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She felt guilty, because it wasn’t like her mother was awful. And her father hadn’t been awful all the time.It was just in the end it had been unraveling, and he’d wanted to go, and maybe, just maybe, he had driven a wedge between the two of them so that the leaving would be easier. It wasn’t. It never could be.
Oh, it really never could be.
There was nothing easy about leaving. And nothing good about it. And it made it difficult for her to remember the decent things in her childhood.
It had made her spiky and pointy and unpleasant.
And maybe all she had needed was a little bit of belonging to get back to being soft.
Maybe it was Levi, Levi himself, not the sex, but the way that he cared, that was softening her. Healing some of those old wounds. Giving her a chance to let down her guard.
Both of them had made such strong statements against vulnerability, but she was beginning to think that there just had to be a little bit of vulnerability to get you through life.
“What if we drove over to the store now?” Levi suggested.
“I’ll ride with you,” said Quinn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
WHEN ALL THE Sullivan sisters had shown up at his property, he hadn’t quite known what to do with it. It was a whole lot of feminine fluttering, red hair and floral dresses.
And they all knew that he was sleeping with their sister, so they’d been giving him shiny, evil eyes every chance they got.
But it had all gone smoothly enough, and now he was invited to the store.
When they got into the truck, Levi reached across the space and took her hand in his. He was not quite sure what had led to that compulsion, and yet he felt it.
To just be closer to her.
He led the way down the dirt road that took them to the edge of his property.
Even though there was no road dug between the two properties now, it was drivable, across the flat field.
He could see the building that would house the farm store in the distance, and took them straight there. It was a quick and easy drive, much more so than if they were to go through the center of their land.
He could definitely see why they wanted to use it.
The building had been painted a slate gray with stark white accents. It looked like something his sisters would want to stop at and spend the afternoon poring through the different items on the shelves.
He could clearly see what sort of person would be coming to this place, and he had to give them that it was pretty darn smart.
“It’s looking great,” he said.
“It is,” said Quinn. “I’ve been so consumed with trying to convince you to let us use the road that I haven’t actually been out here for the last couple of weeks. They made a lot more progress. Gus has put in a lot of hours on the place. Honestly, my sister marrying into the McCloud family has been one of the more helpful things. We suddenly have access to a lot more labor that’s just a favor and not an official thing that’s going to cost us.”
“Yeah. I imagine that is nice.”
“Thank you. Thank you for being so good.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know that I’m actually all that good.”
He had to be. For all these years. And somehow, he never quite knew if it was him, or just something he had to do. Maybe that wouldn’t make sense to a lot of people, but he felt it all the same.
He’d wanted to go out and be a rodeo-riding ne’er-do-well who drank in corrals and lived kind of a hard life.
He had.
He’d fallen into a domestic life. He hadn’t really had a choice. He didn’t know what the hell that said about him.
