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Admitting that he needed help. Maybe it was all those things.
“I’m going to handle this the way that I see fit. Like I did the whole time I raised you. You don’t get to tell me what to do. Not now. If I’m like a parent to you, then do what I tell you to do. Go back to school.”
“Levi...”
“We’re done with this conversation. You can sit there and have your ice cream. Let me have a beer.”
She nodded slowly, and he could see that he had kind of hurt her feelings. He didn’t like that. But he didn’t need her being a mother hen to him. That actually felt like it undermined everything he’d sacrificed, and he didn’t want to get into that. Because he didn’t want to go on about his sacrifice. Because that was a shitty thing to do, and he didn’t want to make her feel bad. He just...
He didn’t know why he was beset by so many difficult women.
But rather than continuing to talk, he and his sister sat there, her with her ice cream and him with his beer, and after a fashion, he had to admit to himself that he wasn’t all that sorry that she was there.
But he did need her to leave. Because he needed her to get on with things.
And as for him? Things would just keep clicking along like they always had.
That was all he expected. It was all he needed.
And there was nothing wrong with that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BY THE TIME Quinn got back to the farmhouse, she was shivering. Soaking wet in her overalls, and not at all cold.
She was just...
Shaken.
The whole thing with him had been...a lot. Too much, really. He had stripped his shirt off, and she hadn’t had any idea where to look, so she had looked down at her phone and decided to dig into the whole thing with the Christmas trees.
But the sight of him was emblazoned upon her soul.
Broad shoulders, perfectly sculpted pectoral muscles and a washboard-flat stomach. The dark hair on his chest had done something strange to her.
She had never considered herself a fan of a hairy chest—she had never really put that much thought into it, in all honesty—but she was a fan of his chest.
Why? Why this man that infuriated her so much? Why did he dig down in the things that she had never wanted to examine before? Why did he uproot all of this stuff inside her? Maybe it was because he irritated her that he managed to get down to the attraction.
Because he was peeling back all kinds of things that she normally kept covered up. From her temper, to her desire, so it sort of stood to reason that all of it could easily be refocused onto him.
She didn’t want to be out of control. It was a horrible thing. For her, that had always been anger. Her temper would spark and off she’d go, the red haze driving her forward, making her say things, do things, she hadn’t even had time to think about.
And he made her feel this horrible, layered emotion that seemed to have her in a headlock she couldn’t break out of. When he’d taken his shirt off, everything in her had been thrown into a tizzy, and her go-to for that sort of thing was...being mad. But it was all awful and out of control. It was all letting someone else derail her. Steal her focus. Make her so disoriented she couldn’t find her way to her goals.
Wanting to please her dad had been all-consuming. The pain when she’d failed to please him, and he’d left, just as much.
When she’d had her punch-out in ninth grade, the teacher had threatened to kick her out of the school. She’d nearly compromised something she cared about so much because she couldn’t control herself.
You thought being angry made you different. But you really are kind of like your mom. Burning it all down over a man.
She rejected that, wholly.
“What the hell happened to you?”
She looked up from the driver side of her car window and saw Rory standing there, looking shocked.
“Nothing,” she said, getting out of the car, which just revealed that she was soaking wet.
