Being taken away from the farm had been one of the hardest things that Gannon had ever been through. It had been his only refuge, the only element of his life that he found even the semblance of enjoyment in, and the only time when he didn’t think about the bitterness and pain that characterized the rest of his existence. Now that he was back in an environment where he could care for plants, he never wanted to lose that again. Whatever he needed to do, he knew that he had to find a way that he could keep this as a part of his life moving forward.
Willow had walked away from him and was standing at the far end of the greenhouse in front of a long counter. He walked up beside her and noticed that she was staring intently at small pots in front of her. Gannon could tell that she was hurting and the thought of it brought a pang to his chest. He wanted to know more about what happened to her, but she had cut off her explanation so quickly. Seeming to notice that he was standing there, Willow looked up at him and gestured toward the plants in front of her.
“See?” she said. “They are so weak. They’ve barely grown in the last two weeks and there are no runners. I should have ripe fruit soon and there are barely even buds. I don’t know what I should do.”
She reached down and grabbed a scoop of blue powder from a bucket on a shelf beneath the counter. She started to sprinkle the powder on one of the plants, but Gannon pulled the small black pot out from beneath it. Willow looked at him sharply.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What is that stuff?” he asked.
“It’s food,” she said. “Specially formulated. It’s supposed to help the plants grow stronger and the fruit get bigger.”
“How often have you been putting this on them?” he asked.
“Every day or so,” she said. “It says to apply until you see results.”
“That is part of your problem,” Gannon told her.
He carefully grasped the plant with his fingers and turned the pot over to release the dirt into his palm.
“What do you mean?” Willow asked. “What are you doing?”
“Have you ever used this type of food on your plants before?” he asked.
Willow shook her head.
“No,” she admitted. “I told you, I got a late start this year. I thought that this would help to compensate for that.”
“It hasn’t been working out very well, has it?”
She looked at him as if stung by his words.
“You can see that it’s not,” she said. “What are you doing?”
Gannon shook the roots of the plant to remove as much of the dirt as he could and then settled it carefully into a new pot, scooping fresh dirt around it.
“You can’t rush things,” he said. “You have overfed them. They have too much of the food in them and not enough of what should naturally be there, so they don’t know what they are supposed to do. You need to give them the time and the space that they need to grow and develop into what they can be.”
“So, we need to re-pot all of them,” she said, resigned to the mistake that she had made.
“It would be best,” Gannon said. “We have to be careful to make sure that they have what they need, but not too much. Not too much or too little food, not too much or too little water. These are good plants, they just need to some time to remember that.”
Willow nodded and reached for another of the plants. They worked in silence for a few moments and as they did, Gannon occasionally slid glances at her from the corner of his eye. There was still pain in her eyes, but she seemed to be concentrating enough on transferring the strawberries that it was starting to slip away. Then she spoke.
“Gavin was always very serious. You know what I mean? The kind of person who doesn’t seem to be able to see the fun in anything but things that are supposed to be fun?”
Gannon looked at her and shook his head slightly, unsure of what she meant. Willow sighed.
“Yeah. He said that that didn’t make sense, either. It was just…he compartmentalized everything. If he was doing something, he was only doing that thing. All of his attention and energy went into that, and he could only allow himself to react to it in the way that he thought he was supposed to. He didn’t have any whimsy or sense of humor, unless it was a situation when it was actually dictated to do that. It was like if we were out doing something, he could have fun, but if there was any sense of rules, regulations, or order, he had to absolutely follow that. Even if we were playing a game at home, there could be absolutely no deviation from the rules. But I was used to that. It was the way that he had always been.”
She stopped and fell silent again. Gannon wanted her to continue, to tell him more about what happened in her past.
“And then he changed?” he encouraged, hoping to ease her forward in the conversation.
Willow glanced up at him briefly and then nodded as she looked down at the plant in her hands again.
“He started talking about all of these crazy ideas. Things I’ve never heard him say before. He would come home from work raving about strange things that didn’t make any sense, and thoughts that he was having. It bothered me, but I didn’t know what to say about it. I figured that he had heard something at work and that he had gotten fixated on it like he tended to do, but that it would pass and he would go back to normal. Within a few months he started getting worse and it was really scaring me. He barely slept. I would go to bed at night and wake up in the middle of the night to find him pacing around the room with his tablet, researching something that he would never fully explain to me. If I asked him what it was all about, he would just go into another one of his rants and it would get more and more extreme until he exhausted himself and finally fell asleep. I tried so hard to stop him. I did everything that I could to distract him and to keep him focused on something else, but it never worked. He just got worse and worse. Then finally that morning he just walked out of the house and never came back.”
