After getting himself a glass of water, Emerson slumped into a kitchen chair with a sigh. He could hear the din of the wedding, still going strong up the hill. But it was muted, not overwhelming. His house was exactly as he’d wanted it to be: still. Peaceful.
And his skin itched with wrongness.
Emerson knew it hadn’t been terribly long since Luca Yaeger had arrived on his farm. Barely over a month. He should have remembered what it was like, all those months before. During the weeks he didn’t have Daisy after Jayden moved out. How quiet it had been at the end of each day.
He didn’t like remembering.
Luca would come through the door any minute. Emerson was sure of it. He had to be somewhere. Emerson could survive until then.
A drunken crowd of people climbing onto a school bus in his driveway sometime later jolted Emerson awake. He cursed as he righted his head, whatever weird angle he’d somehow fallen asleep in alerting his neck at once that it was fucked. He stood, watching the scene outside through his front window, hand cradling the base of his skull, until the bus had safely departed.
He leaned closer to the window, trying to spot Luca’s car. They had moved the van and cars farther from the house earlier today to make room for the wedding party and the bus. But it was too dark now; he could hardly see anything at all.
He did another walkthrough downstairs, even if he knew he would still find Luca’s bed cold. He could feel it, even without looking. Luca wasn’t home.
With a sinking in his gut, he threw off his wedding clothes, tossing them in an uncharacteristic heap on his floor. And then he climbed under the covers, holding onto the hope that when he next woke, Luca would be there next to him: those long eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, a tired smile on his lips.
twenty-two
Luca staredat the walls of his childhood bedroom.
It had been his and Jacob’s, technically. Kjell and Daniel had shared another; when poor Dagny came along, she’d basically lived in a glorified closet.
Kjell and Daniel’s had been converted into an office after all the kids moved out. Lucky for Luca at this moment, his parents had left Luca and Jacob’s room mostly intact for when the faraway Yaegers came back to visit.
Or when one of the local ones needed to have a pity party.
A knock sounded on the door. Luca threw the covers over his face.
Of course the one time Luca chose to have a mini-mental breakdown in his childhood home, it was on a day when the rest of the Yaegers had arrived back from sea. When he’d walked in last night, his dad and Uncle Derek and Joe Halpern were all there, telling exaggerated stories of the run to make it sound more exciting to their wives, as they always did. They’d all looked at him in surprise as he’d walked in unannounced. He’d realized at once how much he’d missed them and how equally glad he was that hehadn’t been on the run with them, and a lump had formed in his throat.
And then he’d realized they were all still looking at him, and he hadn’t made up a single story on the drive over about why he was there. He’d mumbled something about the farm being full-up from the wedding and then stumbled into bed.
He loved his family. But he couldn’t face his dad right now. He still wasn’t sure if his stint as a farmer had been a failure or not. He didn’t want to face him until he knew.
But when his mom said, “It’s me,” through the door, he flopped his covers back down with a sigh.
“Come in.”
“Brought you coffee,” she said when she walked in, and now Luca had to sit up. Leaning over the bed, he grabbed a t-shirt from the floor and threw it on before struggling upright. He took Leah’s proffered mug once he was semi-decent, settling the covers around his waist so his mom wouldn’t have to see her grown son in his underwear.
“Thanks,” he said belatedly, and took a sip.
His eyes closed as his taste buds absorbed Leah’s sugary coffee. She always used those overly-sweet flavored creamers that Luca knew Emerson King would never buy, because he was pretty sure they were ninety percent palm oil. But sometimes—that palm oil just hit.
“So.” Leah leaned her back against the wall, side by side with Luca. “You going to tell me the story of why you’re here and not at the farm? Because last I knew, the wedding guests were all staying at a hotel in Lincoln City.”
“I offered the grooms my cabin for the night,” Luca mumbled. “So technically, they are there.” As far as Luca knew, anyway.
“And did the rest of the wedding party crash Emerson King’s house?”
Luca stared down intohis coffee.
“No.”
And then, after a pregnant pause, he opened his mouth and it all came spilling out.
Luca had come out to his family as gay in high school. Everyone had been cool with it, even his dad, the only person, as always, Luca had been worried about. It had been an overall low-key affair.
