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“And you’re so scared to trust anyone that you’d push me away, accuse me of sabotage. I do trust you. How was I supposed to throw that check away when we need it so desperately? It warranted a discussion, at least. But I should have known. I should have known you’d throw it back at me when you know I would never betray you.”
“I can’t do this.”
I paused. “Do what exactly?”
“Fight you. Forgive you. Let this go. I can’t do it, Olivia.”
My lungs burned, my breath still. “Don’t say that. You can’t mean it.”
“Have I ever been anything but honest with you?”
“No—”
“No, I haven’t. Unlike you.”
“Where does that leave us? What do we do?”
He met my eyes with white-hot pain and betrayal. “I don’t know.”
I stilled. Read the writing on his face. Felt the ground tether me, felt the weight of gravity across my skin.
It was over.
Whether I’d intended to or not, whether I was right or wrong, I had breached the trust I’d earned, the trust he’d given with such rare faith. I knew it was bad, but I believed there was a path back to each other, even if it took time and mending.
But that was all gone the second he’d found that check on my desk, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. Not knowing him as well as I did, which, despite his insistence, was very well.
His eyes shone, his jaw set. But behind his anger, I saw his pain. I saw the fight in him as clearly as I could see my own.
Tears welled, blurring the room and the betrayal on his face. For that, at least, I was grateful.
He turned away, leaving the barn.
And he took my heart with him.
29
Mutual Assholery
OLIVIA
“I don’t like it.” Presley stood at the end of my table at the diner with her arms folded and her eyes narrowed. “I don’t like it at all, starting with whatever this is.” She gestured to me. “When was the last time you showered?”
“Tuesday? No, Monday. I think.”
“If you have to think that hard, it’s been too long.” She slid in across from me and leaned on the table, braced by her forearms. Her shoulders made an M that matched her eyebrows. “He just … walked away?”
I nodded and smoothed my hands over my hair, deciding to retwist it in the four hundredth bun I’d put it in since it was last washed. “It’s been three days, and the only thing I’ve managed to do is cry buckets and buy a plane ticket back to New York. Everything is fucked.”
She tried for an encouraging smile. “It must be, throwing the F-word around so casually. Good thing Cilla’s not here.”
“How much of that money actually goes in the jar?”
“Who knows. I think she’s hiding a cache of quarters somewhere behind her pile of stuffed animals like a squirrel.” She paused, her face softening. “When are you leaving?”
Instantly, tears threatened to spill. “Monday.”
“I hate this.”
“Me too.”
“There has to be some way to get through to him. There has to be some way to convince him to see your perspective.”
“Maybe before, but not now. That was it, the last straw. I should have thrown the check away. I should have gone straight to Jake.”
“Why, so he could yell at you? Listen, I think Jake’s a great guy, but he can be a real asshole.”
“I know. But so can I. Mutual assholery.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
“I pushed and pushed him, listened to Chase when I shouldn’t have. I didn’t tell him that James Patton was after us. With a feud this deep, with this many years between their family and ours, there’s nothing to consider but the people who have been here all the time I haven’t. We could have figured out another option for the money, or at least tried. I could have backed Jake up, but I didn’t. I suggested he join forces with the enemy, and what’s worse—I took their money.”
“Fear makes people say and do things they don’t mean. Like the prospect of losing the farm, your home, Alice—of course you’d consider taking the money. You didn’t mean any harm. It’s sort of like how when Jake is afraid, he turns into a raging butthole.”
“But that’s the thing. Since we got together, we haven’t fought—I’d earned his trust. Then I went and threw it in the fire.”
She sighed. “You haven’t seen him at all?”
“Just once and from a long way away. Even from across the property, I could feel how angry and hurt he was. He just got into his truck with Bowie and drove away. A couple of times, I sat on the back porch and watched for him to come in after work, but he never showed. I figured he probably saw me there and waited me out.”
“I can’t believe he hasn’t even spoken to you.”
