Page 26 of Where She Belongs

“Wow. This…”

Tate nodded, toeing his boot at a piece of charred wood. “Yeah.” He surveyed the damage before turning to his brother.

“It could have been worse,” Jason murmured.

“Don’t tell Rylee that. You should have seen her when she saw the damage.” Internally, he winced at the memory. It had been a couple of days since they heard the news and Rylee had been adamant that she didn’t want to bother Tate with the repairs. He’d rebuilt a barn before and he’d assured her it wouldn’t be much trouble, but she’d insisted that she’d already asked too much of him.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

He blew out a breath and glanced at his brother again, finding him staring. “What?”

Jason’s brows shot up and he looked away. “Nothing.”

“That wasn’t nothing. That look right there. What you did. It meant something. Spit it out.”

His twin shrugged and kicked at a piece of debris. “I don’t know, man. Why are we here again?”

“I told you⁠—”

“You said you wanted me to look at it,” Jason cut in. “And I did. What is it exactly that you want from me?”

Tate ground his jaw and peered over to the side of the barn that was still in good shape. “I need your help.”

“With what? This isn’t our barn.” It was an excellent point, delivered with zero decoration, which was Jason all over.

“But I told Rylee that I would help her fix this mess.”

Jason didn’t speak. To anyone else, he might have looked uncomfortable. He wasn’t. He was watching Tate dance around the real reason, and he was content to let him keep dancing.

Tate sighed and pulled his hat off, turning it over in his hands. “You were just as much her friend as I was growing up. This is the neighborly thing to do.”

Still Jason’s face didn’t change. He simply went on watching. It was unnerving, how he could get Tate rambling just by staring at him like that.

“Look, you don’t have to help if you don’t want to. Like you said it’s not our responsibility. But it would go a heck of a lot faster if you did. And it’s not like we’ll be rebuilding the whole thing.”

“Is… are you two… together?” Jason finally asked.

Tate’s head snapped into his brother’s direction. “What? No.”

“Are you sure? Because you seem to be doing an awful lot with her.”

“I’m helping her get her father’s place back to where it was before he died,” Tate argued.

Jason shook his head. “You let her stay the night during that storm.”

“Her power was out.”

“You helped her fix her sink,” Jason reminded him.

“She couldn’t exactly stay in a house without a sink, now could she? What would you have me do? Let her stay at our place again?”

A small smile spread across Jason’s face. “And I heard you two were seen together at the farmers’ market.”

Tate’s whole body froze up. “What?”

Jason didn’t bother repeating himself. He never did.

“I didn’t take you for someone who listened to idle gossip,” Tate gritted out. The last thing he needed was for anyone to look too closely at the feelings he was fighting when it came to Rylee. Why was Jason being so insistent on this? “We’re friends, Jase. That’s all.”