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Chris stopped, hands in fists. His eyes flashed dark with menacing anger. “And who gives you the right to tell me what to do? You come back after leaving this place and think you can somehow still boss me around?”

“When you put your cock in my sister? Yes, I absolutely can.” She pointed to Chris’s car. “Get lost.”

“No,” he thundered. “I want to see her. I have to see her.”

“What is this, Chris?” She threw her arms in the air. “Is this your way of getting back at me?”

Chris scoffed. “Getting back at you? Alana, not everything is about you! Sure, I was sad when you left, but you and I both know things were ending between us. Your leaving forced me to really consider what I want with my life.” He hesitated. “And who I want.”

She stormed up to him, shoving a finger to his chest and pressing hard. “Why did it have to be her?” She poked again, hard. “Why couldn’t you get with any other girl in Brent, or in all of the Finger Lakes, pregnant? Why did it have to be her?”

“Because I’m in love with her.”

Her rage turned to ice. The heat of her anger stilled. Alana looked at the man she used to know so well and felt like she couldn’t breathe.

He loved her. When she’d dated Chris, their love hadn’t felt like…that. Their love felt childish, something you would expect from two high schoolers with fumbling hands and awkward bodies. He would tell her as such, but in ways that didn’t feel like this. “Love ya” was the most she’d gotten from him.

They loved in their own ways, yes. But saying I’m in love with you with such intent was not something they expressed. It’d felt too adult to her, too soon. It never felt right, and after they broke up, she knew why. She never knew what it felt like to be that in love, so why say it to someone if you didn’t mean it?

Chris said it now with such confidence and ease. Like it was part of his everyday language. Like saying I’m in love with her was as easy as breathing.

Chris shook his head. “I know I should say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I’m not sorry for loving her. I’m not sorry for being her first. I wanted this as much as she did. And I will stop at nothing to walk in that house right now and see her and my child.”

My child. Those two words could have stopped her heart. My child. He was having a child. With her sister. Her youngest sister. Her Bean.

Alana didn’t stop him as Chris stepped around her and back toward the house. She listened as the screen door snapped shut, and the soft sobs from the two of them as they came together.

She looked down at her bare feet in the dirt. The stupid, useless, dirt.

“No.” She shook her head, kicking some of it up. “No.”

Alana bent over and dug up some dirt, then crumbled it until she made a tight fist.

“How could you?” She let it go, the dirt cascading back down to the soil bed. “How could you do this to me? To us. Again.”

She growled as she bent over and picked up two fistfuls, then threw it at the vines. She moved her way down the row, pulling up dirt and throwing it at the vines and the purple clusters, primed and ready to be picked. She wanted them messy. She wanted nothing to do with the magic and the grapes and the soil.

She kept throwing the dirt, and she screamed, and she screamed, and she screamed.

A strong hand wrapped around her waist and pulled her back. She scrambled to try to escape, throwing more dirt, screaming at the top of her lungs. Her oversized tee was caked with the soil. She wanted to rip that too.

Leo sealed Alana’s back to his chest and lifted her up. She thrashed and kicked as he carried her down to the guest shed and right through his front door. He put her down, then closed and sealed it with a lock.

“NO!” Alana pounded on the door, leaving smears of dirt on the white painted wood. “Let me out!”

He didn’t. Instead, he squeezed her wrists hard and walked her deeper into the house. When her back hit the wall, he released her and caged her in, pressing his hands against the wall, his eyes fixed on her as she threw her tantrum. He remained quiet and calm as her rage turned into sobbing, and her sobbing into the quiet hum of disbelief and disappointment.

Slowly, Leo righted himself. He pinched the hem of her shirt. “Can I clean you up?” he asked softly.

She nodded, feeling the weight of everything on her shoulders.

Leo lifted it off her, placing it on one of his stools. She wasn’t wearing a bra underneath, but his eyes didn’t linger as he dampened a towel and proceeded to wash her clean.

She watched with tired, red eyes as he took care of her with his gentle hands and gentle soul. She didn’t deserve him. She didn’t deserve any of this.

When he was finished, he placed the dirty towel in a hamper, then stood there in silence. He scanned her face and body, checking for more dirt or scars or anything that he could immediately fix.

But there was only one fix Alana needed.