And just because Hope stopped pointing out when I grew dizzy didn’t mean she didn’t stop noticing. Almost every time, she’d be there with a bottle of water and a painkiller.
She never smirked or made me feel like a patient. She just delivered what I needed and walked away, leaving me to my own issues at being taken care of.
Tearing my eyes from hers, I pulled forward at a snail’s pace, then ambled over to where the raker sat in the tree shadows. Hope trailed on foot, her tiny frame bouncy and high on life in my rear-view mirror.
Her step was springy, her smile so wide it caused premature wrinkles by her eyes. She glowed with joy. Literally glowed with it as if she were some woodland creature that’d slipped into a human skin for a day and marvelled at a brand new existence.
She didn’t try to hide how happy today made her. She didn’t apologise for laughing for the sake of it or for skipping for no reason.
She was pure ecstasy, and her freedom in such wonder and delight caused painful shards in my chest. She hurt me because I hadn’t been around such carefree happiness before. If my mom smiled, it held a tinge of grief. If my aunt laughed, it shadowed with sadness. If my grandpa grinned, it tinkled with memories of lives taken far too soon.
Cherry River might look like the ideal place to live but buried in the wind and trees and grass was permanent heartache.
Only Hope was free from such afflictions.
Only Hope could look at the forest where we’d scattered Dad’s ashes and see heaven and not a ghost.
Only Hope could twirl in the wildflowers and grin at the sky rather than feel guilty for being so happy.
Watching her made me feel wrong.
I wanted to tell her to be respectful of those who could no longer be here with us. To tell her the dead were watching, and it wasn’t fair to have such a good time when they had run out of time completely.
But how could I snatch away her joy when she’d fought so hard to find it? How could I tell her to leave this place when it would be like kicking her from a home she’d wholeheartedly claimed?
“Hey, Jacob! You’ve driven right past it!”
Goddammit.
I pulled back on the accelerator, shaking my head from gloomy thoughts. The urge to apologise to Dad—to look at the trees and say, ‘I’m sorry she’s so happy when you’re gone and can’t be happy anymore,’ overwhelmed me.
Doing my best to ignore such things and convince myself that Hope’s glee wouldn’t reflect poorly on me with my dead father, I scowled, reversed, and lined up for the rake.
The nasty looking implement could take out an eye, lung, or leg with the row upon row of sharp spikes ready to gather cut grass and place it neatly into heaped lines to dry.
“Watch yourself,” I commanded as Hope fiddled with the coupling, looking a bit lost. I couldn’t in good conscience make her fumble with something so dangerous. “Back away.”
“I can do it.”
“Hope.” I growled. “Back away. I’ll do it. You drive.”
“Really?” Her eyes turned wide.
All day, I hadn’t let her drive. I’d explained what I was doing as I shifted gears and pulled levers to set the mower down and pressed pedals to add torque, but I hadn’t let her into the captain’s seat.
Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the rail and steering wheel and twisted to climb the two steps to the ground.
My right leg threatened to give out on me, my knee unlocking for a second as I reached earth. I teetered with balance, but then Hope was there. Her body pressed against mine, her arm wrapped tight around my waist.
I sucked in a breath, my heart charging faster than Forrest in full gallop; my mouth dry and body hard and blood craving, craving something it couldn’t have.
She’d taken far too many liberties, and I’d been far too weak for letting her.
“Let go of me,” I hissed when Hope gave no sign of stepping away.
She licked her lips, nodding in submission but not going anywhere. Her forehead pressed against my shoulder, nuzzling into me before a tiny moan escaped her, and she tore herself away.
That little moan echoed like a gunshot in my ears, making me lightheaded for all new reasons.
I couldn’t remember what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I stood like an idiot as she climbed the tractor and plopped like an excited child in the chipped and weathered seat.
“Did I say you could get up there?”
She frowned. “You just said I could drive.” Grabbing the wheel, she leaned down, searching my face shadowed beneath my cowboy hat. “You do remember…right?”
I frowned, flipping through memories—
Something about Dad and skipping and the rake.
Ah. Yeah, I did say she could drive.
Damn, this concussion was stealing tiny chunks of my day and turning me into a moron.
“Fine. Don’t touch anything.” Taking my hat off to swipe sweat-damp hair, I shoved the leather back onto my head, then moved to the rear of the machine. My fingers weren’t as agile, and my spine ached like a bitch as I bent over to angle the coupling into the right position.
The tractor connector needed to come down. Seeing as Hope wasn’t exactly an expert in farming shorthand, I moved toward the side and tapped the tread to get her attention.
Her eyes stayed locked on the horizon where Forrest ran with a large herd of rescues; someone had decided to go for a hoon because a flock of four-legged beasts flew in formation effortlessly up the hill, tails streaming, manes dancing, hooves thundering.
“Hey.” I thumped the step, once again angry at the sheer bliss on her face. The absolute contentedness of this country moment to a city girl like her. I didn’t like that she looked as if she’d fallen in love. I didn’t like the way she melted and sighed and—
“Oi!” I grabbed her boot that was no longer box-fresh and new but covered in dirt with a scratch or two.
