Chapter 35 KELSEY IS FINE ALL FINE
Chapter 35
K ELSEY I S F INE A LL F INE
The evening of the hayride is warm and breezy. I decide to walk from the homestead to the tree farm, a journey through the forest that no longer makes me nervous, having traversed it several times in the last two days.
I helped sort inventory, put on price stickers, steam tablecloths, and organize displays.
The brothers cleared the path of the hayride, fortified the tents, and borrowed a second cart and a pair of horses from a neighboring farm to double the number of rides they can sell tickets for.
And Randy and I hit Hallmark movie second base: the almost-kiss. We were admiring his grandfather’s hand-carved bird ornaments, looked at each other with misty eyes over his being lost too soon, like my mom, and leaned in.
Only to have Gina stomp into the room, upset that the Grinch-themed Christmas mugs she ordered weren’t going to make it in time for the tea.
The way Randy grinned at me when we were thwarted made my heart grow three sizes.
As I walk along the pine-scented path to the tree farm, I totally understand the urge to burst into song. I’ve enjoyed Carrie’s company as we worked side by side. Even Gina, who seemed abrupt when we first met, has grown on me.
When I step out of the woods, Ol’ Blue spots me right off and bounds down the row to greet me. Somewhere along the way, she must have decided I’m all right. It might have been the bits of chicken I’ve started keeping in a plastic bag to feed her.
I’m not above bribery.
Randy looks up from where he’s stringing lights along the edge of the second cart. “Hey, Kelsey! You ready for a wild night in Glass?”
I laugh. “I think so.”
He pauses to take me in. “You sure look pretty in that pink dress.”
I turn in a circle. “I didn’t have anything Christmassy.”
“It’s perfect.”
“Can I help?”
“Sure.” He moves to the back of the cart to help me up. I’m better at it now. Hay bales have been placed all along the walls of the cart. “There’s some red ribbons to tie on the sides.”
I pick one up and sit on the hay to wire it in place.
Carrie comes out of the food tent. “Good to see you, Kelsey. That cart sure did need a woman’s touch.”
“I’ve got it!”
Randy’s father, Jed, emerges from the building. We met yesterday. He’s a slightly larger, somewhat redder-faced version of his sons. “You got power in the food tent?” he asks his wife.
“Yep. The cider’s heating,” Carrie says.
Jed frowns. “I guess hot cider makes sense.”
“It’s not good cold.”
He nods, then notices me and raises a hand. “Heya there, Kelsey!”
“Hello, Jed.”
Randy grins at me. “You fit right in, my lady.”
“I kind of do, don’t I?” A happy trill goes through me. So what if it’s been only a few days? Who says this has to be hard?
And we’re still on Hallmark time. Randy hasn’t kissed me yet. We haven’t been alone. It’s been busy since that first day.
But tonight, he’s promised me a solo ride after all the others are over. I feel like a young lass from Little House on the Prairie , waiting on her beau to make her his girl.
I can’t wait.
The preparations are barely in place when the first car parks in the gravel lot. Then more people arrive. Then more. I spot the lady from the sandwich shop, and several kids from caroling. Among them is Jack’s wife, who teaches fifth grade.
“You ready for the first round?” Randy asks, pulling me up to sit on the driver’s bench with him.
“Totally.” I turn to look behind us. All the hay bales are filled with mothers, fathers, kids, and older couples. Jack’s cart is filling up, too. The ones who didn’t fit wander the tents and the rows of trees, eating peach pie and drinking cider.
“This is a good turnout for a Wednesday night.”
“We’re just getting started. It’ll be packed for the square dance Friday night. School will be out, and everyone will feel like celebrating.”
The energy of all the happy people makes the air feel electric. Randy pops the reins and the horses begin their steady clop, clop down the path.
He begins his spiel. “The first Hanover moved to Wyoming in 1875.”
I stare up into the night. Beyond the lights strung between the poles, the stars shine among the wispy clouds. The day was warm, but evening has a bite to it as the wind picks up.
