Page 72 of Grouch-ish

Slowly, I turn to face him. He’s fully dressed, his bag in his hand, ready to leave. His head is lowered as well, and I feel safe to assume he’s heard quite a bit of my confession to my father.

Silently, he steps closer to me and pauses. My heart hammers. My breathing erratic. Brock inhales, closes his eyes a second and then opens them. Flames fire off around those coal-colored eyes.

“I’m so mad at you,” he admits.

“I know,” I whisper, my voice shaky. Tears prickle my eyes and Brock blurs before me, but I blink several times. The tears are for me. My loss of him. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Brock nods once, leans toward me and weakly kisses my cheek. I close my eyes and a tear slips free. He doesn’t address my dad, just passes his captain—former captain—and stalks to the pegs near the front door, removing his jacket and slipping into his construction boots.

Without a glance back at either of us, I watch through the kitchen window as Brock walks to his truck. Deciding I can’t watch him drive away, I turn my head.

And by some freak of nature, the electricity clicks back on.

Too bad the sudden light does not touch the places that are dark and cold inside me.

Chapter 21

[Brock]

Sometimes the quiet click of a closed door says more than a slammed one, and as I exit my captain’s farmhouse and leave my heart shattered among the blankets on the living room floor, I climb into my truck, tossing my bag across the seat.

“Dammit,” I holler into the cold cab, noticing my hands are shaking as I fumble in my pocket for the key fob. Once the ignition starts, I grip the steering wheel with both hands, letting the cold seep into my bare palms.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I see a school bus painted in a pear-green color with Paradise Farms on the side.

How did he get that up the drive? Yesterday’s blizzard raged through the night. A school bus couldn’t have gotten up the gravel lane to the house. Still, I see a path plowed up the lane to the front of the barn where the bus is parked. I never heard a plow.

It’s then that I realize I walked through a deep pile of snow to get to my truck and icy clumps are slithering into my boots. And still, I don’t shake off the chill racing through my insides.

She tricked me. She used me. All those projects. All these days.

I was still having trouble processing everything.

Her dad waking us up. Her admitting she had feelings for me. Her defending herself . . . and me to Cap.

I scrub a hand over my face. Fuck. The scent of her is still on my skin. The taste of her on my tongue.

I have half a mind to rush back into the house. But I’m angry. She deceived me, strangely reminding me of my ex, although we weren’t talking about dollars and cents here. We were talking about hearts.

Pear’s and mine.

Hell, just yesterday I woke from a dream to find her staring at me. When she said she had something to tell me I thought she was about to express her regrets. Tell me she never wanted to see me again. Or couldn’t see me after the twelve days were served. Tell me she had fun while I fucked her but we were over.

The toll of a bell rang in my head, signaling the end, and I panicked. I didn’t let her speak. Instead, I wanted every last minute, every last drop, every last kiss to be spent with me.

Hadn’t I been deceitful as well? As I made her pick a card and set her on that wobbly chair, making her think we were playing a game when I’d been honest in all I said. Laying all my cards out for her to read. Handing her my emotions.

I wanted to worship her. I’d do anything she asked, but I couldn’t let her lie to me, and this is where I struggled.

Had she lied? She never said her dad gave her a list, only that she’d made a list. Fixing dresser drawers and mending fences. Building owl houses and making memories on a snowmobile. Plunging into frigid water and plucking at cow teats, all for her.

But it’d been good for me as well.

She even panicked at one point. She thought I’d left her when I went to the grocery store, reminding me when I returned that I could leave at any time. She wasn’t holding me captive.

Still, I stayed. And as much as I want to say I did it for me, to prove something to Cap, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave her.

I was lonely. You seemed lonely, too.