Fuck. He supposes fair is fair. He wasn’t exactly thinking ahead when he asked her the same question, and now he’s in an awkward position. May as well get it over with. She will find out eventually. “My family owns Omnivar International.”
“I dunno what that is.”
“It’s everything. Well, almost everything. The tech in your phone, the fabric in your sheets, the fertilizer feeding your crops. Omnivar is a parent company of a hundred other smaller companies. We’ve got our sticky hands in every fucking cookie jar.”
“Oh. You don’t sound like a happy participant in the family business.”
He has only given her a brief overview. To get into all the reasons he’s a disgruntled member of the family would take far longer than they’ll be out here. “I’m not. Never have been. But that….”
She raises a brow at his dramatic pause, finishing his sentence for him. “Is a story for another time?”
“Exactly.”
He’s grateful that she seems unbothered by his minor revelation. Neither impressed nor disgusted. Her only response was to question his happiness with the situation. He should tell her right now that he gave up his inheritance in favor of growing peaches and raising goats on his little plot of land. That he really is only a farmer now. He probably should have led with that to begin with and left out the rest, but when she meets Oliver she would have found out exactly who he is, since his brother is and always has been, very proud of the family name.
“Not that any of that matters now because I bought a farm and—”
“Wait a second….” Her head tilts, and her expression changes from one that he’s grown fond of into one that everyone else he’s met sincethe incidentfixes him with. “I think I saw a story about you.”
He rubs the bridge of his nose. Here it comes.
“Did you…are you the one who…did you cheat on your fiancée?”
“Those accusations are false. There’s a lawsuit pending between me and the tabloids.”
“Oh my god. Fuck. I’m so fucking stupid. Here I was, thinking I finally met a man who seems decent and—”
“Hey now, I’m decent!”
“Your former fiancée might say otherwise.”
“None of that happened how you think it did.”
Her nose wrinkles in disgust.
He huffs, his voice irritated. “Oh, were you there? Sorry, I must have missed you among the paparazzi.”
“Whatever. Doesn’t matter anyway. You being a cheating cheater who cheats has no bearing on our survival odds.”
He has half a mind to tell her all the gory details of that breakup and how absolutely nothing printed in that story was accurate, but he clamps his mouth shut. If she wants to believe he’s just another asshole, then she’s welcome to. He was getting far too comfortable around her anyway.
She pauses as they crest the top of a small ridge, staring out past sparsely scattered trees, her tone flat and her words thankfully void of any further scolding. “It’s so beautiful out here. I’d appreciate it a lot more if I weren’t so damn afraid of never making it out.”
“I get that feeling.”
“It’s almost enough to convince me all of this isn’t pointless.”
He tilts his head in her direction. “What do you mean?”
“All of it. Everything we do, everything we say, feel, think, dream. All of it means nothing. We are just ants doing busy work. I didn’t expect someone to topple the whole cage yet, though.”
The resigned matter-of-factness in her tone catches him off guard. Still, he’s grateful she’s even speaking to him now. “This is getting deep real fast. I dunno if I believe that.”
“Religious?”
“No. Not at all. I just have to hope that there’s meaning to be found somewhere eventually, otherwise it’s too damn depressing, and there’s already enough reasons to be depressed.” He gestures to the vast nothingness with no rescue in sight. “Case in point.”
“Fair enough, I suppose.”
