by Linda Kage
“But what about work?” he pressed, his amazing electric blue eyes returning to my face as his grin stretched wider. “I thought you said your boss was going to work you most of your winter break.”
I shrugged and glanced over his shoulder toward the barn. “I wanted…I just wanted to stop in for the weekend and see how things were going.”
When I turned back to him, he gave a delighted laugh. “Well, things are great, even better now that you’re here.” He reached out to grab my hand, physically keeping me from fleeing, not that he had any clue I was scared to death and wanted to run away. Shaking his head, he murmured, “I still can’t believe you’re here. I love this. Best surprise ever.” His grin lit with eagerness. “I have so much to show you. Come see.”
As he proceeded to lead me across the driveway toward the field, I gazed at him in amazed confusion. He still looked like Beck, though all the bruises and cuts had healed. He still sounded like Beck. But he didn’t smile or talk or even walk like Beck.
This guy was so enthusiastic and vibrant and—
I shook my head in wonder. A person never would’ve guessed he’d been tempted by pain pills less than a month ago.
“I started a project in college that I never got to finish,” he told me as we walked, completely oblivious to my shock, “but your dad said I could have a little plot here and start experimenting come springtime.”
His excitement was so contagious my own heart began to race, even though I was clueless as to what he was talking about. “Experiment with what?” I asked slowly.
“Seeds.” Then he laughed at himself as if he knew that answer made no sense. “I want to cross some organic-based mixtures and try to come up with a new hybrid breed. Just imagine it: heartier-growing plants that’ll withstand both drought and flood but also contain more mineral-based nutrients, so they’ll provide a healthier stock for consumers.”
“Sounds like the best of both worlds.”
Such a seed sounded like, well, him. Too good to be true.
His proud, eager grin stretched. “I know, right? It would be an awesome breakthrough.”
I shook my head, my confused-yet-amazed smile returning. “Are you sure something like this is even possible?”
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” he answered on a good-natured shrug, not deflated by my skepticism in the least. “But I’ve even got your dad interested in it after I showed him all my graphs and calculations. We both think something good will come of it. Something at least half-way decent has to come from it.”
My mouth dropped open. “Wait. You got my father, Doubting Benjamin Prescott himself, to buy into this?”
When he nodded, my eyebrows rose. “Wow.”
“I know.” He leaned in to bump his shoulder companionably against mind. “I’m just that good, huh?”
He was a miracle, that’s what he was.
Then he gave a bemused grin. “Actually, he and I play checkers a lot in the evenings. I think we’ve bonded.”
He and my dad had bonded? Oh God, that was so awesome. It was…it was…everything. Beckett Hilliard was everything.
This animated, smiling, talkative guy wasn’t the same person I’d left two week ago. This guy was perfect and amazing and beautiful inside and out. He didn’t need me at all. And yet I needed him more than anything.
How sad was that?
“I’ve been pretty picky about what I want to fertilize my plot with,” he continued, kneeling by the brown field to palm a chunk of plowed earth. He gazed at it a moment, seeing the future, and I gazed at him, seeing only my failures.
He hadn’t become this happy and full of hope until he’d left me.
When he lifted his face and caught sight of my expression, his smiled dropped.
He tossed the dirt clod back into the field and dusted his hands off onto his jeans. “But you don’t want to hear about manure and compost. How’s everything been in Granton?” Reaching out to curl a piece of my hair around his finger, he gave an affectionate tug. “You’re still blond, so I’m guessing it wasn’t too bad.” His grin spread and eyes lit with amusement, making my stomach clinch with longing.
God, how I had missed him.
And God, how wrong he was. I’d actually been too far gone with misery to even think about changing my hair.
Finally realizing I wasn’t my usual self, he paused with his finger still in my hair. “Bailey?”
I began to blink rapidly.
Holy criminy, but what was wrong with me? My breathing was picking up, my body was going into distress, my throat was closing, and I swear I could feel moisture gathering in my eyes. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said I was on the verge of crying right in front of him.
