“Cute sweatshirt,” Layla says immediately, a sly grin on her full lips. She has a cake in front of her, white buttercream and hunter green icing. A trail of delicate, pale blue forget-me-nots cascade down the side, her hand poised above. She adjusts her grip on the bag and tilts her head to the side. “I like your new farm look. It suits you.”
It suits me too, when I’m not sweating half to death. I putter over to the countertop and pick up a broken cookie, Layla’s stack of imperfect discards on a tray for anyone to grab.
I’m supposed to be helping her with her weekend orders, but maybe I’ll eat all her scraps and call it a day. I feel like I’ve earned that.
“I saw the ambulance pull in yesterday.” Stella wipes her hands off on a towel and steps around the counter. “I was going to stop by if I didn’t see you today. Everything okay?”
The ambulance. God. I had never felt like more of an inconvenience than when Gus came rumbling into Beckett’s driveway with his red and white behemoth. At least he didn’t have the lights and sirens going. I’m pretty sure I would have crawled under the bed in the spare room and never come out.
“I’m okay. Beckett took good care of me.” With the blankets and his warm skin pressed to mine, his arms tight around me, his chin on my shoulder. I feel another flush of heat that has nothing to do with my layers. He hadn’t hesitated at all, instantly scooping me up and holding me close.
Layla snickers down at her cake, a practiced flick of her wrist as she pipes a tiny, perfect leaf on the corner. “I’m sure he did.”
I give her a look around a mouthful of oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. “Very mature of you.”
I finish my cookie and tuck my elbows into my chest, an attempt to pull my arms from the sleeves of my top two layers. The thick material bunches around my biceps and I make a helpless sound as I attempt to twist out.
Stella takes mercy on me and grips the hem. “I’m glad you were able to get to Beckett. It’s a long walk from the pond to the fields.”
Even longer when you’re soaking wet and shivering so badly you can hardly breathe. I lost my coat somewhere on the way, the thing so heavy with water it felt like seventy-five extra pounds of weight. I’ll have to go grab it at some point.
Stella tugs the sweatshirt up and over my head and I breathe out a sigh of relief. Movement. Oxygen. Sweet, sweet freedom. She drapes the jumble of cotton over a chair. “What were you doing out at the pond anyway? We really only ever use it in the summer.”
“Trying.” I offer in an explanation that makes absolutely no sense at all. But Stella always seems to read between the lines. The confusion on her face settles into a soft understanding, her hand squeezing at my arm once.
“Everything okay?”
I nod, shrug, and then shake my head. “I don’t know.” I tuck my hands into the cuffs of my shirt and glance at the picture hanging just behind the counter—Beckett, Layla and Stella together with a giant pair of scissors, cutting a big red bow in front of the bakehouse. “Do you ever feel like—do you ever want to slow down? Not be responsible for everything, all of the time?”
She breaks off a piece of my cookie as she considers her answer. “About six months into owning the farm, I started sleepwalking. Most of the time, I’d wake up somewhere in the house. Going through drawers in the kitchen. Inexplicably taking all my clothes out of the dresser. Rearranging houseplants. Other times I’d wake up in my office, sitting behind my desk.” She huffs a laugh. “Once I woke up in the middle of typing an email to a supplier, asking for four times the amount of everything. Beckett would have had enough topsoil for years.”
“The office is pretty far from your house.” At least in the middle of the night, it is. When one is presumably asleep.
Stella nods. “Yeah. One night I fell in the middle of the field. Sprained my ankle. I had to hop my way home in my pajamas.” She shakes her head. “I was covered in dirt, sitting in my kitchen, with my leg propped up on the counter.”
I take another nibble of cookie. “Was Luka mad?”
She nods. “Furious. He was upset that I never told him about the sleepwalking. That it had been happening for a while and I never thought to mention it, or slow down.”
She glances out the window to the trees beyond, a half-smile tugging at her lips. “I’m not great at listening to myself. Some days I push myself too hard. Some days we don’t get a single customer and I panic about losing everything. Some days I make up an elaborate story with my best friend and pretend we’re in a relationship so a social media influencer likes us more.” She gives me a rueful grin. “Some days I’m so tired I can hardly remember my name. And that’s what’s expected, right? When you own a business. I think—I think we’re told that we should embrace the grind. The work. That everything will be worth it in the end. But sometimes we need rest more than we need another thing on our list. And that’s okay. I’m learning that’s really okay.”
I blow out a noisy breath. That’s what I’m looking for, I think. A little rest. Something slower. I’m so tired of everything else.
Stella watches me carefully. “It’s okay to want different things,” she says. “People change. You’re allowed to change. Doing less doesn’t make you less.”
Seasons change and so do we. I wonder if Stella made the banner that hangs in the center of town.
“Nice shirt,” Layla calls, a laugh hidden in her voice. I look down at the oversized flannel tied in a knot at my waist and pluck at one of the buttons.
“It’s comfortable,” I say.
“Mmhmm.”
“It’s really soft.”
“I’m sure it is.”
Not as soft as the look on Beckett’s face, though, when he helped me slip the material over my shoulders, his knuckles grazing the inside of my arm and then my collarbone. Mine, that look had said, possession in the nimble work of his fingers against the buttons. But then he had cleared his throat and looked away, staring at his mug of tea like it held the meaning to life.
I have no idea what he wants from me, if he even wants anything from me at all.
Stella studies me with a knowing look. “Have you talked to him?”
“He knows I have his shirt.”
“That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”
I haven’t. What could I possibly say? That night in Maine was one of the best nights of my life. I want to keep sitting on your back porch.
Every day we spend together, I only like you more.
I can’t. There’s still too much to figure out. I’m confused about work and that confusion is bleeding out, jumbling up the rest of me.
Specifically my feelings for a very handsome and very stoic farmer.
Our conversation is interrupted by a knock against the thick glass of the front door. Caleb Alvarez edges the door open and pokes his head through, the rest of his long body lingering on the small porch. Dark hair, bashful grin. Eyes only for Layla.
“You open for business yet?”
Layla waves him in from behind the counter, tongue between her teeth as she finishes piping her flowers. “Always for you, Deputy.”