Her compassion lands like a blow to the chest.
She reaches out to take the picture back, running a comforting hand over his arm as if he is heartbroken or traumatized by what he sees in that photo, when his heart is already in the very near future, breaking over how she’ll react to the truth.
“It was a long time ago,” he says softly, neither confirming nor denying her original question. “Emma? Can you put these back where you found ‘em, please?”
The girl nods and runs off with the treasure box she dug up from some far corner of a storage heap.
“I was thinking we might want to look further out for some horses. Maybe there are other farms with animals left?” Addison says absently, dumping feed onto the ground for the chickens.“And there’s space for a windmill at the other property. We could have electricity one day if we can figure that out.”
He barely hears her. All he can think about is how easily she trusts him and how completely he’s abused that trust. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea. We should go before the weather really turns.”
“Wyatt?”
“Hmm?”
She moves in front of him, reaching for his hand to thread their fingers together. The contact nearly undoes him. “I’ll never push you to talk, but I’ll always listen if you need me to.” Her soft tone turns slightly teasing. “I promise I won’t even interrupt you with a million questions.”
He does not deserve her. He nearly snatches his hand back to keep from soiling her skin with his touch. “There is something we need to talk about.”
“Okay.”
“Not now. Tonight, after Emma goes to sleep.”
She tilts her head, her concern growing into uncertainty. “Alright. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay. I promise.”
Don’t say that. I’m a liar. I’ll only hurt you.
If there is one thing that has developed between them by now, it is a concerning level of trust. Anyone else might assume the worst, but Addison only nods, taking everything he says at face value, and that cuts his heart into pieces all over again.
This may be the last time she ever looks at him like this. He wishes he could etch her face into his memory so he can pull it up long after she’s left him. Swallowing hard, he turns back to his chores before his resolve breaks, and he spills everything at her feet right here in the barn like a church confessional.
He will tell her tonight. On the very last day of the deal they had made a month ago.
* * *
Wyatt finds her in the kitchen after night falls, ripping open a bag of ramen noodles from the stash and boiling water on the stove. She has left it up to him to seek her out for this conversation, and she’s doing a solid job at pretending she’s not curious. Addison sends him the sweetest smile when she spots him, such a stark difference from her expression the day they met, when she looked at him over the barrel of an antique shotgun.
It’s fitting that he tells her the truth in the same spot where she thought about killing him with a knife from the block right over her shoulder. He only wishes that he had the same amount of apathy about the entire situation that he possessed that day. Far too many feelings have grown since then, and they’ve threaded up through his limbs like vines on a thorn bush, puncturing little holes in him every time he looks at her.
“Are you hungry? I can make you some,” she offers.
“No. We need to have that talk.”
She grabs a cup and begins to smash the dry noodles still in the bag. “Okay, about what?”
Slam. Crush. Crack. Each hit is harder than the last, but she seems oblivious to the stress that must be radiating off him in waves.
“Can you…can that wait? It’s important.”
The cup rests on the table. “What’s wrong?”
Fuck. It’s now or never, and never isn’t an option as much as he wishes it was. If they have any hope of being something more than friends, it can’t begin on such a tattered foundation.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he says quickly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in a nervous tic. “I lied to you when we met.”
She doesn’t respond, but he watches the brief flicker of amusement when she assumes he’s joking morph into wary surprise when it’s clear that he’s not. He does not look at her again as he launches into a poorly rehearsed explanation. If he does, he may not be able to get it all out.
“Omitting the truth is the same damn thing, even if I told myself it’s not. That house I found you in doesn’t belong to me. Never did. I never grew up there. You assumed that, and I didn’t correct you on it.”
