I don’t question him, just switch on my turn signal and follow his instructions. It’s a gravel driveway, and Beau tells me to keep going all the way to the end. “Where are we?”
“Don’t worry, no one lives here. This block has been for sale for months.” He unclips his seat belt, then whacks my thigh for me to do the same.
I have no idea what we’re doing here.
I want to go home, face-plant on my bed, and ignore the world for the rest of the day.
Beau’s waiting for me in front of the car, and when I reach him, he immediately steps forward and wraps me in his arms. Like that, some of the stress loosens its hold.
My hands find his lower back, and I tilt my face down to smile into his shoulder. “What’s this?”
“You looked like you could use it.”
“You’re not wrong.”
His fingers play with the hair at the back of my neck, and neither of us moves for a long moment. Holding him close, breathing him in, it settles me like nothing else can. He’s quickly becoming my rock, and I wish I could be the same for him.
When he loosens his hold, I let him go reluctantly.
Then look around.
The driveway has a dense wood pressing on one side and a large open paddock on the other. More trees cut off the view of the road we were just on, and the land goes past another tree line and toward the mountains a half mile away.
“Want to go for a walk?” Beau asks, nodding toward the field.
“Are we allowed?”
He grins and heads toward the timber fence separating the driveway from the paddock. “Who’s going to stop us?”
Good point.
Apart from the occasional car passing back on the road, it feels cut off from the rest of Kilborough, like it’s a secret oasis away from the always busy town center. Birds call to each other from the trees, dragonflies skip over the longish grass, and when we round the second tree line, we find a pond with ducks lazily drifting across the surface.
“I didn’t even know this place was here,” I say. It’s nice. Calming.
“I’ve never been here before.” Beau holds up his hand in a wave, and I turn to see what’s caught his attention. A man’s sitting outside a small stone cottage.
“Shit,” I mutter. “I thought you said no one lives here?”
“I think that’s Trent Briller. Come on.”
We cross the distance to the cottage, and when the man stands, he does look vaguely familiar. He’s around our age with a thick beard and a broad hat planted on his head.
“Hey, Beau.” His eyes squint up kindly. “What brings you around here?”
“Sorry, I thought the place was empty. We just needed to get outside for a bit.”
“It’s a good place for it.” Trent extends a hand to me. “I think I’ve seen your face, but …”
“Payne.” I shake his hand.
“Oh, yeah, Marty’s brother.”
“The one and only.”
“What are you doing out here?” Beau asks.
Trent huffs. “Every month we have to come out and mow this son of a bitch, so I usually stay for the weekend and do it in parts.” He points toward where the grass is green and clear on the other side of the paddock.
“I’m surprised it hasn’t sold yet,” I say. “You’d think a developer would have jumped straight on it.”
Trent shakes his head. “That other half is protected land because of some of the species that breed in the pond, and the part up front we’ve been offered a fat sum for, but none of the family wants to let it go and see a bunch of houses or apartments go up.”
“I take it you’re not in a hurry to sell, then?”
“Yes and no. We want it off our hands, but Kilborough gets bigger every year, I swear, and we prefer knowing that this area is useful for more than just condos.”
“But if not a developer, who would want this much land?” Beau asks.
He has a point. It’s huge.
“It’s good farmland. Maybe a horse-riding school? Not sure, but there has to be someone out there with better ideas than me.”
Agreed, because like Trent, I’m not an ideas man. I’ll leave the creativity to Beau.
We stay for a while as Beau and Trent catch up and then make our way back to the car. Being out here, getting some perspective away from it all, has settled my annoyance over Kyle’s note.
The divorce is going to happen whether he wants it to or not, and it’s not as though he can force me to meet with him. I have no idea why he’d even want that, unless he’s hoping for a broken nose, because seeing his face again … there’s no telling what I’ll do.
Just the sight of his handwriting was enough to almost ruin my day, but it didn’t. Because of Beau.
When we get home and walk inside, I’m just debating the best way to grab Beau and drag him to my bedroom when he heads straight to his desk.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’ve had a cool idea, and I need to get it written before I forget.”
Aaand there goes my idea, then.
I watch in bemusement as Beau drops into his desk chair, wakes up his computer, and starts hammering away at the words. He loses himself in them completely, not even pausing when I move around the apartment to clean up and pull ingredients out for dinner.
It’s funny that he can go from devoting his afternoon to me one minute to completely forgetting I exist the next, and honestly … I think it’s adorable.
Which is weird, because when that fucker used to ignore me while he was playing on his phone, I’d get mad. It was rude and disrespectful and rubbed me the wrong way. I guess the joke is on me because he never had any respect for me anyway.
Whereas with Beau … I know he respects me. He’s never told me that, but he hasn’t needed to. It’s there in the way he acts, the things he does, how he doesn’t push me to talk about feelings when after last night, he’d definitely be in the right to.
It would be childish for me to think I’m not feeling something for him. Something bigger than wanting to sleep with him or flirt with him or even be friends. And if he pushed … what would I tell him? That I can easily see myself falling for him? Because fuck if that isn’t true.
I want Beau. I want to be the man he finds happiness with. But I can’t offer him happiness with this divorce hanging over my head.
It’s too distracting. All it took was one note today and I felt like my whole world was coming apart at the seams.
That’s not a healthy reaction.
I shouldn’t need Beau to fix things. To put me back together.
That sort of need is what makes me doubt my feelings for him are real and not a product of proximity and timing. I’ve never even thought about Beau in this way before—and as worried as I am about hurting him, I’m just as desperately hoping this is real. That I could be so lucky.
Beau works for hours without a break, and I have no idea how he manages it. My hands would be aching by now.
When dinner is ready, I grab Beau’s book that I’m reading and sit on the couch, not wanting to distract him by putting on the TV.
I think I’ve figured out why Beau wants to live in this world. All his characters have their eccentricities, and none of them are judged for it. They’re accepted for exactly who they are.