What was worse, he saw it.
Worry radiated from him as he shifted closer. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
I shook my head and lowered my face. I didn’t even know where to start explaining what was wrong with me. I’d gone off the deep end with my problems, and I knew it. But my problems weren’t even what was bothering me at the moment. It was his problems…or lack of them.
After two weeks apart, he was okay. Perfect.
Why had being away from me healed him?
Had that week he’d stayed with me, sleeping in my bed beside me, actually been preventing him from making it to this place he was at now, preventing him from getting better? I’d been growing closer to him, dependent on his friendship, bonding on a level I’d never bonded with anyone else, and he…he’d just needed to get away from me.
I felt sick. I didn’t like thinking of myself as holding him back.
“Dammit, Bailey,” he growled softly, cupping my cheek to urge my face up so he could see my expression. “You’re freaking me out here. What’s wrong? Did something happen? Are you okay?”
I just stared at him, knowing I couldn’t involve him in my problems, not when he’d just recovered from his own.
His eyes pleaded right before he whispered, “Talk to me.”
I backed away from him, dislodging his gentle grip on me.
“I…I shouldn’t have come here.”
“Wha—?” He started in absolute confusion, stepping toward me, but I only jerked back farther.
He fell to a stop, gaping at me. “Bailey?” The concern and uncertainty in his face killed me.
I couldn’t do this. I might be the bold, snarky Bailey Prescott, who wasn’t afraid to faceoff with anyone and spit my brutal truth right in their face, but try to make me confront my own fears and insecurities, and nothing made me run faster.
So here I stood in front of the boy I’d fallen in love with, a boy I knew I could never really have, and instead of risking rejection and a broken heart, I shook my head and gasped, “I have to go.” I spun away and raced off.
“Bailey!” Alarm filled his voice. I could hear footsteps as he followed me, trying to catch up, but I only ran faster, dodging past my car and circling around my house. I’d grown up on this farm, explored it for twenty years; I knew I could escape him.
After rounding the house, I dodged into the machine shed and hurried through it so I could burst out the exit on the other side. When I crept back outside, Beckett was nowhere in sight, so I took off running again, backtracking to the front of the house where I’d left my car. But I didn’t hop in it and drive off. I needed more solitude and peace. I needed my place. So I hurried back to the horse barn, rushing past Lula Bell’s stall to grab hold of the ladder and climbing up into the hayloft.
Once I was there, I shuffled through the dark until I could find where the string for the single-hanging light was by feel. But as soon as I found it and gave it a pull, the overhead bulb isn’t the only thing that sprang to life. Along with it, thousands of other lights bloomed, lining the rafters like a host of fireflies.
“What the…?” I spun in a circle, gaping at all the Christmas lights strung around me, making my special spot glow with the most beautiful, peaceful decoration ever.
“D
o you like it?”
Sucking in a surprised breath, I spun toward the opening of the loft where Beck were lifting himself from the opening in the floor. He eyed me warily as he eased the rest of the way up and then sat directly by the loft door as if ready to leave again if I ordered him gone. Or maybe he wanted to prevent me from escaping if I wanted to try.
When I could do nothing but gape at him, he gave a self-derisive laugh and motioned around him. “Took me about three days to sneak up here and hang everything. I had a bad feeling Booth would sabotage my surprise for you if he knew what I was doing so I had to keep it on the down-low.” He gave another smile-type laugh at himself as he met my gaze.
If I’d been in any other frame of mind, I would’ve nodded or totally agreed. Sabotage totally sounded like Booth’s MO.
“Since you’re an electrical engineer major, I thought the light-part would win me extra brownie points.”
He seemed sad as he said this, as if he was certain he’d made no points at all. I just blinked at him. I have no idea why he even wanted extra brownie points with me, but he’d definitely gotten them. And more.
“How did you know?” I rasped.
