Chapter Five
M arigold was astonished. And thirteen-year-old Marigold was appalled .
She could not take this man’s blood money. His guilt money. Under no circumstances. Her principled younger self was outraged. Her older self was trying to figure out if it was the therapy, if it was coming to believe that things were more complicated than she’d previously believed, or if the real issue was that she just really wanted to say yes. Because if he would invest, then she could do what she needed to do with the business. Without risking her house or any of the other things she had built. She wouldn’t have to worry so much about Lily’s scholarships covering absolutely everything. It was just...a miraculously good offer at a moment when she needed it most.
But he was Buck Carson.
You’re eating candy apples with him.
She was. And if she was totally honest, when she had asked him if it was a date, it had felt a little bit like flirting.
He was very handsome.
Which felt like a psychotic thing to think—given everything. But she’d always thought he was hot, and also, the man standing in front of her didn’t bear a resemblance to the boy she’d vented her grief on all those years ago. Not that he physically looked entirely different, but he was different inside. She knew it. She could feel it.
He had kids now. Recently adopted kids. He’d said yes to taking on all the trauma they might have. He was trying to actively parent Colton in this situation with Lily and...
It was far too easy to simply detach this older Buck Colton from the Buck she’d known back them.
Maybe because she was so different too.
The Marigold of twenty years ago had been fascinated by his wild streak. He’d been a bad boy. He’d seemed dangerous, and she’d liked that. In the years after, she’d burned herself out on bad boys. She’d learned her lesson, and well. She wasn’t the same person she’d been.
It stood to reason he wasn’t either.
She didn’t know if she was being desperately naive in saying yes to anything. In even talking to him.
In doing anything other than punching him in the stomach and running away.
But... On the other hand, didn’t he owe her something ?
Not like that. But if Jason had been here, he would’ve been the best uncle. He would’ve been another positive male role model in Lily’s life, and he would’ve offered so much in terms of support. He had been such a great older brother.
“Don’t overthink it. I want to help. I have money. I have a trust fund. And I want to invest in your business.”
“But...”
“Yes. Because I feel guilty. Okay? It’s because I feel like I owe you. I do. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“I don’t know.”
She really didn’t. Maybe because even inside it felt mixed-up.
“What happened back then was bad. It was a tragedy. There’s no way to shift it into something it’s not. It was awful. It is awful. We can’t change it. We can’t fix it. But I have dedicated my whole life to figuring out how to make something grow out of the charred earth the accident left behind. To try and make it mean something. When you showed up on my doorstep yesterday I thought...”
She stopped walking and turned to face him. “You thought what?”
“I thought it was my chance to fix it.”
He meant it. He wasn’t lying. He absolutely felt that way. It was clear he thought this was a chance for him to make amends.
Did she want him to be absolved?
She didn’t feel the way that she once had about him. She thought she had forgiven him, and she had put all her complicated feelings off to one side. She had a daughter to raise. She had a life to get on with.
When her grief surfaced, she didn’t let it have teeth.
She didn’t allow anger at somebody else to mix with the moment, because she wanted the moment to honor Jason.
It was different with Buck there, though.
It was very, very different.
“Yes,” she said, before she could think about it anymore. Before she could overthink it. Because there was no right answer here.
She could be angry at Buck forever, and maybe part of her would be. But it wouldn’t bring Jason back. It wouldn’t bring back Ryan and it wouldn’t bring back Joey.
He was trying. He had lived on a ranch for troubled youths. He had adopted three boys who needed somebody.
It still didn’t bring them back.
So whether she hated him forever or scorned his money and his help, that didn’t make a difference.
Her refusal wouldn’t fix anything either. Maybe it would make her feel morally superior, but it wouldn’t actually solve any of the problems she had.
She would have to make sure her parents didn’t find out, though.
She didn’t know how they felt about Buck. They had never talked about it.
She had gone off the rails, and then she had gotten pregnant, and everybody had rallied around her. Since then, her parents had devoted themselves to being the best grandparents on earth. But that didn’t leave a lot of space to talk about grief.
