Chapter 3
three
. . .
JEREMY
This was a terrible idea. Going back to Harrison’s house alone, without the planned buffer of teenagers or my sister’s meddling presence to spend the next couple of hours photographing him while pretending I wasn’t affected by him was basically signing up for torture.
But we needed the content. The event was next weekend, and without photos for Instagram and Winterberry Farm’s Facebook page, we’d have nothing to draw people in. Jemma was counting on me. The farm was counting on me.
And if I was being honest—which I tried very hard not to be—some pathetic part of me wanted an excuse to be near Harrison again.
Even if it hurt.
Especially because it hurt.
The hurt was good. It reminded me of all the ways he was bad for my well-being.
I grabbed my camera bag, checked that my battery was fully charged, and headed back out into the cold. Snow was falling steadily now, fat flakes that melted against my face. The wind had picked up, too, and by the time I reached the fence that separated our land from Harrison’s, my nose was numb.
The walk gave me time to think. To remind myself this was business. Professional. I was a photographer—well, a washed-up hockey player turned Christmas tree farmer who dabbled in photography—and Harrison was my model. That was all.
The fact that my heart was racing had nothing to do with seeing him again. It was just the cold. The exertion.
Sure it is, you fucking liar.
By the time I reached Harrison's porch, I was covered in snow and my fingers were numb. I knocked on the door and waited.
The door opened almost immediately, showing Harrison backlit by the warm glow of his living room, wearing dark jeans and a cream-colored sweater that made him look like he’d stepped out of a goddamn Ralph Lauren commercial.
My mouth went dry. I’d always liked my men pretty.
“Hey,” he said, moving aside. “Come in before you freeze to death.”
I stepped inside, grateful for the blast of heat, and tried not to notice how good his house smelled. Like cinnamon and pine from the tree in the corner of the room, and something else that was uniquely Harrison. Probably some fancy cologne he’d picked up in Paris last year.
The fact that I knew he’d been to France last autumn was something else I lied to myself about.
“Light’s fading fast,” I said, keeping my tone even. “We should get started.”
He cocked his head to the side, giving me that old, probing look I recognized as him trying to read me. God, I hoped he’d forgotten how. “Yeah, okay. Let me just grab my coat.”
He disappeared into a closet near the stairs, and I used the moment to collect myself. To remind myself why I was here. To absolutely not think about the way that sweater clung to his shoulders, or how his hair looked freshly brushed, or the fact that he'd clearly cleaned up for this.
For me.
For the photos, I reminded myself. Definitely not for me.
He came back wearing a canvas barn coat that was too damn light for the weather, but would photograph well, and we headed outside into the twilight and into the goat barn.
The space was warmer than outside, heated by the goats’ bodies and a few strategically placed heat lamps.
“So,” Harrison said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Where do you want me?”
My brain immediately supplied about fifteen inappropriate answers to that question. I shoved them all down and pointed to the far corner.
“By the stalls,” I said. “Bring Sugarplum out. We want that wholesome, family-friendly vibe people were posting about earlier.”
Harrison turned to me with a smile that was magnetic and triumphant, making my stomach flip. “Aha! So you do know their names.”
Heat crept up my neck. “I might have seen it on your Instagram,” I muttered, hating that he now knew that I followed him. “Are you going to get the fucking goat or not?”
His smile widened, like the knowledge was a prize he hadn’t anticipated winning. “Yeah, I’m getting the fucking goat,” he said with a smirk that bordered on gloating as he moved to Sugarplum’s stall.
She came right to him, like he was her favorite person in the whole wide world. I knew the feeling.
There was a time in my life that all Harrison had to do was crook his finger my way and I would have followed him anywhere—right into the depths of Hell if he’d asked me to.
Come to think of it, I had.
And look what I had to show for it.
I was a thirty-five-year-old, washed-up hockey player living in a small, ramshackle cabin on my family’s land, and I’d only ever been in love with one person.
During my time in the AHL, I’d gone through my share of puck bunnies, plus a few curious guys who knew I could be counted on to be discreet, but that was just sex. A way to release tension when my hand wasn’t cutting it anymore.
Then, after I hung up my skates and moved to California to work at a vineyard, I had a …
thing, I guess you could call it … with one of the guys who worked in the tasting room.
I’d cared about him, sure, but when he broke up with me after just four months, accusing me of being an emotionally closed-off asshole who never let anyone get too close, I couldn’t help but acknowledge he might have had a point.
I didn’t want to be like that, I just … was.
I’d learned it was safer not to trust people. Easier to keep them at arm’s length than to hand them the knife and wait for them to use it to stab me in the back. To leave before they could leave me. To never let anyone close enough to matter.
Because if my best friend wouldn’t choose me, wouldn’t put me first the way I’d put him first, what was the point?
So yeah, basically, hell.
Through my camera’s viewfinder, I tried to be objective about my subject.
Tried to view him not as the guy who’d shattered my heart and more like someone I once knew who’d defied his familial expectations to pursue his passions instead.
A man who belonged here with these ridiculous animals in this warm barn while snow fell outside.
“That’s good,” I told him, snapping a few shots. “Can you get down on her level now?”
Harrison dropped into a crouch, his jeans pulling tight on his muscular thighs, and placed a hand on Sugarplum’s neck. The low light from the barn’s overhead fixture caught the gold in his hair, the strong line of his jaw, the way his mouth curved when his goat nuzzled into the curve of his neck.
Click. Zoom. Click.
“Look at her, not at me,” I said, my voice coming out rougher than I intended.
