Chapter 8 Asher
Asher
“So… about tonight…” Eva stands across from me at my kitchen counter, coffee mug cradled in her hands. She’s been here for twenty minutes already, chattering about the equipment she’s cataloging and the research she’s doing on boiling sap.
I’ve been waiting for her to drop whatever bomb this is.
“Tonight?” I keep my voice neutral.
“Gran invited us to dinner.”
“Us.”
“Yes, us. You specifically. She was very clear about that part.”
I set down my mug. “I don’t do family dinners.”
Eva meets my eyes. “Asher. I gave my word. And she loaned me a golf cart to get you down the hill. You have to play along, or you make me a liar.”
The heat behind her words activates my nerve endings. Assertive Eva is something else. Regular, pre-Eva Asher would say no and make her go alone, but she’d have to apologize to Gran on my behalf, and when she looks at me with deep brown eyes… I know I cannot refuse her anything.
“Fine. But no staying for dessert.”
“Deal.” She keeps sipping coffee, grinning like I made her happy.
After she leaves, I sit in my office, staring at my monitors, unable to concentrate. This has become my new normal after ten years of hyper-focus. The launch went great. Clayton sent an entire three-word text to me, which is practically nominating me for a Webby. Great stuff, Thorne.
There’s no reason for me to skip dinner with the Bedds.
I haven’t been there much since Porter was born.
I feel guilty about that—Ethan’s been my friend since we were kids, and Lia’s my sister.
But being around the baby, around their new-parent happiness, reminds me how fragile everything is. Lia was healthy, until she wasn’t.
Plus, it’s not like Porter has Thorne grandparents doting on him.
My parents are pretty emotionally distant, to put it mildly.
I definitely understand why Lia chose me to confide in about her illness…
and why she swore me to secrecy. Lia’s living life more openly now, and I guess I owe it to Porter to do better than hide up here in my cave.
It certainly won’t kill me to spend an evening staring at Eva Storm and her beautiful face and magnetic personality. She’ll meet everyone I care about, and I don’t know why I care so much what they think of her.
More troubling: I don’t know why I care what she thinks of them.
I don’t even know what I think of her apart from feeling the most alive I can remember when she is near me. Rooms get brighter when she enters them, and I’m sure there is a scientific explanation involving light absorption.
I think about her constantly. When I’m working, when I’m not working, when I’m lying awake at three in the morning wondering what the hell is wrong with me…
And that’s the whole problem.
Eva shows up to fetch me, and I don’t know how to be. I survived an awkward shower with my booted foot hanging out of the tub. I ran a comb through my beard, which now belongs on a before poster at a barbershop.
Obviously, I notice Eva wearing a dress, since she looks sexy as hell in the yellow fabric, scattered with tiny flowers. Her hair is down, falling in waves past her shoulders. She’s wearing lip gloss that makes her mouth look impossibly soft.
I want to kiss her so badly my hands shake. I grip my crutches and focus on the pressure in my armpits.
“Ready?” she asks.
I’m not ready, but I nod anyway. The golf cart is absurdly small. Our shoulders bump as we start down the path between properties, and I’m hyperaware of every point of contact.
Eva drives carefully, navigating ruts and roots. She’s nervous—she’s chattering about whether she should have brought something, whether grumpy Ethan and his brother Alex will like her, whether this is a terrible idea.
“They’re all going to love you.” The words come out like a grunt.
“How do you know?”
“Because everyone likes you. It’s annoying.”
She laughs, and some of the tension eases.
Bedd Fellows Farm appears through the trees. The farmhouse is lit up, warm and welcoming, and I can already hear voices, laughter, and dogs barking.
I should come down here more, and I don’t, and now all the Bedds will sit there with nonjudgmental friendliness.
Eva parks near the barn, and I see Baabara’s palace. “Wow,” Eva breathes. “I thought maybe I distorted Baabara’s palace in my memory, but it really is regal.”
“It’s bigger than most studio apartments,” I confirm. Despite my nerves, I laugh. “Ethan got drunk once and passed out in there after we had a fight.”
“A fight about what?”
“Lia.”
Eva looks at me, waiting.
“Before she came back to Fork Lick, I was… protective. She broke up with Ethan, and he was my best friend, and I decided to honor her request to keep her diagnosis a secret.”
“But you were wrong.”
“Yeah. Probably.” I stare at the barn, avoiding her eyes. “He hated me for a while. Thought I was taking her side, keeping things from him on purpose. I was, but not for the reasons he thought. I was trying to protect her. Trying to control something when everything else was out of control.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
I raise a brow at her. Most people would say I was wrong, that I should have told Ethan, that secrets poison relationships. The fact that she seems to see me without judgment takes my breath away.
“It was,” I admit. “It still is.” Moving home after she was healthy brought a different kind of suffering, where I couldn’t talk about it with my best friend because she broke his heart, and I knew why. It felt like I could never be myself with Ethan again.
Eva touches my arm. “You okay?”