Randy notices and leans in. “Feel free to sidle up if you need to get warm.”
I do.
He calls back over his shoulder, “Grandpap Hanover turned the farm over to my dad, Jed, in 1992, and passed on two years later.”
I watch him talk, pointing out the family burial plot off to the left, in a small clearing surrounded by majestic aspens twinkling with white lights. Grandmama won that battle. I understand she’s formidable. I try to imagine being widowed for thirty-plus years.
My father is already thirteen years in.
Mom deserved so much more in the thirty-nine years she got. I stare up at the moon and whisper, “I won’t let that happen to me.”
Randy reaches over to squeeze my hand. I don’t think anyone’s noticed, but then I catch two of the kids giggling and watching us. It’s adorable. All of it.
We do four hayrides until it gets too late for the families. Jack takes the last round of young couples, and his parents shut down the tents.
“You ready for our ride?” Randy asks.
My heart speeds up. It’s time to see if we’ve got anything beyond a few days of congenial labor and a few handholds.
Hallmark bases, I remind myself firmly. No rolling in the hay on the back of a cart.
That would be Zach territory. It’s true what I said to him on the porch the other night about the actresses he courts. I sometimes field their breathless phone calls the next day, asking if there’s any way they could star in something with him. They get big dreams after a night of his attention. Nobody is ever unhappy the morning after. There are zero complaints.
For a moment, I flash to his hands on me, his earnestness, his care. My body heats up. I get it now. Everything they felt. Zachery is a dream.
Wait. No. No no no. This is a hayride with my possible future husband. There’s no room for Zach on this cart!
I force myself to give Randy a smile. This is what I came here for. The real deal. No Hollywood fantasy.
Randy flicks the reins, and we take off down the path beneath the lights we passed under many times tonight. The night is even cooler, and I snuggle against him.
We pause by the family graves, and Randy nods at them in respect.
Instead of returning to the tents, we turn off toward the woods and the homestead. It’s dark here, and Randy bends down to flip on a powerful flashlight that’s aimed at the ground to help the horses find their way.
We’re in deep shadow.
“It was a lovely event,” I tell him. “I think your farm is the pride of Glass.”
“It’s a cornerstone of the town.” He squeezes my hand. “What do you think of it here?”
“It’s lovely. I am a southern girl, though. How cold does it get in winter?”
“It’s bitter. I won’t lie. But we have our ways of coping.”
“Do you?”
He chuckles. “I plan to install floor warmers in the master bedroom of the homestead. That’ll help.”
“That does sound nice.”
“Then there’s always other things.”
The cart slows, and one of the horses snorts in the dark.
Randy faces me. “Is it all right if I kiss you, Kelsey?”
“It is.”
He leans in, his mouth gently finding mine.
Third base. I’m supposed to know by now how I feel. It’s the great crescendo of the movie. There should be a soaring soundtrack.
And I like it. I do. His mouth is warm and gentle, like he’s got all the time in the world.
I scoot in closer, to see if he’ll take it deeper. And he does, his tongue sliding along my lips until I part for him.
It feels right, I keep saying to myself. It’s a good kiss. A perfectly wonderful, normal kiss between two companionable people.
We kiss a little longer, slightly jostled by the cart’s slow progress, until the lights of the homestead invade the darkness, and he pulls away.
“I’m glad you came to Glass, Kelsey,” he says.
“Me too.” I fit my head in the space between his neck and shoulder. I’m jolted to another moment, another shoulder, another neck. Zach’s arms, around me as I sobbed. He’d touched me so deeply, further in than I let anyone go, other than my mother in the emails I write but cannot send.
Zachery got me there. He reached that inner part of me I never let heal. Have never wanted to heal. I want to miss my mother all my life.
I’ll just tuck the memory of Zach in there with her. I have to. He is not for me.
And I like Randy’s kiss.
And the cart ride.
Really. I do.
It’s all perfectly fine .
