His kitchen is as neat as the rest of his house. I resist the urge to go snooping, instead taking in everything I can see from the counter that stretches out into the center of the space. An open bill, a scattering of loose change right next to it. Books stacked on the shelf, pages dogeared. A couple of coasters out of place on the coffee table.
I collect a glass from one of the cabinets, an old jam jar with bits of the label still clinging to the edges in pieces. I rub my thumb over the faded grapes and shoulder open the back door, shuffling onto the back porch where there’s a couple wide, comfortable looking chairs.
The crickets begin their evening song as I shut the door quietly behind me, a call and response of chirps across the wide yard. I didn’t notice last night, but Beckett has a small greenhouse at the very edge, right before the trees begin to cluster into woodland. I can see the shape of leaves through the fogged windows, stacked boxes and a long bench down the center. A table in the back with terracotta balanced in stacks. I wonder what he grows in there, if he likes to spend his evenings with the flowers after spending all day with the trees.
The dwindling light moves across the porch and I pour myself a glass. I sip carefully and hold myself too still, waiting for the creak of the front door, boots against hardwood. But after an hour of watching the sun sink in the sky, it becomes apparent that Beckett isn’t coming home anytime soon. I fall back in the chair with a sigh, the thought oddly disappointing. Is he avoiding his house? Or is he somewhere else? With someone else?
I frown and curl my legs beneath me in the chair and watch the colors change across the sky. Cotton candy pink. Vibrant red. A deep, indulgent violet. I sit on the porch and I wait.
But as night begins to edge across the yard and a yawn works my jaw open wide, I decide to call it. I collect my jam jar and the bottle by my feet and retreat back inside, tidying up some of the things on the counter before shuffling down the hall to the spare room.
I close the door behind me. I’ll talk with Beckett tomorrow.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EVELYN
Beckett is avoiding me.
Three days and I haven’t seen a single glimpse of him. I know he’s been coming and going. There’s always fresh coffee in the pot and a handwritten note right next to it listing out what leftovers are in the fridge. I don’t know how he manages to be so quiet about it, but I don’t catch him once. Not even when I attempt to stay up late on the third night, determined to talk with him.
Instead I fall asleep on the couch, two of the cats purring on my lap. I wake up around midnight with a blanket draped over me and a fresh glass of water on the coffee table.
It’s infuriating.
“Where is Beckett hiding?” I ask Layla, my palms pressing pastry dough into the countertop. I’ve been spending my days with Layla and Stella, helping out where I can. Neither of them looked surprised to see me when I first appeared in Stella’s office, so at the very least, Beckett told them I was here.
Or the phone tree did.
Layla hums and continues piping intricate layers of icing across a cookie. She leans back, rotates it once, and then bends to continue. “Aren’t you staying at his house?”
“I am, but he’s not.” Layla makes another contemplative sound under her breath. I press my knuckles into a stubborn bit of dough. “Or he’s the quietest man alive.”
“He is pretty quiet,” Layla offers. “Once I went three whole weeks without hearing him say a single word. Just grunts.” She straightens, fixes her face in a frown, and grunts from somewhere deep in her chest. It’s a pretty good impression of Beckett. “He’s probably trying to give you space. He’s like that.”
“I’d prefer if he wasn’t avoiding his own home.”
“You could try telling him that.”
I would. If I ever saw him. “I haven’t seen him in three days.”
Layla gives me a look over her tray of cookies, a streak of bright blue frosting on her chin. “He works here, doesn’t he? Go find him.”
My forearms and shoulders are sore by the time I decide to leave the bakehouse. I took all of my frustration out on the dough, and I think I rolled out enough pie crust to blanket the entire acreage of the farm and then some.
I trudge my way through the fields, letting my palms pass over the bristly branches of the Christmas trees. The farm is no less magical now than it was during the holiday season, the trees so dense out in the fields that I can’t see the buildings or the narrow road beyond it. It’s just me and the evergreens, the sun high in the sky. I breathe in deep through my nose and smile.
Balsam. Cedar. Fresh cut grass and apple blossoms.
I don’t find Beckett out with the trees or along the fence that divides the land into neat quadrants, so I change direction and head to the barn instead. I pass a couple of farmhands I recognize from my last trip and give them a wave, a man passing by with what looks like a basket full of radishes. I shield my eyes against the sun with my hand.
“Have you seen Beckett?”
The man nods and points to a smaller barn behind the one they use for holiday decorations, the door propped open with a discarded tractor wheel. Finally. I let the full weight of my frustration guide my way over to the shed and I slip through the door, half-expecting him to bolt as soon as he sees me. It would be poetic, in a way, for Beckett to run from me this time.
But he doesn’t run. He doesn’t hear me at all. I step through the door into the small space flooded with afternoon light and almost faceplant into the wheelbarrow in front of me.
Beckett stands shirtless in the middle of the room, both arms braced above him as he winds a thick coil of rope around and around two parallel pegs. I watch the ink on his arms shift and flex with every rotation of his hands, the constellations and planets on his left arm a beautiful compliment to the flowers and vines on his right.
The smooth skin of his back is unmarked, his spine a strong column flanked with lean muscle. His body is conditioned by work, hardened and cut by days spent under the sun and in the fields. I remember pressing my fingers into that warm skin, how his hips rolled down into me, pinning me beneath him.
I swallow hard as he drops his arms and rolls his shoulders back with a sigh. He reaches for a t-shirt thrown over the edge of a large metal shelf and I clear my throat—shift my eyes away from the span of his firm shoulders.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”
Beckett startles and knocks his head on a low-hanging basket of garden tools. I get a glimpse of toned stomach as he turns and pulls his shirt down to cover himself. The reminder that I’ve been in bed with this man is like a string looping us together. It pulls taut and I sway forward, further into his space.
He rubs his knuckles behind his ear, his sweat-damp hair sticking up every which way. His hat is back on one of the shelves, a faded black snapback with an Orioles logo worn at the edges. There’s a red mark across his forehead from where it must have been pressing into his skin. I stare at it as he looks at me with lowered lashes, a sheepish look turning his cheeks pink.
That body with that face.