I realize I’ve been gripping the side of the golf cart too hard. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Gran opens the door before we can knock. “There you are! Come in, come in!” The house is chaos as I crutch through the door and into Ethel’s dining room.
Samuel and Diane are here with their kids and two dogs that immediately come to investigate me. Apparently, Ethel has given up on her “no dogs in the house” rule. Sam strokes his neat, tidy beard and frowns at my cast.
His twin Colleen has her arm around her husband, Bacon—I can never remember his real name—while their children run around. Baby Porter is sleeping peacefully in a bassinet despite the noise. Alex and Molly are in the kitchen, and Molly’s dad, Wesley, is sitting very close to Gran on the couch.
Eva notices immediately. I see her eyes widen and clock the delight on her face as she notes the obvious affection between the older couple.
My body clenches Too many people. Too much noise. But Eva squeezes my hand once before letting go, and somehow that makes it bearable. Her fingers are warm and certain, and the touch lasts maybe two seconds, but I feel it everywhere.
Gran does introductions rapid-fire. Samuel and Alex are polite but gruff—protective of their family, suspicious of the outsider. Colleen is warm, immediately asking Eva about Pierce Acres. Then Bacon jumps in. “You do social media professionally, right? For businesses?”
Eva lights up. “Yes! Mostly for my sisters’ businesses but—”
“Our restaurant needs help with email marketing. I hate it. Would you be interested?”
“Oh.” Eva was clearly not expecting this to be a networking opportunity. She glances around the room. “I mean, I’d love to talk about it.”
Molly interrupts, “And Udderly Creamy! Alex’s dairy farm. We desperately need a better social media presence. I’ve been so busy marketing the CSA and wholesale side of the business.”
Eva’s laugh floats above the mayhem, and I watch her settle into her stride, talking about branding and content strategy and messaging.
The crew slides seamlessly to the giant table, shoveling out heaps of food in between observations about the ways Fork Lick has changed and the ways staying the same has helped create magic for the Bedd family business interests.
Everyone leans in, interested and engaged, as Eva makes connections and builds relationships with my community, while I sit to the side, tracing a finger along the cold metal of my crutches. She’s sounding like someone who might stay.
And that’s a huge fucking problem because… I want her.
Damn it, I want her. I want to know what she’s thinking. Want to hear her laugh at my dry comments. Want to watch her get excited about rusted evaporator pans and old family photographs and this weird little town that’s apparently claiming her the way it claimed me.
I want her to look at me the way she’s looking at this room full of strangers—like they matter, like their stories matter, like she has all the time in the world to listen.
I need to just go out and find a date or something. Find some woman in Climax or hell, New York City, so I can work this tension out of my system.
But… I don’t want a date.
I want Eva, and she’s on her way out of Fork Lick.
I’m sweating. The room is too loud, too crowded, too much. I stand abruptly, forgetting about my injury.
Pain shoots through me, white-hot and immediate. I stagger and catch myself on the table. “Shit.”
Everyone stops talking. Eva is at my side immediately. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. We should go.” She’s already making excuses to Gran, thanking everyone for dinner. I want to protest, but the pain is real, and I feel so anxious I might scream.
Eva helps me into the golf cart—the same as she’s done all week. But her touch feels different now. Charged, electric. Or maybe that’s just me, wound too tight, wanting too much.
She drives faster than before, the cart bouncing over ruts. The silence is thick, loaded with things neither of us is saying.
My jaw is clenched so hard it aches. I’m in pain from my ankle and in pain from wanting her, and I don’t know which is worse.
“Your family has a great vibe,” Eva says, squinting in the darkening farmland as she drives. The dim golf cart lights are not ideal for the terrain.
“They’re not entirely my family,” I say, knowing it’s a lie, not sure why I say it. “But yeah. They’re great.”
Eva swallows and licks her lips. “I’m sure they were kidding about wanting my help with marketing. I mean, they just met me.”
“The Bedd family isn’t known for their jokes.” I force myself to look away from her, to stop thinking about a future where she stays and works closely with all the people close to me.
We reach my house, and Eva parks. What I want to do is reach out, pull her in, and kiss her until she understands exactly what the problem is.
This thought terrifies me, and it doesn’t help when she leans in, lips parted, clearly expecting me to do just that.
I lean in… and reach past her for my crutches propped in the back seat. I clear my throat and extract myself from the golf cart. “Goodnight, Eva.”
I go inside before she can respond. Before I can see the look on her face. Before I do something I can’t take back. I lean against the closed door, breathing hard.
Through the window, I watch her sit in the golf cart for a long moment. She’s not moving. Just sitting there with her hands on the wheel, staring at my front door.
Then she shakes her head slightly, like she’s clearing it, like she’s dismissing something, and drives away.
The golf cart disappears into the trees, and I stand in my dark house alone, telling myself I did the right thing.
Telling myself this is what I wanted.
Telling myself that the ache in my chest will fade by morning.