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Dom turned away from her, grabbing the tray of dough a little more roughly than he intended and shoved it into the oven. “You’ve seen his puppy eyes, Sarah. You’re just as helpless against them as I am.”
“I’m not,” she told him, her voice a little more careful this time, “because I’m not the one tortured in love with him.”
Dom felt his heart ache at her brutal honesty. “I don’t…mean to be.”
He heard her let out a sigh, then her heels clicked on the floor before a small, delicate hand wrapped around his wrist and spun him around. He wanted to cry, or maybe rage a little, at the pity he found in her gaze.
“I know you don’t, but you’ve never given anyone else a chance.” She reached up and smoothed her fingers over his cheek, likely wiping away a stray bit of flour. “You’re such a good person, Dom. You have the biggest heart of any man I have ever known, and you deserve to be loved. You deserve to come first.”
Dom closed his eyes and bowed his head toward her. “I don’t know if that’s strictly true. I’ve never been much of anything. I mean, Shiloh’s chosen to stay here and help his dad for now, and I get it. It makes sense why. But there’s still time for him to do more. He could move abroad and stand in front of lecture halls at bloody Harvard or something. And that…I’m never going to have a future like that. This was always meant to be my life. But if he finds out the truth, he’ll stay for me too.”
“So?” she demanded, cocking a fist up on her hip. “Why the hell shouldn’t he be the sort of person who stays for the man he loves?”
“Because that would mean I’m holding him back,” Dom said, the words erupting from his chest, and he realized just how long he’d been holding them in by the pain they left behind. “Someday he won’t need to keep up the farm. Benjamin is going to retire, and they haven’t really been turning a profit in years. Just enough to get by.” Dom pushed his fingers into his hair and pulled gently. “Shiloh’s going to realize that the rest of the world is out there waiting for him. He could finish his PhD, meet someone brilliant, someone as smart and beautiful as him. Someone who wants to travel. Someone who can hold conversations about history and philosophy and all the things that make my eyes cross. And they’ll…they’ll do everything together he can’t do with me.”
Sarah’s face fell. “You have no idea, do you?”
Dom scoffed and took a step back. “About what? Trust me, love, I’ve never been anything other than brutally honest about myself and what we are.” He waved his hand around the kitchen. “This is where I belong. It’s where I was always meant to be. And I’m okay with that. But I’m not okay with telling Shiloh how I feel and risking his entire future for a compromise.”
She shook her head, but for the first time in the long years they’d been having that same argument, he finally saw defeat in her eyes.
“Do what you will,” she said on a sigh.
“You know I’m not trying to be contrary. I hate rowing with you.”
Her smile was brittle, but it was genuine. Rising onto her toes, she tugged him close and smudged a kiss to his cheek. “Let me put the kettle on, then we can see if anyone has costumes in stock that’ll fit you.”
Dom rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just going as a wolf. I don’t need anything fancy.” She raised a brow at him, but he didn’t have it in him to explain just yet about Shiloh’s costume. He’d be showing God and the rest of the town what he looked like in a dress, but Dom wasn’t going to give that secret away until Shiloh was ready to do it himself. “It’ll be good. I promise.”
She sighed again, then patted his cheek. “If you say so.”
He watched her walk away, the swinging door creaking on its hinges, and he let out a breath when he was finally alone. His heart ached, and he knew that he did deserve love in some capacity. But not at the expense of what Shiloh deserved. Dom would do anything for him, go anywhere for him.
But he refused to hold him back. ***
Eight
The thing Shiloh loved most about Benld was that it had everything they loved about bigger cities without all the chaos of tourism. They didn’t have to fight holidaymakers and their over-sized sun hats and rolling cases, reeking of pina-colada sun cream, for a café table that overlooked the water.
There was something to be said about sitting there with his legs stretched out in front of him, unable to see much but content to listen to the quiet waves lapping at the beach while Dom nattered on about his week. He was halfway into a story about Dierdre, her six children who always broke at least three things in the bakery every time she came in, and her creative ways of slipping him her number.
“She begged me to just cut into this little dome cake, and I swear to God, mate, it looked like one of those ‘nailed it’ fails on Instagram. I think it was meant to be a frog or something because it was hideously green with bulging eyes.”
Shiloh smiled as his fingers traced lines over the holes in the wrought iron table. “Sounds dreadful.”
“It tasted worse.”
Shiloh laughed. “You actually took a bite of it?”
“Don’t judge me. She looked so desperate. Anyway, I cut the poor thing open—hopefully put it out of its misery—and there was a soggy bit of paper on the inside.”
Shiloh pulled a face. “Gross.”
“Yeah. It was a Post-it Note. Glue and everything.”
Shiloh snorted, then lifted his cup to his lips and took a long sip of his now-tepid oolong. “What did you do with it?”
“Slipped it into my apron and told her to have a nice day. Gave the little ones some almond cookies first,” he added, because of course he did.