“Oh, sorry!” She snapped out of her trance, smiling with pink cheeks. “I was caught up.”
“You can say that again.”
“Jacob…this place.” She opened her arms wide as if she could embrace all of Cherry River. “How do you get anything done out here? It’s spectacular. It’s amazing. It’s the best place on earth.”
“It’s just a farm.”
Her eyes turned sharp. “It’s not just a farm. It’s so much more than that, and you know it.”
I glowered, daring her to say only good things happened here when bad things did on a regular basis.
Ignoring my look, Hope breathed, “Knowing you’re a part of it? That you’re linked somehow?” She shivered. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever experienced. This is what I want. I don’t know how I could ever go back to a city after this. How do people live in high-rises? How do they cram into trains or eat in crowded restaurants when this…this—” She once again followed the wave of horses as they slowed from a canter to a trot. “This is where souls live. This is real. This is—”
“This isn’t yours,” I snapped. “Don’t fall too deep, Hope. Only heartbreak follows.”
I hated that she felt the same way I did. I despised that she understood the loathing for society and the unwillingness to become close to others. She’d shared my world for two minutes—she wasn’t allowed to understand.
She would go back to those cities and eat in those crowded places and travel on congested transport because she wasn’t welcome here.
She upset my simple balance.
She made me wonder what life as free as her, as happy as her could be like and, in turn, threatened everything fundamental about me.
She stilled.
A cold breeze snapped from nowhere, licking around us. A breeze I’d always associated with my father but now just believed was coincidence.
My dad was gone.
He wasn’t watching us. If he were, he’d be torn apart with how callously Hope paraded her life and health in his face.
Hope leaned over me, her tongue wetting her lower lip.
“What if it’s already too late?”
“What?” My heart stopped beating. “What did you say?”
“What if I’ve fallen, and there’s no place else for me?”
Nausea filled my gut. “Then I guess you better discuss adoption with my mother. I know Dad always wanted a daughter. Suppose you’d do.”
She flinched. “I know you’re being deliberately cruel, but I see right through you.”
Everything inside went cold. “You see nothing.”
“I see everything.”
“You’re a child.”
“No.” She shook her head, hair spilling from her baseball cap. “I’m your friend.”
That fucking word.
It drew blood.
It was a knife digging deep in my chest.
Ever so slowly, I reached out to grab the two handrails. “Stop saying that.” With a painful hiss, I hauled myself up so I wasn’t so beneath her. So she wasn’t so above me. So we were on even ground.
Hope slipped off the tractor’s seat, kneeling on the dusty, dirty floor where the pedals waited for commands. Her fingers dug into the rubber matting as she locked eyes with me, ferocity and fight equal to mine. “I see your fear. I see your anger. I see how you want to run but don’t. I see you love but wish you didn’t. I see how deeply you feel, Jacob, all the while begging you were heartless.” Her hand came up; her fingertips kissed my cheek.
It physically hurt worse than any hug, touch, or smile.
“Don’t.” Everything inside me raged. I tore my face from her reach. “I’ve told you before. Don’t touch me.”
“And I say you need to be touched.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Oh, really?” Her gaze dropped to my mouth. “You don’t need something? You don’t lie in bed at night wanting—”
“Never.”
Her eyes hooded. “Liar. I think you’re hungry…just like me.”
“I’m not like you.”
“I think we’re more alike than you’ll admit.”
I forced a laugh. “Why? Just because you want me, you think I want you in return?”
She sucked in a breath. For a second, she arched away, but then her body softened. “I know I’m pushing you. I know I’m driving you crazy. And I know I’m breaking all my promises, but Jacob…you’re right. I do want you. I want to help you.”
“That’s all you want? To help? Now who’s the liar?”
Her voice turned feathery and windswept. “Fine. I want you in other ways. I want—”
“Stop.” This had gone on long enough. “Get off my tractor.”
Get out of my goddamn life.
I gave orders to my fingers to unlock so I could drop to the ground, but they only squeezed tighter, hauled me higher, brought me closer.
“No.” Her eyes flashed.
“Yes,” I hissed.
“Not yet. We’re finally getting somewhere.”
“We’re going around in circles.”
“Only because you’re too afraid to admit you feel what I do.”
“I feel nothing.”
“You feel everything. You’re alive…you just wished you weren’t.”
“Shut up, Hope.”
“No. Not until you accept that you’re lying to yourself.”
“I’m lying?” I bared my teeth. “You’re the one lying. The one believing in lies. I don’t want your help. I don’t want you on my farm. I don’t want anything from you.” My breathing roughened as my lips tingled to smash on hers. To kiss her. To be normal and no longer be so goddamn afraid of finding something so precious only to be suicidal when it was lost. “I definitely don’t want you.”
“Once again, you’re lying.” Her chest rose and fell. “You’re thinking about it. You’ve wondered.”
“Never.”
“I have. I’ve wondered what it would be like to kiss you.”
Everything locked down. My cock swelled. Pain manifested in every cell. “Find something else to wonder about.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because when it comes to you…I can’t think about anything else.”
