Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
I twirl the spaghetti onto my fork and take a bite, then sigh as I close my eyes. I definitely missed Mom’s cooking.
“Good?” she asks, laughing softly from across the table.
“Mm-hm.” I nod and immediately take another bite. I guess staying here isn’t so bad. I’ll start looking for a place next week… maybe.
Dad huffs a laugh, setting his beer down. “How was work this week?”
I glance up at him with a small shrug. “It was good.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me, lifting his fork. “That’s it?”
I release a breath. “Unfortunately, yeah.” I look between my parents, and they just continue to stare at me, waiting for more.
I sigh again, dropping my gaze to my plate.
“It is good. It feels really good to be working at this level, where I can actually make a difference and support decisions that impact long-term performance. It’s just… Silas.”
Mom lowers her fork, and her expression turns serious. “What about him?”
“He wants absolutely nothing to do with me. The problem field is apparently something he’s working on, and he doesn’t want me touching it.
Which is ridiculous because I was hired to support farm-wide optimization, with that field being a pretty damn big issue.
” I lean back in my chair and rub a hand over my face. “He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you,” Mom says with a shake of her head.
I huff, lifting my beer to my lips. “Oh, yes. He does.”
“I’m sure he’s holding onto some strong feelings,” Dad says. “And so are you.” He observes me for a moment, then drops his gaze to his plate to scoop up another forkful. “Just remember where you both came from.”
My brow furrows slightly as I wait for more, but he doesn’t add anything else. He just takes a bite of his spaghetti.
Mom glances at me, then picks up her wineglass. “So, what are you getting up to tonight?”
“I have some more work I need to do,” I say.
“It’s Friday.” She shoots me a warning look. “You need to have some fun, too.”
“It’s planting season.” I smirk at her. “Fun is not a part of the farmers’ vocabulary for the next month, so it’s not in mine either.”
She presses her lips together with a serious nod. “Well… yeah, that’s true.”
Winston wanders into the room and sits next to me with his eyes glued to my fork, and I glance down at him.
“Since when do you beg?” I ask him.
His eyes flick towards Mom, and he scoots to the other side of the table as she picks up a piece of bread.
And now it’s my turn to shoot her a warning look. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh, hush,” she says, tearing a piece off and giving it to him after he theatrically gives her his paw. “Grandmothers are supposed to spoil their grandbabies.”
“Not from the table,” I say in shock as Winston happily smacks on his bread.
But Mom just waves a hand in dismissal.
Maybe house hunting will start soon after all. But Winston’s eyes quickly flick to me as if he can tell what I’m thinking, and I swear he’s saying that’s not going to happen.
I sigh and try to hide my smile as I finish the last of my spaghetti and push back from the table. “I need to head over to the farm and grab a few things from the office. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“Alright,” Mom says, tearing off another piece of bread. “We’ll be here.”
Winston doesn’t even spare me a glance as I stand, his eyes glued to Mom’s hands as he drools on the floor.
I’m going to have some bad habits to break.
I stick my plate in the dishwasher, then step into my sneakers and head out into the crisp evening air. Now that we’re into May, the bite in the breeze is finally softening, and warmth is creeping in. And it’s making me pretty damn excited for a PEI summer.
Everything is peaceful and still as I head down the dirt road towards the farm, and the sinking sun sends long shadows across the dirt and gravel in the golden light. The quiet simplicity brings a smile to my lips as I feel the warm sun on my face and listen to seagulls in the distance.
Toronto could never do this.
I glance around as I step onto the lot, and I’m not surprised to see it’s completely empty. Everyone is gearing up for some long, hard days planting, and already they’re putting in the extra hours to prepare for it. But on a Friday night, Scott likes to make sure his employees don’t stay too late.
Yet another win for PEI. There’s nothing quite like working for someone who actually cares about you.
As I approach the office, I glance out at the fields between the buildings, and a nagging annoyance stirs inside me. Because one of those fields I haven’t so much as looked at yet. But now it’s time.
Silas may have an interest in the hollow heart field, but I was hired to optimize the farm’s overall performance.
If that block is going to factor into the yield targets, and if its data feeds into system reports and risk assessments, then it has to be part of my planning.
I can’t exclude it just because he’s planted his flag there.
It’s skewing the curve, and if I continue to ignore it, it will drag the whole system with it.
I let myself into the building and head down the hall to my office.
It’s lit by the last spill of sunlight cutting a path across the desk, so I leave the light off, grab a couple binders from the bookshelf, and settle into my chair.
I flip through them to find the reports and notes I need to take home tonight to review, then snap the binders shut.
But as I turn to stick them back on the shelf, movement outside catches my eye.
I pause as my eyes land on Silas, leaning against the back of the garage facing the fields… reading.
My brows draw together as I take in the open folder spread across his lap. What is he doing?
I lean forward, squinting to try to get a closer look, but he’s too far away for me to tell what it is he’s reading. But what I do see sends a pang of guilt and sadness right through me.
