“Because I love you,” I say, stubborn. I don’t see anything wrong with the things he’s listed. “Because I love all of you.”
“I’m starting to think I made a mistake, then,” my dad says quietly, his entire face lined with regret. He blinks quickly and clears his throat, never looking anywhere but right at me. “When I taught you how to love.”
Something in my chest fractures. Worse than when Evelyn walked out my greenhouse door. “What?”
“If you think love means having to sacrifice bits of yourself to make someone else happy,” he explains. “If you’re afraid to ask after what you want. Maybe I did something wrong.”
“I’m not—” my voice cuts out, my throat closing around the words. I look down at the ground, at the edge of my boots. Mud splattered from my time in the fields. I clench both my fists. “That’s not what I’m doing.”
It’s not. I love helping my family. Helping people is my—Christ—Nessa would say helping people is my love language. It’s how I show them I care. Actions have always been easier for me than words.
“Did you ask Evelyn to stay?”
I shake my head. “That has nothing to do with this.”
“Did you?”
I wish I had already started on the porch. It would be helpful to have a hammer in my hands. Pour all the restless energy twisting through my chest into the lift and pound of work.
“I didn’t,” I grit out. “Because she wouldn’t be happy here. Because she’d leave again.”
Because I can’t be the reason she gives anything up. She’d hate me and I’d hate myself.
“Aren’t those her decisions to make?” When I open my mouth to respond, my dad talks louder, steamrolling right overtop of me. “How the hell is she supposed to know you want her here if you never even ask her to stay?”
I close my mouth.
Blink.
Blink again.
“Sometimes love is greedy, kiddo.” My dad sets his mouth in a firm line. “Sometimes it’s a little bit selfish, too. You think it’s never crossed my mind that your mom deserves something better than the life we carved out for ourselves here? It has. A million times. A million and one. But I’m holding onto her with both hands. I’m trusting her to make her own choices. To choose me.”
He looks right at me, a smile hooking at the side of his mouth. He bends at the waist and grabs a piece of wood. He flips it over his shoulder and begins making his way to the ramp.
“Be selfish, Beckett. Just this once.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
EVELYN
“What did he say?”
I glance up at Josie from my collection of folded leggings—a frankly alarming amount of comfort wear that towers next to one of my moving boxes. “When?”
“When you left.”
He hadn’t said a thing. He stood in the entrance of the greenhouse with his arm braced against the door and watched me quietly move around his house. I only allowed myself a single look back, right before I walked out the front door. He had his back to me by then, both hands anchored in his hair.
I can’t keep standing here and watching you walk away from me.
I topple the whole stack into the box. “He didn’t say anything.”
“Has he said anything since?”
I glance at my phone and then shake my head. It’s been radio silence.
Not that I expected anything different.
It’s been two days and the only update I’ve received on Beckett is a banal text from Stella. A simple he’s okay that she didn’t choose to elaborate on, along with a picture of a baby duck with a cookie by his webbed feet. Otis written in icing on top.
Though I suppose that was an update in and of itself.
“I need you two to communicate,” Josie offers from the other side of the room, holding up a shot glass from … I have no idea, honestly. She rummages around above my microwave and finds a bottle of whiskey that is so old, it’s accumulated a layer of dust. I think the cap is fused to the bottle. “The miscommunication here is—”
She trails off, grumbling under her breath.
“What?”
“It’s extremely frustrating for me, as a bystander in this relationship of yours.”
She shuffles her way back over to me around a minefield of moving boxes and … more leggings … the bottle wedged under her arm. She collapses in front of me and hands me the shot glass, working at the cap with her teeth. She spits it towards the windows when it’s off.
“It’s not a miscommunication,” I reply. It’s Beckett thinking there’s no possible way I could find my happy on his farm. It’s him making a decision for the both of us out of a misplaced sense of … something. “I just can’t believe he thought I’d leave like that,” I sigh.
I see it every time I close my eyes. Beckett and the way his entire body went rigid when I walked into his space. The resignation on his face, like it was what he expected the entire time.
He really thought I left.
Josie fiddles with the bottle. “Well, did you ever tell him you wanted to stay?”
“What?”
“You know. ‘Beckett. I want your gigantic heart and your smoking hot body. I’m staying.’”
I open my mouth and then close it.
Josie continues. “You were very communicative with me about your plans.” She sniffs at the open bottle and makes a face. “What was his reaction when you told him about the new job?”
“He doesn’t know about that,” I mumble.
Josie makes a sound, exasperated. The bottle in her hand almost goes flying across the room. “So it is a miscommunication thing.”
“It’s not.” I rub my fingertips against my forehead. I think about our late nights on the porch, talking about everything under the sun. Everything, apparently, except our plans for the future. The things I was working towards and the things he was afraid of.
See where this thing goes.
God, we’ve both been so stupid.
But I’ve shown him, haven’t I? Trivia with his family and my name written on the registration sheet for next time. Afternoons spent in town and evenings spent with him. I’ve been putting down roots this whole time, carefully cultivating each one to be something lasting and true. Hasn’t he seen that? Hasn’t he realized?
Josie pours the amber liquid into the shot glass and I frown at it. “What do you want me to do with this?”
She raises both eyebrows. “Drink it.”
“I’m not twenty-two anymore.” Taking a shot physically hurts me these days.
“We need to commemorate this new chapter of your life and solve the giant mess the two of you have made.” She takes the shot out of my hand, sips half of it, and almost spits it right in my face. She swallows it down with effort, her fingertips at her lips. “Oh my god.”
“I told you.”
“You did not tell me.”
“I thought my refusal might say enough.”
“Alright, change of plans.” She scoops up her phone and scrolls and taps— and taps some more. “I ordered us two bottles of wine and a pizza.”
“That was very efficient.”