“Hope…” Breathing was a struggle. Everything was a goddamn struggle. Her voice was a trap, her eyes a cage. I was caught, drawn against my will to feel, to want, to crave. “Don’t push me.”
I can’t do this.
Please, don’t make me do this.
“Jacob…” Her eyelashes painted spidery shadows on pretty cheeks. A piece of grass hitched a ride in the valley of her sun-tinted breasts.
I was losing.
Losing myself.
Losing to her.
I shuddered as she came closer, crawling to me. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I think you are.”
“You should be afraid. Afraid of what I’ll do if you keep pushing me.”
She smiled sadly. “I am. I’m afraid for you.” Once again, she touched my cheek, branding me with venomous fingertips. “I know I shouldn’t. I promised myself I’d stop, but today has shown me just how incredible life is. This place. This afternoon. You. You live in paradise, Jacob, but your mind ensures you live in hell. Please...”
She didn’t continue, her cheeks pink and eyes imploring, full of desire and temptation.
I’d never had someone stand up to me this way.
Never had someone fight with me, killing me word by word.
She was my greatest nemesis.
She was my cruellest foe.
“Jacob…please just let me show you. Show you that you can have—”
I snatched her wrist, yanking her fingers from my face. “Have what? Love? Sex? What my parents had?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“You think I want those things with you?”
She flinched. “If you don’t, then at least I’ve pushed you into admitting you want them with someone.”
“Who are you?” My fingers tightened around her wrist.
“I’m you. I’m your opposite. I’m what you need.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“That too.” She rocked her wrist in my hold, activating hunter instincts, my heart racing to keep her captive.
I squeezed her harder. “You’re ruining everything.”
“Maybe.” She sucked in a breath with a blood-heating hitch. “Or maybe I’m fixing everything.”
“Don’t fool yourself.”
“Stop lying to yourself.”
“Stop being so goddamn stubborn.”
“Kiss me and stop avoiding the truth.”
Heat became a forest fire as we locked in a war.
I wanted to kill her.
I wanted to kiss her.
I wanted to be left the hell alone. “Enough.” I forced myself to let her go. “I’m done with this.”
“Don’t.” Her hand soared to my cheek again, her thumb tracing my bottom lip. “Don’t run.”
My cock left the realm of hard and turned into concrete. Concrete threatening to crack and splinter if it didn’t have a tiny taste of whatever bristled between us.
She leaned closer, her gaze no longer temper-focused but hazed with need.
My mouth went dry. My heart stopped beating. The earth fissured beneath me, sending me into pits of despair.
“Kiss me…” Her command could barely be heard, snatched by the breeze. The same breeze that licked around us, cocooning us, fighting us.
“No.”
“Please, Jacob.”
I needed to get away.
Now.
But she had me snared, gutted, broken.
I had no free will anymore.
No earthly way of removing myself from this nightmare.
My back bellowed. My mind ran crazy with lust. It took all my willpower to meet her eyes and hiss, “Leave. You’re fired.”
The desire on her face flickered. Her stubbornness faltered for a second. A blissful secon
d where my heart scrambled for fresh air.
“You can’t fire a friend.”
“You’re not my friend.”
“I am.”
“You’re my enemy.”
She shook her head. “I’m not, can’t you see?”
“Get off my land.”
“No.”
“I’ll physically throw you out if you don’t leave.”
Her chin came up, her cajoling switching to anger. “Go ahead. But you’d have to touch me first. Touch me, Jacob. See if you’re immune as you say you are when I’m seconds away from losing everything.”
There was no fresh air because she’d stolen it. Every breath I inhaled Hope. I inhaled sunshine and lemonade and lust.
I wasn’t just lost.
I was dead.
Murdered by the one thing I never wanted to feel.
“Hope…just stop.” I was willing to concede defeat if she just left me the hell alone. I needed to run. To remember how to live in a world of love when I couldn’t have any of it.
“I’m so sorry, Jacob.” Her eyes glittered. “So sorry I’m hurting you.”
“Then stop. Stop all of this.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean, you won’t.”
She nodded, tears welling.
Something about this argument was different. It scratched me, scared me, scarred me.
Fucking terrified me.
Beneath my anger, beneath the attempt at a truce and the truth of pain, the broken kid inside me got on his knees for help.
I wasn’t equipped for this. I was used to family accepting my desire to be left alone. I was conditioned to earn peace by pushing away those who cared.
Hope didn’t give me those rewards.
She didn’t slink away when I growled.
She didn’t stop pushing me.
Pushing and pushing, always goddamn pushing.
“Leave.”
“Like I said, you’ll have to touch me first.”
“If I touched you again, Hope Jacinta Murphy, you’d wish you’d run when I gave you the chance.” My voice blistered the sky.
She froze, a thread of wariness decorated her face. “Try me.”
“Get off my tractor.”
“Make me.”
“Get out of my life.”
“Bite me.” She snapped her teeth together. “I’m not going anywhere. Not yet. Not until—”
The Son & His Hope Page 26