That was all right. Because in some ways it was easier. She didn’t have to carry their grief along with her own. Maybe that wasn’t fair, but it was the truth.
“I can’t commit myself to working too much before Lily leaves...”
“But we can get construction started. We can make a business plan, get permits—all that stuff takes time. It would be good if we could start as soon as possible.”
“You’re just now back in town. You have your family, other commitments. Why do you want to throw all in with me?”
“I already told you.”
“You feel that guilty.”
He let out a long, slow breath. “More complicated than that. I think this was what was meant to be. I... I don’t ignore gut feelings. Okay? I really try to sit with them. I try to listen to myself. I try to see what God or the universe or whatever the fuck is out there is telling me. And it was telling me something when you came to my house yesterday.”
“It wasn’t just telling you that our teenagers have wildly racing hormones?”
“All right. It was definitely telling us that. But I think there’s a point to be made here—this was meant to be in some way.”
“You can still believe in fate?”
She had trouble with that one. Because she had a hard time believing her brother was meant to be gone. She had a hard time with people saying things like: it was his time. Because how could it be an eighteen-year-old boy’s time? How? There was nothing just about that. There was nothing fair about it. She had a very hard time believing anything that even hinted it was meant to be.
And she would’ve thought he could understand that.
“Maybe not fate. What I do think is that sometimes we get pulled up. By the scruff of our neck. By the divine, I guess, and it’s up to us whether we listen or not. I try to listen now.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Because she related to that experience. When she had found out she was pregnant, it had been like a divine hand reaching down to redirect her. It had been like a total shift in the way she saw things. But she could have chosen a different way. She hadn’t had to keep Lily. She hadn’t had to change. But she had heeded the feeling. Maybe that was what she felt now. A tug. Telling her she had to take his offer. This opportunity. Because it mattered. Because it was going to mean something.
Or at the very least it was going to make her life easier, and surely that wasn’t a bad thing.
“Well, it’s good for me. Though I suppose we need to come up with all kinds of official terms and conditions.”
“Of course. I’ll send them over to my lawyer. I just did an adoption, so I’m more familiar with the legal system than I’d like to be at this point.”
“They aren’t brothers, are they? I mean biologically.” She felt clumsy asking the question, concerned she’d done it in a way that didn’t respect the bond they all shared. But she was more curious about his life, about how everything had come together to create that family, than she wanted to admit.
“No. They were all three at the ranch for a while, and none of them were going to a home. Reggie...” His expression suddenly went remote. She saw his throat work. “His mom got killed by her boyfriend. Along with his younger sister. It happened while he was at the camp. If he had been home, he would’ve been gone too. That poor kid.”
Sympathy tightened her stomach. “Oh. Wow. That poor boy.”
“When you meet him, though, don’t be soft on him just because he’s been through shit. He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want pity.”
She understood. It was hard when everyone knew something bad had happened to you. They were so careful. Sometimes so careful they decided not to speak to you at all. Reggie had a fresh start here. In some ways, that must feel good.
Buck knew too. And Buck had to find ways to help his son with his grief.
“That must be... That must be so hard,” she said.
“It is. The kids come with a lot of baggage, but so do I.”
She had to admit that it really did seem like he was trying to do the best he could with what he had. That he was trying to take a tragedy he had experienced and turn it into something good.
“Why don’t you walk me up to your building?”
“It’s not my building yet.”
“We can put an offer in tomorrow if you want.”
“Really?”
“I can pay with cash.”
“It’s expensive.”
“Do you not realize that my dad’s rich, right? My siblings and I all have huge trust funds.”
She did sort of know that, but Buck had been gone and she’d assumed he’d been cut out of the cash flow.
“He still gave you money?”
“Yeah. I guess he always hoped I would come home. But I hadn’t spent a penny of it. Not until I bought the ranch here.”
“You already bought the ranch, and you still have money left over?”