Gannon felt sadness wash over him at the thought of her going through that. Though he hated the idea of her with any other man, he didn’t want to think about her being hurt.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Willow shook her head and gave him a weak smile.
“It’s alright,” she said. “By that point, I had been struggling with even trying to remember why I was still with him. I was having a really difficult time in the relationship and had been thinking about ending it with him, I just didn’t know how.”
“Do you think that it’s possible that Gavin knew that you were thinking about that, and maybe that’s why he left that day? He wanted to get away from you before you were able to end the relationship?”
“No,” Willow said. “I don’t think that he thought of anything but whatever it was that was in his mind that was causing him to change. I don’t even think that he thought of me at all before he left, and definitely not again after he did.”
“And you never heard from him again?”
“No. Not even once. It was like he walked out of the house and just disappeared. He never showed up for work that day even though his car was in the parking lot, and no one ever heard from him afterwards. There’s been no activity on his phone or his financial accounts. His family hasn’t heard from him. There was an investigation and I think for a while some people thought that I had something to do with it, that I knew where he was and just wasn’t saying. But then no one was able to find anything and the search faded and eventually stopped.”
“Are you worried about him?” Gannon asked.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted her to say. He felt a sharp pang of jealousy just thinking that this man who had already claimed so much of her and that had caused her so much pain was still taking up her thoughts and her emotions. At the same time, he couldn’t imagine that she would be so heartless that she would be able to just push him out of her mind all together when he walked away.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I definitely have questions, but I don’t really know if I’m worried a
bout him or if I just wonder what could have happened. It was all just so strange.”
Gannon reached for the final strawberry plant at the same moment that she did and their hands brushed against each other. Neither withdrew quickly, but instead looked at each other. Gannon felt his skin tingle where it touched hers and the air around them seemed to get thicker as they stared at each other for the span of a few heartbeats before turning back to their work.
Chapter Six
For the next few weeks the time that she was able to spend with Gannon became the highlight of her week, and in the times that she wasn’t able to be with him, he was never far from her mind. She would pick him up from Nana’s house nearly every day and bring him back to the greenhouse where they would spend hours tending to the plants. The flowers, fruits, and vegetables were lush and thriving, but within the first few days their focus on the plants became less and less as their attention shifted more toward each other. They spent their time together talking and gradually the hesitation that she had seen in Gannon started to dissipate, eventually allowing him to relax with her. The sound of his laugh was thrilling and Willow found herself wanting to hear it more and more, wanting to draw it out of him as if it was something that he had never done and she wanted to give him as much of it as she could.
The longer that they spent together, the more curious she became about Gannon’s past. Though she had shared more about herself with him, telling him about her childhood and the family she had grown up with, he had given her few details about his own life leading up to when he came to stay with Nana. The information that he did give her was vague, and if she tried to coax more out of him, she could sense his unwillingness to talk further. It was difficult to decipher what was keeping him from being as open with her as she was with him. Willow couldn’t determine if the details of his life were something that he just didn’t want to share with her because he didn’t trust her as much as she had grown to trust him, or if there was something else that was keeping him from giving her more of a glimpse into his past.
Despite him keeping her at a distance with the details of his past, Willow could feel her draw toward him becoming stronger and the level of trust that she felt for him becoming deeper. She was excited that she was able to feel this for someone again and didn’t want to push it, not wanting to threaten the connection that they were building.
The strawberry plants had responded to Gannon’s suggestion to move them into other pots and stop feeding them the fertilizer that she had purchased. Now rather than the weak, limp plants that she had had when she first asked him to come, she had strong, bright green plants with such an abundance of runners that they had had to plant them in raised beds that he had built for her in the center of the greenhouse, moving aside flowers that were nearly ready to be transferred outside. The vines were heavy with luscious fruit and she knew that it was time to pick them. Gannon’s incredible skill with the plants had been so successful that she had far more berries than she had ever expected to have, and was excited about all of the potential that the sweet, juicy gems held. She was thinking about the recipes that she wanted to start with when she heard a low, rhythmic sound in the distance that brought a smile to her lips.
