Chapter Seventeen – Ivy #2
“Where are you?” she demands. “Still playing house on that farm like some tragic version of Green Acres?”
I clench my jaw. “That’s none of your business.”
“It is my business when your name is still my paycheck. You think you can just run off and pretend this little identity crisis doesn’t have consequences?”
“I’m not pretending,” I say, voice tight. “I’m living.”
“You think anyone gives a damn about you without me guiding your career?” she snaps.
“I made you. When your father left, you were just a girl in a trailer park with a half-dead cassette player and no idea how to keep the lights on. Who paid for your braces? Your first guitar? That trip to LA when you were fifteen? Me.”
I swallow hard. “You helped. But that doesn’t mean you own me.”
“I built you from the ground up,” she hisses. “And now you’re going to burn it all down to flirt with a cowboy in a town that doesn’t even have a Starbucks?”
I almost laugh. But there’s no humor in it.
“I’m done letting you choose who I have to be.”
Silence.
Then her voice drops, soft and sharp.
“You’re making a mistake, Evangeline. One you won’t come back from.”
I stare out across the field, where Rowan is still moving between stalls like nothing in the world could shake him. Where his shoulders hold up more than fences and feed bags. Where he hasn’t once asked me to be anyone but myself.
“If it’s a mistake,” I whisper, “at least it’s mine.”
Then I end the call.
My hands are shaking as I shove the phone back in my pocket, the weight of that conversation pressing down like a summer storm on my chest.
But I don’t cry. I just stand there and breathe. One breath. Then another.
Until finally, I turn back toward the barn and start walking—toward the horses, toward Rowan, toward something that feels real.
By the time we get back to Rowan’s house, the light is thick and honeyed, the porch casting a long shadow across the yard. My chest still pinches from the call with my mother, but it’s Rowan’s quiet that tugs at me more. He holds the door, lets me pass, and it swings shut on the breath between us.
Inside smells like wood and lemon oil and him. He goes straight to the kitchen, opens the fridge like it offended him, then shuts it with his forearm. A low sound escapes him—half grunt, half breath.
“Eggs on toast?” I offer, keeping it simple.
He grunts again—then stops himself. Both hands are planted on the counter. Head drops. He draws a long breath like he’s hauling a net out of the water and wants what’s caught to come up clean.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says, voice rough but steady. “I’m… working on not being an ass when I don’t have the words yet.”
I lean on the island and wait him out.
He lifts his head to meet my eyes. “I got jealous when you and Crew were laughing in the barn.” He says it plain, like he refuses to make it ugly.
“Not because I think there’s anything there.
I know what that was—PR, headlines, a job.
It’s the shorthand you two have. He’s known you longer.
He knows details I’m still learning. And I wanted”—his jaw flexes—“I wanted to be the one you look at that way.”
Something unknots in my ribs. “I was talking about his disastrous attempt at roping. He ate dirt in front of a second-grade field trip.”
A reluctant smile tugs his mouth. “Good. He deserved that.”
“And,” I add, stepping around the island, “you’re allowed to say all of this out loud. Preferably before you turn into a storm cloud.”
He huffs, nods. “I’m learning. Slowly. But I’m learning.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
His hand finds the small of my back, tentative. “Let me try again.”
“Try.”
He takes the pan from me, sets it on the burner. “We’re making dinner together,” he says, quiet authority back in his voice, but it’s softer now. “And then I’m taking you somewhere that isn’t a kitchen or a café or a barn. I don’t want to argue with you. I want to… show you.”
“Show me what?”
“That I can be good at this.” He swallows. “At you. At us.”
Heat stings behind my eyes. I blink it clear and hand him the butter. We move around each other like we’ve been doing this for years—my hip bumping his gently and his fingers brushing mine when he passes the salt. Nothing dramatic, just the ordinary intimacy I’ve starved for.
He puts on a playlist from his phone, something low and warm, a steel guitar threading the space.
While the eggs set, he catches my hand and tugs me into the open patch of floor.
Barefoot on old wood, we sway. No steps to memorize, no audience.
His chin tips to my hair; my cheek finds his shirt.
He breathes out like the tension’s finally found a door.