It looks like he’s covering parts of the paper, like he always had to do to read. He had to do that to block out the noise so there was only one sentence in front of him, and he could just focus on one thing at a time. But even then, he found it hard.
He pauses and lifts his head as his gaze drifts across the field like he's lost in it, and I just watch him, taking this moment to see him when he doesn’t see me. His head turns towards the hollow heart field, and realization hits me. I look down at the report in my hands and sigh.
The Field Variability and Yield Risk Assessment for the hollow heart field.
Shit… this is what he’s reading…
I skimmed over it the other day, just enough to grab preliminary data for inclusion in the season’s operational model. But I planned to fully review it all tonight.
Silas lowers his head, bringing his attention back to the report in his lap. I watch as he shifts the papers around to block a new section, but it only takes a few seconds before his hand goes to his head, and he tosses the folder aside as he leans back hard against the garage wall.
Fuck.
I’ve never known Silas to continue with something like this after it overwhelms him.
In school, it was nearly impossible to get him to read or keep going with something after it defeated him.
Once he felt he failed, that was the end of it.
Even with learning accommodations and behaviour support, something inside him just shut down the moment he felt lost. And I knew it was protection.
I knew he thought he was going to fail before he even started.
And he hated failing. So at some point along the way, it became easier for him to just not even try.
But now, here he is… working on this field all on his own and even trying to fight through a technical report.
My dad’s words echo in my head, and I release a breath.
Remember where you both came from.
Suddenly, Silas’s reaction to my offer to help seems less like hostility and more like defence. He’s never cared enough about anything to try this hard, to push himself to tackle it on his own, and to claim it as his.
Accepting help probably feels like failure.
But it’s not. He’s not failing.
I just don’t know how to make him see that.
Especially if it’s coming from me.
I lean back in my chair as I quietly watch him and take in the frustration written all over him. His fingers press into his head, and his shoulders tense as he takes short, shallow breaths, and he looks like he’s one second away from a meltdown. And it hurts my heart to watch.
I wish I could help him.
I wish he wanted me to help him.
Suddenly, Winston bounds around the side of the garage, his golden coat catching the final rays of sunshine, and his tail wags furiously when he spots Silas.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I push to my feet, ready to run out and grab him.
But I pause as Silas looks up, and Winston barrels forward to plant himself between his feet and stares right at him with his goofy smile.
Then Winston lifts a paw and rests it against Silas’s chest. Silas’s hands fall from his head as he simply looks at him, and I stay perfectly still, as if any movement from me may scare either of them away.
But the sadness on Silas’s face makes my heart drop, and I swallow hard as my own emotion rises in my chest.
I fucking hate that look on him.
I always have.
Slowly, Silas lifts a hand and rests it on Winston’s back. His fingers curl into his fur and sink in deeper, and Winston just keeps his paw on his chest, looking happy and proud.
And then… Silas smiles.
My heart skips a beat, and I sink back into my chair, keeping my eyes locked on him.
He lifts his hand to scratch behind Winston’s ear, and his smile grows as Winston scoots in closer to him.
Fuck… I missed that smile.
That smile made everything better. It was the one I looked forward to every day, and it lit me up whenever I was able to bring it out.
It was the finish line at the end of everything we ever did, from running into the strait with our clothes and shoes on, getting the four-wheelers stuck in mud on the trails, staying up too late drawing comics, and getting way too competitive over video games.
It didn’t matter what we were doing… I just wanted to smile with him.
The corner of my mouth lifts as I watch them, bathed in the last of the golden light spilling across the field. The sun is almost below the horizon, but it seems to be lingering, like it’s taking an extra moment to highlight this scene, just for them.
And me.
My eyes slowly travel over him, taking in the shape of his smile to the stubble along his jaw.
His backwards hat is pushed back just a bit, and a slight breeze lightly moves the hair curling out from underneath it.
He’s wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt tonight, and my gaze locks on the way his muscles shift underneath it as he pats Winston.
I can’t help but take in the quiet strength in the way he moves, and the strong build of his shoulders…
and I think about last week in the garage when he was in just a T-shirt.
And even though he was yelling at me, I noticed those muscles. And now I can’t stop staring at them.
He looks good.
Really good.
An odd feeling stirs in my stomach at that thought, and I quickly drop my gaze to the reports in my lap.
But I can’t keep it there. It’s back on him before I can think better of it, and I try to make sense of whatever this feeling is.
He used to be my best friend. And we shared so much together.
But now he’s a massive block of ice, refusing to let me get close at all. So sneaking this moment of closeness feels like stealing something I shouldn’t. Even though it feels like more than that…
But as Winston leans his entire body into Silas, causing him to visibly release a breath, those questions fade away in my mind.
Right now, all I can do is smile and watch Silas and my dog in the soft, golden light.
It’s beautiful.