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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.
“You don’t really mean that.”
“You don’t know what I mean.”
“At this point, I know you well enough to be able to make some guesses. I also know better than to tell you what they are because I don’t want you to bite my hand off.”
There was so much she wanted to say to him. But she also just didn’t want to deal, so she made the decision not to. So she just walked away from him. Went into the house and let the screen door slam behind her. An angry, therapeutic sound.
But only the slammed door felt like therapy. The rest was just the same.
Her bottling it up.
Her not dealing.
She stood in the quiet of the farmhouse and let out a long, slow breath. She looked at all the pictures on the wall, extending down the hall. Her wedding picture. Pictures of them when she had been pregnant with Riley. Baby pictures of them with Hazel.
Her and Mac. Together for what was supposed to be forever. Except she’d been intent on shattering that...
Mac never knew.
She felt furious about that, sometimes late at night. Her head and heart and throat crowded with all the things she’d never gotten to say. Angry things about years spent in unhappiness. About all that he’d done wrong.
