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But...
Ruby had a way of unintentionally making other people’s feelings about her. Ruby didn’t want anyone to be unhappy, and she made it her mission to cheer people and Lydia just didn’t want cheering.
The way she looked at Lydia... Like she wanted to see into her head, her heart, and examine her grief. It made Lydia want to hide from her.
But Ruby had helped with the kids all day Saturday, so there was that.
Oh, she was so tired of herself. She was so tangled up in everything. Her own feelings, her own resentments. And Chase wasn’t helping.
Mac’s best friend and foster brother had never really been her favorite person. She found him crass. And his laconic manner and extreme confidence hit her in all the wrong places. Not only that, his grief was just a bit much for her to bear. It was clear in the way that Chase mourned Mac. It was pure. In a way her own grief wasn’t.
She could deal with someone who was annoying. That was the least of her worries. It was dealing with someone who made her feel guilty. Who made her feel like a fraud... Yeah, that was what she resented.
She got out of the car just as Chase was circling back to his work truck. He had on a faded denim jacket and a pair of tan, Carhartt pants that clung to his workman’s physique with more loving care than she felt was strictly necessary.
“Good morning,” he said as she got out of the car.
“Yeah. I guess. What have you been up to?”
“Just went and fed the pigs. Haven’t been out to collect the eggs, but I know you like to do that.”
He looked almost boyish when he said that, and it made her want to snap at him. “And we care what I like now?”
“I thought I’d haul the tractor out later, help out with the field.” He said that like she hadn’t just been spiteful about the eggs.
“I didn’t ask for your help,” she said.
“No,” Chase said. “But Mac did. And this was his plan too. Same as the kids are his kids, as well as yours. And I figure if that’s what he wanted, it’s my duty to make sure that some of this is done the way he saw fit.”
“He’s dead,” Lydia said, making a wide berth around his person as she headed toward the house.
She was abitch. She really was such a bitch.
And she was angry with herself. For saying that to Chase, and for the fact that saying it didn’t make her want to cry.
“I’m aware of that. Would you like some coffee?”
She stopped, her shoulders sagging. “Were you in my house?”
“No. I brought some coffee with me.”
She looked at Chase, and she suddenly felt tired. And he looked strong. Tall and broad shouldered, with pale blue eyes and blond hair. When she’d first gotten to know him, at thirteen, he’d been cute, and then he’d transitioned into a boyish handsomeness, his looks appealing to large swaths of Pear Blossom’s female population.
It had been truly irritating to be around. But in Mac’s eyes Chase could do no wrong. His foster brotherknew about the world. And had all the women he could possibly want—not that Mac wanted that. He was perfectly happy with her! He always hurried to say—in an endless source of streetwise confidence.
He was that bad boy most girls couldn’t get enough of and all Lydia had wanted was safe. When Lydia was twelve, Caitlin Groves had disappeared. Presumably killed by her boyfriend. And then she’d found a baby on a bridge when she was thirteen, and that had only confirmed to her that the world had seemed vast and scary.
Bad boys were the last thing she could imagine wanting.
And yet, she seemed to be stuck with one.
And now there were lines around those eyes and grooves around his mouth, representative of the years that had passed and all they had cost him. His face holding ghosts of emotions that had come before, and now a permanent sort of grimness that had come about with Mac’s death.
She directed her focus past his shoulder, at the mountains beyond that had the audacity to look the same.
“Yeah, I’ll take some coffee.”
He took out his thermos, unscrewed the lid and poured a bit of coffee into it. He took a step toward her when she didn’t move toward him, handing it to her.