His gaze shifted from a strand of lights to me. “What? That this was your spot?” With a shrug, he glanced around himself. “Your dad sent me up here the second day I was here to get a fresh bale of hay, and…I don’t know.” He shrugged again, his lips tilting with an affectionate smile. “It just felt like you, like somewhere a girl with four older brothers would go to get alone and find some peace. To dream. So I found myself coming up here in the evenings so I could find…you.”
The last word was spoken so quietly I could barely hear it. But oh, I definitely felt it.
Beck had done all this for me, because he knew me, because he wanted to make me happy, because he wanted to feel closer to me.
Because he cared.
I wasn’t sure how to deal with that. It was too much, too big, too amazing. I couldn’t trust it. No one cared this much about me. He had to be just trying to pay me back. That’s all. It wasn’t…he didn’t love me. Not like I loved him.
But, oh my God, his sweet, amazing gesture affected me. It rattled and devastated me.
Knees giving out, I sank to the floor of the loft and sat heavily on the wooden planks, hugging my knees up to my chest and burying my face into them so I could weep.
Chapter 32
BECKETT
Of all the things I’d hoped to accomplish when I’d jazzed up Bailey’s loft, a complete meltdown was totally not on the list.
In my wildest fantasies, I’d hoped to impress her enough to make her throw her arms around me and kiss the breath from my lungs before she tackled me onto a bed of hay and…well, that was the wildest dream I’d had. But I would’ve settled just as happily if her response had been to grin and smack me in the arm before proclaiming, “Not half bad, Bucket.”
Except she hadn’t done that either.
Sobs tore from her chest as if her happiness was being peeled away from her very soul with a paint scraper.
It gutted me to bring her to this point. I didn’t even know how I’d done it.
I’d busted my ass these past two weeks to become something good enough for her to be proud of, and yet it all seemed to have backfired. Unless something else was bothering her. Not that I would know; she was being so quiet and un-Bailey-like.
Worried and scared what had happened to bring her this low, I silently rose to my feet and tread carefully closer until I reached her. She didn’t acknowledge my approach, I don’t think she even remembered I was there; she’d fallen too far into her grief.
Needing to fix whatever was wrong more than I needed my next breath, I knelt down behind her and slowly wrapped my arms around her.
She trembled in my embrace, but she didn’t push me away. Encouraged by that, at least, I tugged her fractionally closer, then closer again until I could shift her sideways so her cheek pressed against my chest.
I lowered my face to bury my nose into her hair and kissed her head as she burrowed closer, clutching my arm. Shuddering out my relief, because she wasn’t resisting my comfort, I began to rock her back and forth.
I had no idea how long she cried, but each heart-wrenching sob she tried to muffle made each second feel like a year. Waiting it out until she flushed her system of some of her grief was hard. It tried my patience like nothing else. I felt helpless, unable to help the person who meant the most to me. It made my blood seethe with a pent-up frustration. But I knew I couldn’t let my emotions blow; the only person I’d attack would be her, shaking her and demanding she talk to me already. That was the last thing she needed, so my nerves coiled tighter and tighter with each achingly long second.
By the time her tears had settled to an occasional sniffle, I felt exhausted by how hard I’d been holding myself in check. But I merely stroked her hair as gently as possible, determined to give her what she needed most: a shoulder to cry on.
She sat up slowly, wiping her eyes. Tears still clung to her lashes, and the red skin around them had grown swollen and tender. She dropped her fingers lamely, probably realizing she couldn’t hide anything.
When she glanced at me, she looked leery. “I’m sorry,” she croaked, her voice hoarse and low, full of pain.
I shook my head and reached out to calm some of the wayward curls on the right side of her head. “Don’t,” I begged softly. “Don’t apologize to me. Just…please tell me what’s going on?”
“I…” She shook her head and swiped a hand over her eyes again, growing distance. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
I snorted. “Bullshit.”
“It’s stupid,” she mumbled, growing irritable.