“I don’t want to keep messing up,” he murmurs. “So I’m going to say the thing instead of making a story about it.”
“Rule number one,” I say into his chest. “Say the thing.”
He pulls back just enough to see my face. “Say the thing: I want you here. With me. And when I get it wrong, I want you to tell me—then let me fix it.”
The timer on the stove dings. He kisses my forehead—simple, devastating—and slips away to plate dinner.
We eat at the counter, knees touching, sharing a single fork because the drawer only gave up one and neither of us was willing to wash another.
He slides the crispiest corner of toast to my side without comment.
I call him noble; he calls me dramatic. It feels like the beginning of something we both recognize and are a little afraid to name.
When the dishes are rinsed, he wipes his hands on a towel and turns to me with that steady, I-built-a-fence look. “Grab your sweater,” he says. “And the quilt from the back of the couch.”
“Where are we going?”
He tips his head toward the door, eyes gone midnight. “To park my truck in the back pasture and let the sky do the talking.”
The back field is a dark bowl edged in trees, the creek murmuring somewhere beyond the grass.
Fireflies pulsing like slow applause. He kills the engine and climbs into the bed, then offers a hand and hauls me up like I weigh nothing.
The quilt spreads, and we stretch out. He’s thought ahead—two Mason jars with sweet tea, a paper bag with peach hand pies tucked inside. Wooing, Wright-style.
“You brought dessert?” I tease.
“Insurance,” he says, arranging the jar near my shoulder. “In case my star lecture bores you.”
“It won’t.” Because he could read a tractor manual in that voice and I’d still show up.
He points out familiar shapes—handle, belt, hunter and dog—and the ones I never learned. “That smudge there? The Milky Way. We only get it on the clearest nights.” His fingers trace the air, not touching me, and still I feel the line down the center of me go warm.
“Make a wish,” I say.
He’s quiet for a long moment. “Not a wish,” he answers. “A plan.”
I turn on my side, pillow my head on his shoulder. “Tell me.”
He slides his palm to my waist and rests it there like an anchor. “Plan: I stop shutting down when I’m scared. Plan: I tell you when I’m angry before I weaponize silence. Plan: I take you on actual dates—not just hauling hay and calling it quality time.”
“What kind of dates?”
“Picnic at the creek. Sunday sunrise in the flatbed. Dance on the back porch to whatever song you want, even if you make me count.” A beat. “Skinny-dip at midnight if you’re braver than me.”
I laugh against his shoulder. “I am.”
“I know.” He smiles, small and real, then sobers. “And I learn the ways to look after you that matter. The practical ones—the meds in the truck, the shade when it’s too hot. And the other ones—the coffee the way you like it, the quiet when you need it, the noise when you don’t.”
My throat goes thick. “Rowan…”
“Say the thing,” he reminds me softly.
“Okay.” I breathe. “I’m scared too. I’ve been managed more than I’ve been loved. I don’t always trust my own instincts. But when I’m with you, I feel… right-sized. Like I’m allowed to be a person first. I want more of that. With you.”
His hand tightens at my waist—just once. “Good,” he says, and the word lands like a vow.
The night settles. Crickets. Creek. Our breathing in time. He turns his face, finds my mouth with a kiss that’s unhurried and sure. Not a grab. Not a dare. A promise. He kisses me like we have time, like we’re going to use it well.
When we finally part, he presses his forehead to mine, voice low. “You deserve more than a man who flinches at his own feelings. I’m not flinching.”
“So noted.”
We lie there until the quilt dampens with dew, until the jars are empty and the hand pies are crumbs.
He points out one last star. I name it ours, to hear him scoff and then relent.
On the drive back, his hand finds my knee and rests there.
At the fork in the path—left to the house, right to the cottage—we stop where the two pools of porch light almost touch.
“Left?” he asks, not assuming.
“Left,” I say, and he smiles like a man who has decided to let himself be happy.
Inside, he flips on the lamp. No storm cloud, no retreat. He hooks a finger in my sweater hem and tugs me into the kitchen for one more slow turn to a song only we can hear. And when he kisses me good night, it’s with the same certainty as the stars: steady, simple, bright enough to steer by.