It’s not particularly late when I head up the stairs of the homestead.
Zach’s door is open. He’s sitting against the headboard of his bed in casual shorts and a T-shirt.
“Knock knock?”
He looks up. “How was the hayride?”
“Good. Really nice turnout. Should have made decent money.”
He sets his phone aside. “Any progress with the husband?”
I sit on the far corner of his bed. I don’t dare get any closer, not after the direction my thoughts took earlier.
“We made out in the woods on the way home.”
I watch him carefully for any signs of jealousy or disappointment. His smile seems genuine. “Was it everything a girl could hope for?”
I kick off my shoes. “It was good. I like him. He’s good. His family’s great. Maybe these sorts of relationships really can happen.”
“Sure looks like it.”
I run my hand along the dark-green bedspread, unwilling to hold his gaze. “It’s only been a few days. I barely know him. But it’s promising.”
“Not something unwise?”
My head snaps up. That was the subject line of my email about the night with Zachery. He can’t know about that.
But he does. His face is frozen, like he didn’t mean to say it.
“Did you read my emails?” I want to jump up, shout at him, but I feel paralyzed.
He swings his legs around to move closer to me. “No. Not one. I saved a draft of a work email I wrote for you and saw some subject lines. I shut your computer down immediately.”
My chest heaves with fear. I have always kept the emails on my laptop so no one would ever see them. But I handed it right over to Zachery.
“Kelsey, do you want to talk about them?”
I can’t quite catch my breath. I try to slow down, but I’m gulping air.
Zach pulls me to him. “Breathe with me. You’re okay. I didn’t read them. I wouldn’t.”
He presses my head to his chest, exaggerating his breathing. I work to match him. Long inhale, long exhale.
His hand slides through my hair, making my scalp tingle.
He feels so good. His chest. His arms. His unbelievably good smell.
A pulse beats down low.
I want him. I want him again. I want him always.
I can’t.
A sob forms in my throat, and I’m unable to stop it before it escapes.
“Kels?”
He can’t know this emotion is about him. I rush out an explanation. “I started writing emails to my mother in high school.”
His hands stroke my back and my hair. “Do they help?”
“Always. The farm was so hard after she died. Dad was so terrible. Work, chores, get up early, make no mistakes. You couldn’t complain, and you could never cry.”
“What would he do?”
“Make you work harder. We all learned quickly to hide our feelings.”
“So you wrote the emails.”
I nod against his chest. “I don’t do it as often now.”
“But you did the night we were together.”
I nod again.
“Do you want to talk about it? Why it was unwise?” His voice rumbles in his chest. I can feel it in my cheek.
I do. I really do. I want to tell him how it made me feel. How I opened up. How I fell into him and no longer felt afraid of facing anything. That it wasn’t unwise at all, other than knowing I couldn’t have him. That I might eventually need him like I used to need my mother and lose him, too.
Mom was the one who made farm life fun. Who let us sleep in and pretended we were doing inside chores. Who took us out for our birthdays and did more than buy presents, but gave us her presence.
And now here’s Zach, showing me what intimacy can be like. More than touching and chemistry.
Connection. Real, true feelings. I had them. He brought them out.
But he’s not for me.
His hand moves down, and his thumb accidentally grazes the side of my breast.
I flinch.
I can’t do this. I’ll fall right into him.
I’ll let him take me to those places again. I won’t be able to escape a second time.
I jerk away.
“I have to go, Zach. I’m all right. I really am. I’m sorry you saw the subject line. I’m fine. We’re fine. It’s all okay.”
I slide away from him and pick up my shoes.
I don’t look back at him. I know what I’ll see. Perfect, handsome, muscled, irresistible Zachery, his shirt rumpled from where I just left it. On his bed.
So close. So tempting.
But absolutely, completely, the worst possible thing I could do.
I lied about being fine.
I’m most definitely not.
I need to write an email about this. Think it through. Sort it all out.
I need my mother.