“Yes. And I don’t intend to live a life of excess. I intend to send these boys to college. I intend to get my ranch up and running. But I’m investing in your business. I’m not just dumping money into something.”
“I don’t know that it’s going to earn much back.”
“It will.”
They walked down the street until they arrived at the vacant building. It was large and empty, once housing a department store when this street was a thriving thoroughfare during the gold rush. In recent years, the economy had picked up because more and more people were moving to Bend and pushing tourism out into Eastern Oregon, an area which had been desolate all the years before. And the town of Lone Rock itself was growing. Bend was so trendy it had become expensive, so moving to an outlying area that wasn’t terribly faraway was seen as a great compromise by a lot of people. That meant the odds of her growing her business were good, and the real estate market was still competitive without being overinflated.
The building was still a mint green color with gold trim, and she loved how cheerful and old-fashioned it was all at once. It was easy for her to imagine different workstations where people could prepare their food. And a big commercial kitchen for her.
“This is it,” she said.
“It’s great,” he said. “Really great. I love it.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I think you could really sell people on the community aspect of coming in and preparing meals together. Instead of it being drudgery, it would be a fun night out with your friends.”
She loved that. She hadn’t even really thought of that direction. She could furnish drinks, cocktails, coffee. She really liked the idea because for so much of her adult life she had been isolated. She’d had a daughter at a much younger age than anybody else she knew, and she was consistently a baby next to the other parents at Lily’s school. And while she was relatively friendly with a few of the moms, most of the mothers of graduating seniors were ten to fifteen years older than her. The idea of community really appealed to her.
Maybe because it had been elusive for so long.
Maybe because she’d felt outside of it even before she’d had Lily.
Back when she’d been the sad girl whose brother was dead. And then the slut who would go with any guy that asked.
“Listen, if you want to, I wouldn’t mind if you added me to your meal prep rotation,” he said. “I’m dying trying to cook for these kids.”
For some reason that made her stomach get tight. Made her heart throb. “I...yes. I’d like for that to be one of your investment perks.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Maybe not, but it’ll be a while before this is making enough money to cover what you’re proposing to put into it. So let me at least make food for you.”
“Fine. But I’m paying for the groceries.”
“Okay. I want to do this. I mean I really do. I said yes because I didn’t want you to change your mind, and not really so much because I felt totally on board. But now I do. I mean I really do.”
“Good,” he said. “I’m glad. I’m glad that you’re on board for this.”
“My parents....”
“Right. Shit. You want me to talk to them?”
“Not right now.” She wished she was brave enough to talk to them. About Jason. About Buck. About Lily dating Buck’s son.
But it was like the words froze in her throat whenever she tried.
Before her brother’s death, her house had always been loud and fun, filled with Jason and his friends and their mom making food for everyone.
When he’d died, it had been so deathly quiet, and she hadn’t dared speak above a whisper. When she was home, she tried not to speak or feel anything. She went out and she partied and she made up for all that quiet then. And came home with her parents none the wiser.
Until she’d gotten pregnant, of course.
Then they’d all figured out how to speak again.
But it was about new life, not about death. About Lily and what was best for her and what Marigold could do to be a good mom, not about losing Jason.
They didn’t talk about their loss.
Marigold didn’t know how to, not with them.
“All right,” Buck said. “It’s an awfully small town, though.”
“I know. I will talk to them. I will. I just... I need to figure all this out.”
“Seems fair. And you have yourself an investor, Marigold Rivers.”
He stuck his hand out, and she really had to think about that. But then she took a breath and clasped his hand in hers. It was rough. Hotter than she had imagined it would be. And for some reason, it made her tremble. And maybe now wasn’t the best time to reflect on the fact that it had been nearly eighteen years since a man had had his hands on her body.
“You have a deal,” she said, breaking the handshake as quickly as possible.
They were already going into business together. She wasn’t going to muddy the waters by feeling attracted to Buck Carson.
There were lines. And this was one she was never going to cross.