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“You worked so hard, you must have been hungry all the time.”
“I was. And here’s the thing... The deal with your dad is complicated. I’m angry about it, because did he take advantage to an extent? Yes. But did I have steady income? Yeah. We weren’t rich, but we always ate. I could always go to the Minute Market and grab a bite when I went to buy feed—which I could also afford. So did we get the best deal? No. But did we have enough? Yeah.”
“I’m glad you didn’t go hungry.”
He shook his head. “Nah. It was nothing fancy. I learned to make a few things. I’d put meals in the slow cooker in the morning so we could come back to food in the evening. I adapted. You do adapt.”
She was familiar. She’d adapted. The Sullivans kept on adapting. Some of it was good—figuring out ways to use the land that were sustainable for them.
And some weren’t. Like using anger as a shield, and then using a sense of superiority and education as another, so you never had to deal with your deeper emotions.
“What were the kids like?”
“Camilla never knew any different. She was barely one when Mom died. Two when Dad did. I think she missed Dad, but she adapted to me easily enough. She needed to be carried around everywhere, though. Jessie was seven, and it was...hard. She was just a little girl whose whole life got upended, and she ended up sticking to me pretty hard all day every day. Dylan was thirteen. He wanted to fight. Everyone and everything. I guess it was the military or prison, so I should be glad he chose the military. But he has taken a few years off my life.”
She took a bite of her macaroni salad. “I can relate to him. To the anger. Because the alternative is pain.” She met his gaze. “I didn’t want to be in pain. I didn’t want to grieve. So I just...let my anger power me. Until my goals could. But even those were just distractions from feeling.”
“Sometimes keeping moving is all you’ve got, though. I don’t know what else there is.”
And neither did she. Except there was this. They had this.
“I like you,” she said. “If you didn’t know.”
“I like you, too, carrot,” he said.
“I’m glad to hear that, because just yesterday you said you didn’t.”
“I’m a stubborn cuss. So even when I change my opinion on something, sometimes it takes me a while to admit it.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” she said.
“Liar.”
“I thought you said you liked me.”
“I do. That doesn’t mean you’re not a liar.”
She was, though. Because there was something else she’d left behind when her father had abandoned them, and that was all those softer feelings she’d had for him. The very idea had felt impossible because she just couldn’t want any more things she couldn’t have.
But she’d shared all these other things with him, and now she wanted him to have this, too.
To know that...this mattered to her. Because of who they were now, but also because of how she’d felt then.
She smiled. “I have something to tell you.”
“What is it you have to tell me?”
“I had a crush on you. When I was fourteen.”
“You had a crush on me?”
“Yes. You spent a lot of time at our house back then. From the time I was a kid, admittedly, but I just remembered the first time I noticed you. Really noticed you. My dad left and you didn’t come around anymore because, of course, your deal was with him...”
“It’s a good thing you didn’t actually know what I was talking to your dad about, because usually we were having a fight about the whole thing.”
“Yeah, I get that now. But I didn’t then. I remember sometimes I’d see you around town in... You know, you’re definitely one of the reasons I never had sex in college.”
He looked like he’d been slapped with a fish. “I’m one of the reasons you didn’t have sex in college?”
