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Will pierced her with those bright eyes, but honestly, why had he shown up asking for coffee if he didn’t want to talk? He did, and Clarissa knew it. She’d seen all the signs, and she’d been through this with him before. He just needed a little coaching.
“I tried not to say anything,” he finally said, a sigh accompanying the words. “I just wondered why they didn’t build the roof before they started on the inside. That made no sense to me. It rains in March and April.”
Clarissa nodded and turned to get down a couple of mugs. She’d already had her morning coffee, and the baby didn’t like it much. She had terrible heartburn now that she hadn’t before, and she smiled internally at the reason why.
Having a baby was worth giving up coffee for a few months.
“She said I ask too many questions, and I pass judgment without knowing everything.”
“Well.” Clarissa turned back to him as the first drops of his coffee hissed into the pot. “Sometimes we Coopers do that without meaning to.” She knew Will, and she’d seen him with Gretchen. He hadn’t brought her to a family dinner yet, but just the fact that he left the farm to see her spoke volumes.
“I know, and I hate that about myself.” Will’s eyes grew dark. “I hate that I can’t control what I say. I’m trying. I swear I am, but honestly, Rissa, I don’t think I’m ever going to be or do what Gretchen wants.” He sprang to his feet. “I have to get back to work.”
“Will,” she said, hurrying after him. “Wait.”
He did, pure anguish rolling from his broad shoulders. She stepped in front of him, anxious now. “I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you telling me everything?” Clarissa needed to know, and she’d risk her brother’s wrath. “Did she break-up with you and you’re just not saying?”
“No.” He shook his head. “She just asked me not to come by the shop. We’re still talking and stuff.”
“You don’t leave the farm much.”
Anger blazed in his eyes, and he lifted his chin. “How do you know?”
“I’m guessing,” she said. “But from that reaction…”
“I thought Travis might’ve told you.”
“Travis and I don’t talk about you and Gretchen.”
“Really? Because he won’t shut up about me and Gretchen at our house.” Will spoke with so much venom in his voice that Clarissa fell back a step. “He’s lecturing me constantly about what I should’ve said or not said—as if I don’t know.”
Clarissa didn’t know what to do or say right here. She knew keenly how Will must’ve felt at his girlfriend’s shop. “I’m so sorry.” She stepped back into him and hugged him.
He gripped her tightly. So tight that Clarissa realized just how much pain he was in. Will was the strongest of them all. He’d eradicated his pre-diabetes within six months of learning about his elevated blood sugar. He’d lost fifteen pounds in the process, and then regained all of that and more in pure muscle as he lifted weights and ran around the farm.
He was smack dab in the middle of all of them, and he held their family together by sheer will. She had only seen him cry once, at least a decade ago, when the horse he’d raised from a colt, tutored in its care by their grandfather, had died.
Her worry doubled and then tripled as the man she considered made of rock, iron, and steel cracked and crumbled right there in her arms. She certainly wasn’t strong enough to hold him together, but she sure did try.
Will finally stepped away, his eyes glassy. No tears came out, but his voice carried pure pain as he said, “I have to get back to work.”
“Do you need to stay here with me and Spence for a few nights?” she asked, wiping at her own face. Only the slightest of tears came away with her fingers. “To get away from Trav?”
She was going to kill her youngest brother. He said plenty of inappropriate things too, thank you very much.
Will shook his head. “No, I moved in next door already.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You did? When?”
He cleared his throat. “Just today. Before dawn.”
“By yourself?”
Fire moved through his expression, and she felt it filling her too. Right behind it came a wind so powerful, it could whip flames into tornadoes. Then a lashing, unrelenting rain, the kind that only came with hurricanes and tropical storms.
