And now I can’t seem to look him in the eye, so I close them and I hear him swear under his breath. Then I feel the blast of cool air as the shower door opens and he steps out. “Tate, wait!”
I follow him out of the shower, pausing to grab my towel and turn off the water. “I’m not doing anything tomakeyou lose the farm. I just… Well, we have this idea and we want to expand and your property—”
“So you’re not only blackmailing me, you’re banking on me losing everything?” Tate says as he pulls his boxer briefs back on, over his soaking wet skin. I wrap my towel around myself.
“I was, but to be fair, you were thrilled we were going to lose money when you got the market booth and we didn’t,” I reply as he reaches for his shirt on the floor.
“That’s different,” Tate snaps.
“Okay, well if it matters, I feel really bad about the fact you might lose the farm now,” I reply. “Even though your family is horrible to us and we owe them nothing, I don’t want to see you lose it…if you really want to keep it. But I’m not sure you do.”
He still looks furious. “Of course I want to keep it. I’m busting my ass and risking everything to keep the damn thing.”
“Okay! Okay, it’s just…” Why am I suddenly unable to speak my mind when it’s never been a problem before?
He tugs his shirt over his head and then reaches for his pants. “I love that land. Unlike you, it hasn’t been in our family for generations, but I grew up there. Maybe apple farming isn’t my favorite thing, but there’s potential to turn it into something else if I can just keep it. If I can hold on to it long enough to get some pro hockey money, I can just live on it without the pressure of making it turn a profit.”
“Tate, can we talk about this?” I ask but I don’t honestly know what I’m going to say.
“Are you planning on buying my farm if the bank forecloses?” he says as he buttons up his jeans.
“We…my family have mentioned it, yes,” I admit.
And just like that’s he’s gone—out of my bathroom, out my bedroom and down the hall before I can say another word. Not that I’m going to say anything because I have no clue what to say.
I just watch him go.
I wrap my towel more tightly around myself and walk to my bay window where I stare out until he’s down the street and completely out of view. I want to yell out the window and tell him to stop. I want to tell him I’m sorry. I want to explain that I feel horrible about it now that I know him—and like him,a lot. But I don’t say a thing. I just watch him go.
Because this is for the best. This was never going to be anything. We aren’t fated mates. Not destined to be together. We are enemies by birth, and that is as unchangeable as our DNA. So I throw myself down on my bed, bury my face in my pillow, and refuse to let myself cry.
16
Maggie
“What is your damage?” Daisy asks as I hook a left into the parking lot and she clutches the handle on the door.
“You need to stop watching eighties movies when you have insomnia,” I mutter. “Your catch phrases are lame.”
“Speaking of which, why were you the one wandering around last night at like four in the morning if I’m the sister with the chronic insomnia?” Daisy asks, ignoring my dig about her movie preferences.
I turn off the engine and we both get out of the car. It’s a crappy day, cold and overcast, but it fits my mood. Daisy is looking at me like she’s an FBI agent and I’m a bomb she has to defuse. “Can I do anything?”
I pause at the trunk of the car as I lift it and look at her. Her big brown eyes are actually soft and sympathetic. I wish I could tell her this. I wish I could pour it all out but I can’t for a million different reasons, the biggest being she would freak the hell out. I don’t want to see her reaction—which would be horror and then disgust—or hear her words of wisdom. Because they will most likely be “You’re crazy. You can’t date him. You’ll destroy our family and our future.”
“I’m good. I mean, I’m not, but you can’t fix this. I can’t fix this. It’s not a big deal.” I sigh because the worry and concern on her face is deepening instead of dissipating. “It’s a long, crazy story I don’t feel like getting into, so let’s just work, okay? That will get my mind off everything.”
“Okay. If you say so,” Daisy says and reaches into the open trunk to grab some of the merchandise we brought.
We carry the coolers full of our cheeses to the stand. As we come around the front of the booth, my disappointment is so severe that it almost winds me. Jace, George and Raquel are there but Tate isn’t. I try to casually glance around as we set up, hoping I’ll spot him somewhere nearby but I don’t.
“You know,” Daisy says casually as we walk back to the car for another load of goods, “I registered online with the ancestry site. It allows me to build our family tree online. I’ve gone back super far on Mom’s side. Like all the way back to her great, great, great grandmother.”
“Cool,” I mutter. It is cool, honestly, but I’m just not really in the mood to focus on anything. Where is Tate? Is he skipping the market altogether? Is it because he’s avoiding me?
“Did you know that our great, great grandmother was named Petunia?” Daisy says and makes a face. “Petunia Harrison. And she named her daughter Amaryllis. I always thought the flower-naming thing for girls on Mom’s side was cute but that’s because no one named us Amaryllis or Petunia. We dodged some serious bullets.”
“We did,” I mutter as Dad’s truck pulls into the lot. He’s dropping off the stuff we couldn’t fit in the car.
