matter how little work Louise and Raquel do, he still treats them better than my dad, Jace, or me, who are all actually working our asses off to keep the farm.”
“Has he always been like that? With Louise and Raquel? Because that isn’t fair,” Maggie says and twists around so she’s got her back to me now. I curl up against her. Why am I so intent on cuddling this girl? I have no idea, but I am. There is no place I’d rather be right now, and it’s giving me the strength to talk about the shittiest part of my family dynamic.
“Always. My dad acts like it isn’t a big deal, but my mother was always vocal about it when they were married and she was also living on the farm,” I explain. “I think it might even have been one of the things that made her want to end the marriage. She was living and working on the farm, giving blood, sweat, and tears just like my dad, and my grandfather and grandmother were taking every last extra cent and throwing it at Louise for whatever she needed. She wanted to go to college, and they paid for two years before she dropped out. My dad didn’t apply to college because they told him when he was a senior in high school they needed him on the farm. When Louise got knocked up, my grandparents acted like it was the biggest blessing our family had ever received. According to my mother, when she was pregnant with me they barely acknowledged it, and when she announced she was having Jace they told her it wasn’t a great time because he was due in the fall during harvest.”
“You’re kidding me?” Maggie says, her mouth hanging open. “That’s…”
“Horrible. I know.” I sigh, bury my nose in her hair and inhale the scent of her shampoo, hoping she’s managed to get it all over my sheets too because I want to fall asleep to the scent tonight. I try not to think about what that urge means. “Anyway, the other day I’d had a particularly late night because I was coming back from a job and then had to get up super early for class and then my gramps called me bitching that I hadn’t picked up the extra wood we needed for the barn repair, and I swear I almost quit. I’m out there in my undies getting eye-fucked by strange women while I clean their toilets and he’s bitching about a Home Depot run that if Raquel or Louise were reliable, he could have had them do.”
I feel her tense a little. She wants to say something. I hold her tighter. “Say it, Maggie. Whatever it is.”
“Do you ever like…do stuff with them?” she asks, barely above a whisper. “Your Manly Maid clients?”
“No. Never,” I say firmly.
She wiggles and turns and now her chest is pressed to mine and her eyes are glued to my face. “Do they touch you or stuff like that?”
“Some try but I remind them of the contract they signed,” I say. “I’m not there for sexual favors, just cleaning. I know some guys let the lines get blurred, but I’ve never wanted to and I never will.”
“I’m sorry I asked. It really isn’t my business,” Maggie says softly and then gives me a chaste kiss.
I take one of her hands that’s pressed up gently against my chest and hold it in my own. She’s got really delicate hands with long, thin fingers, and I remember she used to play the piano in grade school. “It’s kind of your business. I mean, since we’re doing this whole naked thing on the regular now.”
“So this is a regular occurrence now?” she counters and I grin confidently.
“If I have anything to say about it, yeah. I mean at least until market season is over,” I reply and press the fleshy part of her hand, just above her wrist, near her thumb, to my lips and give it a soft little bite. Her eyelashes flutter at that. “After that it might be harder to explain if we’re still talking to each other or seen around each other. But until then, I intend to keep this up if you want to.”
“I want to.” Three simple words said so firmly it makes my heart beat quicker.
“So then you have every right to know what is going on with my job,” I reply and take her hand and slide it down my bare skin from my chest to my stomach to my cock which is rock hard again. Her eyes flare and her cheeks pink as I press her palm against it. “For the record the whole bed buddy thing for me is exclusive. And I’d need it to be for you too.”
“It is,” she whispers and wraps her fingers around my length. I bite back a groan of pleasure when she squeezes me gently. “This is all I want.”
I roll on top of her. “Good. Me too.”
And then I occupy my mouth with hers so that we both stop talking. I feel like we’re getting precariously close to saying things that we can’t take back. Things about feelings we aren’t allowed to have.
14
Tate
She’s my first thought when I open my eyes in the morning, and that’s a dangerous thing. I know it, but I can’t help it. She makes me smile and not much else has been doing that lately. I rub the sleep from my eyes and throw on some clothes and stumble my way down the stairs. The house is begrudgingly alive, filled with toilets flushing and feet shuffling and alarms beeping for the fourth and fifth time, followed by moans of protest.
In the kitchen I find Cooper and Lex shoveling cereal into their mouths while standing by the sink. I push past them to grab my travel mug from the drying rack and notice the kettle is already on the stove about to whistle, so I grab a green tea bag from my stash in the cupboard marked Tate and snatch up the kettle. “Who turned this on?”