All I could say was, “No, it’s not stupid. It’s obviously important to you. So it’s important to me. Now, dammit, tell me what’s wrong!”
Hissing out a breath, she merely sent me a stubbornly mutinous glare.
So I sighed as well. “Fine,” I growled, pushing to my feet to pace the floor and spike my hand through my hair. “Then I’ll just start guessing. Is it about the kiss?”
She pulled back, shocked, as if the kiss we’d shared was that last thing on her mind. “Huh?” That didn’t bode well for my ego, since her reaction told me whatever was wrong had nothing to do with our kiss. She’d totally and completely moved on from it.
But it still haunted me, so I pressed the issue. “Are you pissed at me for kissing you? Did I ruin whatever friendship we had? Do you want me out of your life? Can you not see me that way because you saw me with Melody? What? I’ve always, always known what you were thinking before because you always just told me, but now you’re not talking, and I can’t read a damn thing you’re thinking, and it’s scaring the shit out of me. So please, Bailey, just—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she whispered, shaking her head and staring at me as if I was insane for suggesting any of the shit that had just poured from my mouth. She pushed to her feet as well, rising to my level. “None of that…everything you said about the kiss, it’s not…I’m not mad at you for that. Besides, I’m the one who kissed you, anyway.”
“But I’m the one who took it to the next level,” I insisted, watching her face closely and deciding this really didn’t have anything to do with that.
“Yeah, but…” She frowned and shook her head as if confused. “You were just…” She paused again as if she wasn’t sure what she was going to say was right or not.
Gently I urged, “I was just what?”
Again, her head swayed back and forth. “This isn’t about the kiss,” she stated more firmly.
“Then what the fuck is it about?” My patience was slipping. I was going to lose it in five seconds if she didn’t—
“It’s because you don’t need me anymore,” she blurted.
I opened my mouth, but no words came. So I pressed my lips together and blinked at her, trying to make sense of her words. Finally, I said, “What?”
/> “You don’t need me,” she repeated with more force, her eyes filling with tears. “You were still having panic attacks when I left. You looked like a beaten dog as I climbed into my car that afternoon. And now, two weeks later—only fourteen days after I left—you’re fine, as if nothing had ever bothered you. But how? How could you be completely healed, just like that, and...and. none of that had anything to do with me. In fact, it seemed as if I’d been holding you back from really getting better, that you couldn’t heal until you cut me free. So I repeat, you don’t need me.”
I gaped at her, growing disoriented by her words. They felt like accusations, like my getting better was a bad thing.
Barking out a harsh laugh, I took a step away to spread my arms wide so she’d look at me, really look at me.
“You see all this,” I said. “This improvement. I did it for you. The last thing you asked of me before you left was to get better. And I promised you I would. Jesus fucking Christ, Bailey. You have no idea how hard it was just to get out of bed those first few mornings, to integrate myself into your dad’s world and be social again. I still wanted to burrow away somewhere and grieve because I missed you so bad. But I fought the urge, every goddamn day, because I’d made you a promise. I’ve even talked to someone about all my issues in order to get better. I was that determined to impress you. And yeah, maybe leaving Granton did help a lot, but it wasn’t because I was away from you. Being away from you just made it that much harder to do. So don’t you fucking get mad at me for busting my ass every hour of every day these past few weeks to keep my word to you. Be mad at me for…for…”
“For what?” she asked, her chest heaving with breathless anticipation and her bright eyes and glowing with hope.
I took five steps back to her. And then I took the leap. “For letting things go unsaid after our kiss. For not just doing this again.”
Gripping her by the back of the head, I tugged her against me and smashed our lips together.
It was like lighting a fuse. We exploded. She was just as eager to grip the front of my shirt and presser closer as I was to coax her mouth open and swirl my tongue against hers. She moaned and clung to me, grabbing fistfuls of my hair and climbing my body. I backed her into a wooden beam and then lifted her by the ass, clutching two handfuls until she wrapped her legs around me.