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I shook my head, my confused-yet-amazed smile returning. “Are you sure something like this is even possible?”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” he answered on a good-natured shrug, not deflated by my skepticism in the least. “But I’ve even got your dad interested in it after I showed him all my graphs and calculations. We both think something good will come of it. Something at least half-way decent has to come from it.”
My mouth dropped open. “Wait. You got my father, Doubting Benjamin Prescott himself, to buy into this?”
When he nodded, my eyebrows rose. “Wow.”
“I know.” He leaned in to bump his shoulder companionably against mind. “I’m just that good, huh?”
He was a miracle, that’s what he was.
Then he gave a bemused grin. “Actually, he and I play checkers a lot in the evenings. I think we’ve bonded.”
He and my dad had bonded? Oh God, that was so awesome. It was…it was…everything. Beckett Hilliard was everything.
This animated, smiling, talkative guy wasn’t the same person I’d left two week ago. This guy was perfect and amazing and beautiful inside and out. He didn’t need me at all. And yet I needed him more than anything.
How sad was that?
“I’ve been pretty picky about what I want to fertilize my plot with,” he continued, kneeling by the brown field to palm a chunk of plowed earth. He gazed at it a moment, seeing the future, and I gazed at him, seeing only my failures.
He hadn’t become this happy and full of hope until he’d left me.
When he lifted his face and caught sight of my expression, his smiled dropped.
He tossed the dirt clod back into the field and dusted his hands off onto his jeans. “But you don’t want to hear about manure and compost. How’s everything been in Granton?” Reaching out to curl a piece of my hair around his finger, he gave an affectionate tug. “You’re still blond, so I’m guessing it wasn’t too bad.” His grin spread and eyes lit with amusement, making my stomach clinch with longing.
God, how I had missed him.
And God, how wrong he was. I’d actually been too far gone with misery to even think about changing my hair.
Finally realizing I wasn’t my usual self, he paused with his finger still in my hair. “Bailey?”
I began to blink rapidly.
Holy criminy, but what was wrong with me? My breathing was picking up, my body was going into distress, my throat was closing, and I swear I could feel moisture gathering in my eyes. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said I was on the verge of crying right in front of him.
What was worse, he saw it.
Worry radiated from him as he shifted closer. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
I shook my head and lowered my face. I didn’t even know where to start explaining what was wrong with me. I’d gone off the deep end with my problems, and I knew it. But my problems weren’t even what was bothering me at the moment. It was his problems…or lack of them.
After two weeks apart, he was okay. Perfect.
Why had being away from me healed him?
Had that week he’d stayed with me, sleeping in my bed beside me, actually been preventing him from making it to this place he was at now, preventing him from getting better? I’d been growing closer to him, dependent on his friendship, bonding on a level I’d never bonded with anyone else, and he…he’d just needed to get away from me.
I felt sick. I didn’t like thinking of myself as holding him back.
“Dammit, Bailey,” he growled softly, cupping my cheek to urge my face up so he could see my expression. “You’re freaking me out here. What’s wrong? Did something happen? Are you okay?”
I just stared at him, knowing I couldn’t involve him in my problems, not when he’d just recovered from his own.
His eyes pleaded right before he whispered, “Talk to me.”
I backed away from him, dislodging his gentle grip on me.
