Chapter 10
Ten
Kingston
The rotors build as we prepare to take off from my place on Wednesday at noon.
The helicopter rises, and Elise and I skim out over the lake.
In the last few days, the whole valley has changed, patches of green now pushing through the white.
The road that was buried earlier this week now shows like a scar, cleared to a single lane.
By tomorrow, two lanes will be open. The thaw is a reminder that seasons change whether we want them to or not.
Elise leans forward, her face soft. “I’m going to miss this,” she says. “The valley, the air, the vines…” She turns to me, earnest. “This is the only life I want, you know? It feeds me in a way nothing else does.”
My hand clamps on the collective until my knuckles ache. That’s my truth too, the one I never say because it sounds like sentimentality when it’s actually the only thing that keeps me sane. This land feeds me. Grounds me. Hearing Elise say it—without apology—strips me bare.
For a second, breathing is difficult. We’ve built lives that look nothing alike, yet here she is, articulating the thing that tethers me to this valley. In that way, we are the same. Perhaps this is why she seems to confuse my defenses in a way no one else has.
I clear my throat. “Yeah. I get that.”
What I really want to say is, You get me.
We arrive at Paradise Hill, and the helicopter blades wind down.
I ease us into place, the familiar vibration settling into my bones before I cut the engine.
For the past few days, I’ve flown Elise over around lunch and back every night.
She’s given me a reason to leave my home office at a reasonable time and have an actual dinner with pleasant conversation.
The rhythm of it has become…comfortable. Too comfortable.
And this will be her last night before she goes.
I tug off my headset, and she’s already unbuckling, hair whipping in the last lazy swirls of wind. She laughs as she tames it with both hands, and the sound twists my heart. For a moment, I feel entirely untethered. None of this makes any sense. It’s not what I want, not what feels safe.
“Thanks for being my chauffeur,” she says.
“Guess this makes me officially out of a job.”
“You’ll survive.”
I’ve liked having her under my roof. Her soft footsteps in the hall at night. The way she sings in the kitchen when she thinks I’m upstairs. The place already feels empty, and she hasn’t even left for France yet. But that’s just my confusion. Her departure gives me a chance to reset.
“You’re staying with your dad tonight?” Despite myself, I reach over to unclip her harness before she can do it. My fingers brush the back of her hand, and she stills for a heartbeat, then pulls away gently.
“Yeah. One more night at home before…” She looks past me, out over the vineyard like she’s trying to memorize it. “Tomorrow morning I fly to Vancouver. Then direct to Paris.”
“And then the train to Bordeaux.” I grimace. “That’s brutal.”
She shrugs bravely. “Part of the adventure.”
She didn’t have to make it that hard. She could’ve asked me to fly her.
We could’ve taken my plane and skipped the layovers and the shuffle.
Thirty-six hours of travel versus a smooth glide over the Atlantic.
But she didn’t ask. And I didn’t volunteer.
That would involve me even more deeply in this process, and I might have admitted I don’t want her to go.
“You’ll be jetlagged for days,” I mutter.
“Probably.” She smiles. “But I have the weekend to adjust. I don’t start until Monday morning, so I’ll deal.”
There’s that smile again. I want to bottle it.
I sigh as I lift her bags out of the storage compartment. When I help her out of her seat, my hand lingers at her elbow until I make myself let go.
Mitch comes out to meet us, his hat shoved back, smiling the way fathers smile when their kids come home.
“You got a few packages,” he says, hauling her bags into the back of his SUV. “ guy thinks we’re running a warehouse.”
Elise laughs, tucking hair behind her ear. “I needed a few things for the trip. After the fire…I don’t have much.”
“You staying for the dinner, Kingston?” her dad asks.
I glance at Elise. Her eyes are bright, waiting. “Yeah,” I agree. “I’ll stay.”
“I’ll run her home real quick,” her dad says. “Then we’ll see you at the barn.”
They head off, and I walk into the main house and look for my mom.
I follow the clatter of pans to the kitchen. Mom looks up as I enter, her eyes lighting the way they always do when she sees me.
“Kingston.” She wipes her hands on a towel and pulls me into a hug. “How are you? How did it go with Elise staying at your place?”
“Simone liked it,” I say. “Having Elise around gave her more to do.”
“And for you?”
“I felt like I was here all the time.” I already wish I hadn’t come in here. This isn’t a conversation I want to have. The ferrying, the meals, the late-night talks—days blurred. I didn’t mind.
“That isn’t what I asked,” Mom says softly.
I rake a hand through my hair. “What worries me is this lothario she’s running off to France to work with. I don’t trust him. He’s probably only interested in—” I clamp my jaw closed.
Her lips twitch. “And why does that bother you so much?”
“It just does,” I snap. “Call it instinct.”
Her gaze sharpens. “You’re not worried about France. You’re worried about losing her.”
Her words are a dare. “She’s important to Tarryn,” I explain. “And the business. I want her to come back.”
“And to you.”
“Yes.” It bursts out, and I grit my teeth. She’s cornered me, and we both know it. How can my mother see things I don’t even understand about myself?
Her eyes soften. “That’s exactly how it was for me and your father.”
“What?”
“I told him I had a job on Vancouver Island when my residency ended. Leaving was awful. But I did. And then, he wrote to me. Every day.”
“Dad?” I blink. “He’s never been a share-your-feelings type.”
“Not with words spoken,” she says, smiling. “But on paper, he poured himself out. I still have the letters tucked away. Our whole courtship was ink and envelopes.”
Envy stabs inside me. My father—stoic, steady—found a way to put his heart somewhere it could be kept.
I’ve never been good at saying what I feel or even knowing what I feel, in some cases.
And the times I’ve tried haven’t ended well.
Sometimes, there’s not even a point in putting yourself out there.