His gaze shifted to Sugarplum, and I kept shooting, focusing on the gentleness in his expression as he stroked her fur, the way his shoulders relaxed as he whispered something only she could hear, the snow visible through the barn door behind him, creating a natural frame for the photo.
My finger hesitated over the shutter button, my bottom lip pulled tight between my teeth.
This was a mistake.
I was supposed to be maintaining distance, keeping my walls up, not noticing all the ways this man was different from the Harrison Prescott I’d once known.
Growing up, Harrison wore his cockiness like armor. The captain’s “C” stitched to his jersey. The All-Star patches collected like trophies. That Prescott smirk perfected under his parents’ calculating gazes—the son whose achievements they tracked like part of their stock portfolio.
I’d watched him perform the role of golden boy for years, never missing a line.
It was only with me he’d ever let that mask slip, but even then, it was just glimpses.
Nothing like this. Nothing like the gentle man murmuring to his pet goat with unguarded tenderness, utterly at home in his own skin.
This was someone I’d never been allowed to see. To know.
And I needed to stop thinking like this before it got me in some deep shit.
“Stand up,” I directed. “Grab that asshole Kringle if you can, and lift him.”
Harrison raised an eyebrow, and for a heartbeat, I saw the cocky teenager I remembered. “You want me to hold a forty-pound goat?”
“Unless you can’t handle it.” The challenge slipped out before I could stop it.
Something sparked in his expression, competitive and achingly familiar. “I can handle anything you throw my way.”
The words tugged at a deeply buried memory: Christmas break, our senior year.
We’d been skating on the frozen pond at the far end of the property, Harrison goading me to go faster, harder.
Every challenge he threw my way, I met with stubborn determination—a need to prove myself, to make him see me. To want me.
I wondered if he was remembering that day, too, or if it was just a turn of phrase to him.
He stepped into the enclosure and scooped up Kringle, who let out an indignant bleat that made me bite back a smile. Harrison held the squirming goat against his chest, biceps flexing with the effort, and I had to force my expression back to neutral.
Was I fucking with him? Absolutely.
But I also knew these shots were gold.
“Great,” I managed. “Stay just like that.”
The light hit him perfectly. He looked strong and capable—and yes, absolutely ridiculous—and I hated how much I wanted to capture every angle of him.
I took shot after shot, moving around him, directing him to turn slightly, to look down at the goat, to smile.
“I’ll smile when you let me put him down,” he said, a hint of frustration seeping into his voice.
“All right. Fine.” I’d tortured him long enough.
He set Kringle down, and the goat trotted straight back to his enclosure, only to lower his small horned head and charge at Comet with the determination of a miniature battering ram.
Harrison huffed out a laugh, the corner of his eyes crinkling as he shook his head, a lock of golden hair falling across his forehead. “You were fucking with me.”
I shrugged, my traitorous lips twitching upward. “Maybe.”
“Asshole,” he said, but there wasn’t any real bite to it.
We stood there staring at one another as the wind picked up outside, whistling through the barn.
With another shake of his head, he brushed goat hair from his sweater, and I found myself counting the seconds.
Realizing this was the longest we’d gone without sniping at each other since he’d moved back to Mistletoe Bay.
I opened my mouth to remark on it, then closed it again.
We didn’t snipe at each other. I was the one who kept pushing. Kept fighting. Harrison simply took it. Absorbed my anger and hate. Never once gave it back.
“Why?” The question tumbled out before I could stop it.
His fingers stilled on his sleeve. He looked up, brows lifting. “Why what?”
My free hand curled into a fist at my side, my fingernails cutting half-moons into my palm.
I moved toward him until I could smell the sweet and spicy notes of his cologne mixing with the earthier scents of the barn.
“Six months of me treating you like dirt. Six months of me picking fights and throwing verbal punches. And today’s the first time you’ve ever said ‘boo’ back.
You never tell me to go to hell. Never tell me to take my attitude and shove it. Why not?”
Harrison’s eyes widened slightly, like I’d caught him off guard with a question he wasn’t prepared for.
I watched as the surprise melted away, replaced by something softer, more vulnerable.
The set of his shoulders tightened, and his gaze dropped to the hay-strewn floor for a few beats before finding mine again.
When it did, the sadness there made my chest tighten in a way I wasn’t ready for.
“Because,” he said quietly, his voice barely audible above the wind rattling the barn doors. “I earned every bit of your anger. I deserve it.”
The thing was … he wasn’t wrong.
He had earned my anger.
He’d broken my fucking heart.
But I’d been holding onto that hurt like a damn security blanket. I’d made hating him my full-time hobby, and it hadn’t made me feel any better.
Maybe it was the snow. Or the lights twinkling on my house in the distance. Or maybe it was just plain old exhaustion from carrying around a grudge that had long since stopped protecting me and started poisoning me instead.
I didn’t want to forget what he’d done all those years ago, but maybe … maybe I could stop letting it define me.
I blew out a long breath, watching it fog the air between us. “Yeah,” I said finally, my voice rough. “Maybe you did. But I think I’ve made you pay interest on it long enough.”
Harrison’s head lifted, surprise flickering across his face before his mouth split into a wide, happy grin. It was unguarded and bright in a way I hadn’t seen since he’d moved back, and for a second, it hit me right in the chest.
I didn’t know what to do with that kind of joy aimed at me.
My throat went tight. I scratched at the side of my nose, cleared my throat, and tried to find somewhere else to look. “Come on,” I muttered gruffly, hitching my camera strap higher on my shoulder. “Let’s go inside and get some pictures of your damn cheese.”