I sniff. “It smells like… mud and Thanksgiving.”
Beck tips his head back and laughs, the sound of it echoing in this hot house.
And then he’s hugging me again. Tight. Just the way I like it. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he murmurs into my hair.
I want to keep hugging him, but it’s so hot in here. I squeeze him once around the middle before dropping my arms.
“Can we go back out? I’m getting sticky.”
“Of course. Sorry—” He lets me go and turns us back toward the door, but then a thought hits me and I halt.
“Wait a second—” I look back over my shoulder at all the crates. Parked at the other end of the cure house is a forklift—I’m guessing for stacking and unstacking the crates. Because there are so damn many.
I blink at the crates and then look back at Beck. “So… the potatoes stay in here to cure… for a week?”
He nods. “And then we move them to one of the storehouses.”
I look back at the crates that must hold literally thousands of sweet potatoes. Each crate has a small white card with writing on it stapled to the front. I look closer. Harvesting dates. The crates closest to me are marked for yesterday.
“So these are potatoes you’ve harvested just in the last week?”
The corner of his mouth lifts and there’s my favorite punctuation mark. “Yeah.”
“Jesus Christ.”
He’s not a man. He’s not a farmer. He’s a beast.
I stare at him, stand up straighter and clear my throat. “This is a lot. You do a lot.”
Way more than me. Way, way more than I could ever manage.
I make sure not to say this part out loud.
My family wants to put me in a group home because they don’t even think I can manage to take care of myself.
I make damn sure I don’t say this part out loud either.
But if Merrick hadn’t intervened—hadn’t proposed the idea of me at least trying to live on my own, I’d have to tell him. And he might never look at me the way he’s looking at me now again.
Beck leads me outside, and I don’t think he says a word. At least I hope he doesn’t because nothing penetrates as I take in the farmland again.
It’s fucking huge.
He runs a farm for Pete’s sake.
“H-how many acres is it again?” My voice comes out squeaky.
“Three hundred and twenty.”
And maybe I’ve fallen too deep into my own thoughts because Beck’s voice suddenly sounds far away.
When I look up at him, his gaze is on the fields, his brow knitted.
Then he does this thing that seems pretty un-Beck like. He shakes his head like a dog shedding water and picks up his stride.
“C’mon.”
Like the cure shed, the store shed he shows me has a big garage door, but we enter through the regular door on the side.
