Stella lives in a cottage on the opposite side of the farm from my cabin, a tiny house filled to the brim with old magazines and half-empty coffee mugs. It looks like an eighty-year-old woman with a hoarding problem lives there, Luka’s interference be damned. I once heard them arguing about kitchen towels with gnomes on them. Stella didn’t want to throw them away because, apparently, they’re a conversation piece.
“We’ll move in together when we can add a bedroom or two so he has someplace to cry when I don’t fold his t-shirts exactly right.” She shrugs, jostling Luka’s arm around her shoulders. He pinches her lightly without even looking and her smile spreads into a grin. “I’m happy to share that with anyone who asks. All of this—Dane needs to know we love him. We love them. He told me once he didn’t think he was enough for Matty. He was afraid to take the chance.” She leans into Luka, her temple against his chin. “He deserves to know he’s got the town rooting for him. That we’re glad he’s happy.”
That’s all well and good, but Dane looks like he’s about to melt into the floor.
“Even if it derails the rest of this meeting?”
She grins. Luka shouts something about matching china patterns. There’s an answering cheer throughout the small room and Dane presses his fist to his forehead. “Especially then.”
I lean back in my seat with a chuckle and cross my arms over my chest, pull my baseball cap low over my eyes, and stretch my legs out as much as I’m able. Best just to wait these things out, in my experience.
I close my eyes, breathe in deep, and think about peppers.
CHAPTER TWO
EVELYN
“Uh, hey.” A throat clears somewhere above me, a rough rumble. “You waiting on someone?”
I glance up from my phone to the tall figure leaning with his hip at the edge of the table, a frown tugging his lips down. I don’t think I’ve seen him smile once since I got here—on the limited occasions I have seen him, of course. I think he’s been hiding in one of the barns every time I’m touring the grounds.
It makes me sad.
A little annoyed, too.
“I’m not.” I push the empty seat across from me back with my boot. A silent invitation.
He waits a beat and then folds his body into the small seat across from me. I watch him over the edge of my coffee mug. Elbows on the table, hunched shoulders. His body curls forward as he stares at his plate like it holds the secrets to the universe. Minutes pass, and he doesn’t say a word.
“So,” I drop my chin in my hand and take a noisy sip of my coffee. I keep my voice light and bright, markedly different from the awkward tension that’s curling in my gut. My mom says I’m impervious to the moods of others. That I could brighten even the darkest storm cloud.
With Beckett, I feel like we’re both the storm cloud. Together, we’re a monsoon.
“How is your day going?”
He glances up at me, a bite of zucchini bread perfectly poised on the end of his fork. “Hm?”
“Your day,” I repeat. If he wanted to sit in silence, he could have gone to any of the empty tables lined against the wall. Instead he sat down here, with me. “How is it going?”
“Oh,” he shifts in his seat and traces the edge of his porcelain plate with his thumb. “It’s fine,” he mumbles. Blue-green eyes peek up at me and then dart back down. Another awkward pause, the silence stretching a moment too long. I can’t believe this man walked right up to me in a bar and put his body next to mine. Leaned into my space until I could smell the summer rain on his skin and asked me what I was drinking. “Yours?”
“Fine.” I want to fling his plate across the bakehouse, if only to get a reaction out of him. I wait for him to say something else and when he doesn’t, I sigh. “Stella is taking me on a tour through the fields later.”
He makes a vaguely interested sound.
“It really is beautiful here.”
Another sound under his breath.
Alright, fine.
I collapse back in my seat and cross my arms over my chest, busying myself with looking out the floor-to-ceiling window to my left. From this angle, I can see a couple of kids weaving in and out of the trees—a tiny squirrel hiding in the brush, digging a hole in the dirt. The bakehouse is hidden in one of the fields, a surprise for visitors to stumble upon when they’re out hunting for the perfect tree. Inside, condensation gathers at the bottom of the windows, a perfect frame of gray-white. Tree branches brush at the windows. It feels like I’m in one of those vintage Christmas cards, and I bet it’s damn near magical when it snows.
“You know, I was walking past the strawberry fields earlier.”
I dart my gaze back to Beckett, still staring at that stupid plate. “Yeah? I didn’t know you had strawberry fields here.”
He ignores me, a bob in his throat as he swallows tightly. Stoic. Insulated. A million miles away.
“I heard some of them crying, I think.”
“What?”
“The strawberries,” he explains. “I heard some of them crying.”
I blink at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s because—” a small smile curls at the edge of his mouth, right at the corner. It tugs at his bottom lip as he shifts in his seat and I remember, viscerally, what that smile feels like tucked in the place between my shoulder and neck. He looks up at me through his lashes and it's the moment after a storm when the sun decides to peek out from behind the heavy clouds—rain still dripping from the edges of the roof, the trees, the mailbox on the corner. “It’s because their parents were in a jam, I think.”
It takes me a second to understand.
A joke.
Beckett just made a joke.
A really stupid one, too.
A surprised laugh bursts out of me, bright and loud. Several people turn to look.
But I’m too busy staring at Beckett, the grin on his face wide and unrestrained. A little bit wild. A lot bit beautiful.
I press my fist to my lips, delighted by his shining eyes. He ducks his head down and takes another bite of his zucchini bread.
“That was a dumb joke,” I tell him.
“Yeah.” His smile settles into something soft. Something I’ve felt before with the palm of my hand in the dead of night. His eyes shine bright in the afternoon sun. “Yeah, it was.”
I’m pulled out of my daydream with a sharp kick to my shin.
I jump in my seat, my knee hitting the underside of the shiny wooden table that stretches the length of the room. Josie gives me a look from her place across from me, both eyebrows raised high. I haven’t been able to keep my thoughts from drifting since I sat down at this meeting, and given the bruise forming on my leg, she’s noticed.
“How do you feel about dance?”
My agent-of-the-day, Kirstyn, taps her pen against a pale pink notepad. Peony pink. The sky right before the sun hits the water pink. Sway doesn't believe in assigning one specific agent to a client. Instead, I have a rotating fleet of young, attractive, and trendy consultants at my beck and call. Kirstyn and her severe cloud of perfume has me yearning for Derrick and his fluorescent nail polish. Shelly and her oversized blanket scarves.
Kirstyn pinches her lips together in annoyance. “Did you hear what I said?”