Willow hurried out of the greenhouse and around to the back so that she could look out over the rolling green pasture that stretched behind the house and toward the tree line in the distance. The sound grew louder and she caught sight of a dark figure ahead of her. It approached quickly and soon she could see Gannon sitting astride a massive grey horse, his hands grasping the reins firmly but without fear. This was how he had been arriving at her house for the last few days and it had seemed to light something inside of him. Though he hadn’t said anything about it, Willow could sense that not being able to drive and having to rely on her to get to her house bothered him. She hadn’t pried into why he didn’t drive. She could tell it was something that went beyond just never learning and he hadn’t offered an explanation. Instead, she had encouraged him when he mentioned that he thought that he might like to learn to ride one of the animals that he had been caring for, and helped him to find the easiest path between Nana’s house and her own so that he was able to ride to her. The first time that she had seen him arrive on the back of the majestic animal, the change that had come over him was obvious, and it had delighted her to see the smile on his face and the flush of color on his cheeks.
Her heartrate increased as she watched Gannon ride toward her. His body looked strong and powerful in the saddle, his muscles tight as he held himself in place. The movement of the air through his thick dark hair caused it to ripple and pushed his shirt open at the neck, revealing a small amount of smooth skin. She could no longer deny the feelings that she had for him and the reaction that her body went through each time that she saw him. No matter how strong those feelings were, however, she hadn’t been able to express them to him. There was still so much that she didn’t know about him, including any relationships that he might have had in the past, and that held her back from even considering what it might be like to allow herself to step out of the boundaries that she had created for herself and explore the pull that built in her belly and her heart every time that she was near Gannon.
The animal slowed and stopped near her and Gannon dropped down onto his feet beside it.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi. If you want to bring the horse to the yard, I’ll meet you in the greenhouse.”
Gannon nodded and led the horse by its reins toward the fenced yard off of another section of her house. The fences were tall enough to keep the horse within them and there was enough grass that it could eat happily, occasionally wandering over to the bucket of water that she had put out for it for a drink. She was snipping berries from one of the plants and settling them into a basket when he came into the greenhouse.
“The berries are ready,” she told him. “We can harvest them now.”
He crouched down beside her and tucked a hand under one of the bright red berries, holding it against his palm as he tilted it back and forth to admire it.
“Are you happy with them?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” she answered. “They are more beautiful than I could have ever hoped for.”
“I know how that feels.”
He had said it so softly that Willow wasn’t sure if he had meant for her to hear it, but she couldn’t help but look at him in surprise. There was a cautious look of appeal in his eyes, but he quickly looked away again, turning his attention back to the berry plants in the bed in front of them. He scooped up a pair of gardening scissors and started snipping the berries from their stems. Willow felt her heart fluttering and had to draw in a breath to calm it, forcing herself to appreciate the delicate way that he was harvesting the berries rather than the innocent, yet impactful, comment. Even under his strong hands, cutting the berries instead of pulling them off of the stems protected them from bruising and kept them looking almost like they weren’t real they were so ripe and perfect.
“There are enough berries here for me to make several different recipes,” she told him as the baskets were filling. “I’d like to put up some preserves so that I can enjoy them all year. Have you ever done that?”
Gannon shook his head.
“No,” he answered.
“If you’d like, you can come over tomorrow and help me make them. It can be a bit of a messy process, but it’s fun.”
The tip of Gannon’s tongue slid across his bottom lip and he nodded.
“I’d like that.”
Willow reached for another berry, licking her own bottom lip as she imagined what his would taste like.
“Good.”
Chapter Seven
It was mid-afternoon by the time that Gannon was able to get to Willow’s house the next day. He rode the horse up to the back of the house like he always did, but she wasn’t standing there waiting for him. Concerned that she was upset that he was arriving later than he usually did, Gannon led the horse into
the yard and hurried into the greenhouse. His worry increased when he noticed that the greenhouse was empty and the berries that they had picked the day before were no longer sitting in their baskets beside the beds. He went to the back door and knocked, ready to explain that there had been more tasks to handle at Nana’s house that morning than usual, without delving into the fact that one of those tasks was sitting with Jonah and Aubrey and talking through some of the realities of his life in Ryan’s facility so that he could help them work through some of the problems that they were trying to unravel. He didn’t know how to even begin to explain that to her, to tell her who he was and what he had gone through. It felt like the time was passing too quickly and the opportunity to tell her had gone by, leaving him in a tense, uncomfortable position. He didn’t know what he was going to do or how he was going to handle it.
As soon as Willow opened the door, all of the worries that he had had disappeared. Her hair had been swept back into a ponytail that bounced at the back of her head, but a few strands had escaped and were hanging down by her cheek. She was barefoot, making him realize that she was much smaller than he had thought that she was, and wore an apron over her clothes. The smile on her face only made her more adorable and he couldn’t help but return the smile.
“Hi!” she greeted happily. “I already got started, but there’s plenty more to do. Come on in.”
Gannon & Willow's Story Page 3