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So all of her plans had been put on hold. The life she’d painstakingly decided to build for herself as a divorced woman.
It hadn’t been an easy conclusion to come to even when he hadn’t been sick. She’d known it would mean untangling lives that were so enmeshed in each other that the process would be painful. Would leave damage and scars.
And she’d decided it was time, because they both deserved more than a life of quiet resentments that were aging into bitter roots, down deep in the lowest parts of their souls.
She’d decided to take that step.
And then the path had turned again, and while she might have been able to figure out how to live as a divorced woman, she hadn’t yet discovered how to live as a widow.
She hadn’t anticipated how much it would tangle her up in the grieving. And how much it would make her feel boxed in.
How much it would leave her unable to deal with her feelings.
“You can tell me,” he said.
She imagined a wall going up between them. Smooth, pristine and impossible to scale. “Yeah, I’m gonna pass on that. You and I were never friends. It’s not going to happen now.”
“I don’t need to be your friend,” Chase said. “I know that might shock you.”
She started to walk away from him, her own words echoing in her head.We were never friends.
They hadn’t been. It had been him and Mac, thick as thieves, and she’d been along for the ride, mooning over Mac’s blue eyes and brown hair and dimples. He’d been sweet, she’d thought. She hadn’t liked Chase’s overabundance of energy, his quick temper or his blunt observations.
Later, though, she’d realized Mac’s sweetness was a deep passiveness. He went along with things. And when life got hard, he took a step back. He went out drinking even when she didn’t want him to. If he didn’t want to deal with a problem, he didn’t.
And there was nothing she could do to make him.
They might not havefought, but she realized now it wasn’t because he was nicer or kinder than the average man.
“I heard your sister’s back,” Chase said.
She stopped, her shoulders stiffening.
“Yes,” she said. “She is.”
“I’d like to see her sometime.”
She gritted her teeth. “If you’re trying to angle yourself into a position to hit on Ruby—”
“I don’t have any interest in Ruby that way. But it’s nice to know that you have such a low opinion of me.”
She ground her back teeth together, feeling so awful in her own skin because this was just meanness for the sake of it and she couldn’t seem to stop. “Your reputation precedes you.”
“I’m a single man, Lydia. What I do with my spare time is my business. But I guarantee you it’s not going to cross over into your family. I was just making conversation. Being polite. Not sure if you’re familiar with the concept. They taught us trashy foster kids manners because they assumed we wouldn’t pick them up naturally, not sure how it worked for your kind.”
“And yet, I keep thinking that you’ll take a hint. But you never do.”
“I hear you,” he said, moving away from the truck, and something about that swift, smooth motion sent her heart straight up into the center of her throat. “But you may have noticed that I’m not interested in doing your bidding. My best friend died. He doesn’t get to see his kids grow up. And the last thing he said to me was that he wanted me to make sure that this farm didn’t suffer. Thatyoudidn’t suffer. If I’m your medicine, then so be it. But I will make sure you swallow the pill.”
Her heart was hammering so hard she felt dizzy with it, and she couldn’t quite say why.
There was an intensity to his gaze that she couldn’t contain. He was firing it straight into her, and there was nowhere for it to go. She had done her level best to live in some kind of softened state that denied reality for the last six months. And he was pushing something so real, so authentic, right into her that she just...
She turned and walked away from him. Started to move toward the farmhouse.
“I’ll be back with the tractor,” he said.
“Great,” she returned.
