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We’d lose some barn animals too. But now that we knew what we were dealing with, we could act, and acting was always preferable to the hell of endless, helpless waiting.
Now the farm could move on.
It was the first bright spot I’d seen since Jake walked away from me in the red barn. Had it only been a yesterday? It felt like a week.
The long hours of the night had passed here with Alice, and I spent the time thinking. Thinking about all he’d said, all the ways he’d hurt me and how I’d hurt him. The ways he’d been right and how he’d been wrong. Maybe I had been naive. Maybe Chase had no good in him, despite what I thought. Maybe I was a sucker and a fool. Or maybe Jake was wrong.
All I knew was that we’d hurt each other again. He saw me as a liability, and I saw him as a roadblock. Here in a bit, when he’d had a little more time to stew, I’d find him so we could talk. We’d be fine, so long as we both apologized and found a way to communicate.
Hope sprang, sparkling and bright, at the thought. And I put all my focus on that in the interest of willing it to fruition.
That hope was dashed by a blood-red slash when Jake walked into the medical barn.
If I hadn’t known what’d happened by the grim calm on his face, I would have figured it out from the slip of paper in his hand.
My heart lurched and my stomach sank, my gaze hanging on the check.
His steps were long and measured as he approached, looking down at me like a furious god. “Have anything to tell me?” he asked quietly, darkly.
“I can explain,” I started, scrambling to my feet.
His eyes followed me as I rose. “I don’t know that there’s a way you could explain this one away, Olivia.”
He was so calm, so sharp, I didn’t think I’d ever been so afraid of what he’d say. The wild, angry bear could be met with a roar. But this I didn’t know how to fight.
“He just gave it to me yesterday—”
“You should have told me the second you came home. Just like you should have discussed it with me before you tried to put the farm up for a loan.”
“After you said … when you said …” I stammered. “What was I supposed to do, chase you down and hand you two hundred grand from the Pattons? I was never going to cash it, Jake.”
“I don’t believe you.”
A hot flush bloomed on my cheeks, the sting of my nose warning of tears. “You don’t actually think that I’d—”
“When you accepted this scrap of bullshit, you betrayed me, this farm, and everyone who depends on it. Which is apparently everyone but you.” He crumpled up the paper and dropped it. “And again, you lied. You didn’t tell me about the money—I had to find out about it from him.”
“Do you honestly believe that I wasn’t going to tell you?”
“You’ve kept things from me before. Why not now? It tracks—you’ve been pushing for peace with the Pattons since you got here. Since Pop’s funeral. This is what you want, it’s what you’ve wanted for a long time, but if you’d been here instead of leaving us all those years ago, you’d know just how grave that mistake was. I told you I’d figure all of this out, but you didn’t have any faith. Instead, you ran off to the bank to try to borrow off the farm without even mentioning it to me, and then you accepted a check from the devil. Be honest, Olivia—you don’t trust me anymore than I trust you, or you would have come to me with the loan, the check, the truth about James Patton and his intentions. If we don’t even have trust between us, we don’t have anything.”
“What are you saying, Jake?” The question trembled.
“You’re dangerous, Olivia. You are a danger to this farm. You're the weak spot, just like the Pattons figured you for, and that check proves it. If you’d just fucking gone home, none of this would have happened. The sick cattle, the fire, the missing stock—it was all a scheme to steal the farm through you. And you let it happen.”
“That’s not fair,” I said softly, painfully. “I tried to tell you.”
“Not very hard.”
For a long, pregnant moment, we stared at each other.
“Tell me what to do, Jake. Tell me how to make it right.”
He shook his head. “There is one thing in this world I hold above all else—loyalty. I believe you think you’re helping. I believe you think you have the answers. You told me you’d never hurt me on purpose. You’d never hurt the farm on purpose, either. But here we are, and both are broken, thanks to you. And the good you’ve done was erased when you put your faith in the fucking Pattons over me.”