“One day,” my mother goes on, “he asked if he moved to the island, would I date him. I never expected it. He’d always been in love with his legacy here. So when he said he’d give it up, I knew he was serious.”
She sets a plate down, eyes warm. “We lived there for eighteen months. When my contract ended, we came home and got married. You arrived ten months later. I’ve never regretted it. Not for a minute.”
Her words leave me with a picture I can’t shake—my father at a desk, lamplight on paper, writing truths he couldn’t convey any other way.
Tarryn strides in like a storm, ponytail swinging. No hello. Just the hit. “Someone got in last night and messed with the cultivators and aerators.”
“Zach?” I straighten.
“I don’t know.” She pulls out her phone. “Here. Look.”
The footage is grainy, but a figure moves through the rows. The sodium lamps wash everything dull, but it’s clear enough that I can see the man bend, finger the cultivators, and crouch at the aerators like he knows which levers matter.
My stomach knots. Seeing someone among the vines is worse than hearing boots on gravel. Elise’s words echo, “This land feeds me.” It feeds me too. And right now, someone’s poisoning it in the dark.
Beckett and Ryker step in, their easy mood evaporating when they see our faces. Beckett takes the phone, and Ryker leans over his shoulder.
“Too tall,” Ryker says after a beat. “Zach’s lanky. This guy’s got twenty pounds on him.”
“But the way he moves,” Tarryn argues. “That little hesitation before he touches anything. That’s Zach. Or someone coached by him.”
“Or someone setting him up,” Beckett counters. “It’s grainy. Could be anyone.”
I squint. A flicker at the man’s wrist catches the light—metal. Not farm gear. A watch. No one on the crew wears jewelry in the fields. Too dangerous. But he goes right to the engine. You have to know the cultivator to get it open so quickly.
“He knows what he’s doing,” I say. “That’s not random. It’s targeted.”
Tarryn exhales, sharp. “So which is worse—Zach doing it, or Zach helping someone else?”
“Or the Dempseys,” I add bitterly. Zach killed their prized vines too, and this may be retaliation.
We have a multigenerational feud going with the Dempsey family, who own a neighboring vineyard. We hoped that Ryker marrying a Dempsey would calm them down, except that Zach poisoned their award-winning crop of grapes last year and then ran off.
Ryker’s jaw ticks. “Wouldn’t surprise me. Evelyn never forgives, never forgets.”
“This isn’t about bruised egos anymore. If those machines go down, we lose weeks of soil prep,” Beckett says, rubbing his neck.
Weeks. Lost vines. My rage sparks, low and hot.
“I’ll talk to Ginny,” Ryker says, already moving. “Have her reach out to her sisters. See if Evelyn’s behind it.”
“Be careful,” Tarryn warns.
Ryker smirks without humor. “If the Dempseys want a fight, they’ll get one.”
“Come on,” Tarryn says finally. “Everyone’s waiting. Tonight is about Elise. We’ll pick this up after dinner.”
We step out onto the patio. As I look toward the barn, smoke from the grill curls into the cooling evening. Strings of lights cast warm pools across the lawn. Voices overlap, laughter bright against the knot in my chest.
Elise and her father have returned, and she now flushes under all the attention. Tarryn tucks her into a hug. “You didn’t have to do this,” Elise says, hands up, trying to wave it away. “Really. I’ll be back. I promise.” Her eyes shine a little too bright.
“And if you have to bring Sebastian with you, that’s okay,” Tarryn teases.
Laughter ripples. Elise groans into her hands. “Please stop.”
I don’t laugh. The name lands like gravel in my throat. Sebastian—Italian accent, probably a perfect jaw, all hands and charm. I force a smile anyway.
Throughout the meal I watch her, the way she leans in when my mom speaks, the quick crinkle of her nose when she laughs, the way her fingers keep circling the stem of her glass, as if she needs something solid to hold.
She fits here. She belongs here. The thought of her gone for even three months feels wrong, like cutting a piece out of the vineyard itself.
When the platters are picked over and the moon is climbing, I help her gather chairs because, of course, she’s helping to clean up. Away from the chatter, it’s just the scrape of metal on stone and her boots whispering beside me. Firelight softens the edges of everything.
She sets a chair down and faces me, her cheeks flushed from heat and her hair loose on her shoulders. “I’ll miss you, Kingston.”
I have no choice but to respond with truth. “I’ll miss you too.”
Her gaze flicks away, then back. “When I get back, I might…want to stay down at Black Bear a few nights a week to work on your vines.”
Hope surges, reckless. Before I can think, I step close, and my hand slides to her cheek. She inhales, breath warm against my mouth, and I kiss her.
It starts tentative and slow. The second she leans in, it changes, slow and hot, like we’ve been circling this and finally collided.
Her fingers fist in my shirt and every nerve wakes up.
A small sound in her throat undoes me. My senses fill with the smoke on her sweater, the taste of wine and something purely Elise.
My pulse pounds in my ears as the world drops away.
Then come voices. Too close. My brothers’ laughter.
We break apart, breathless. She stumbles a step, lips swollen, eyes wide with shock and want.
Boots scrape stone outside the shed, and I shove the last chairs in, forcing my hands to steady. My chest heaves as I lean close enough that only she can hear. “I can’t wait for you to get back.” I don’t know what those words mean, but in this moment, I know they are true.
Her eyes meet mine, dazed and burning. She nods once, tiny but certain.
I step out to meet my brothers, the night air hitting skin that now feels branded.
My mother’s story flickers in my thoughts.
Ink and envelopes may be too old school, but email might work.
And truth written down because speaking failed may be a solution.
Maybe that’s the way to untangle my thoughts, understand them myself.
I’ve never been a writer. But maybe it’s time I learn.