Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
LINCOLN
Finding out my wife wasn’t residing at the home I’d only ever known as the Jameson farmhouse had been a real kick in the balls. Thankfully, getting fawned over by two women old enough to be my grandmother helped soothe my battered ego a bit.
Expecting Willa to answer the door, I’d just about fallen on my ass when Pearl—an older Black woman with silver braids piled high and a mischievous smile—and Bernice—a white woman around the same age with zero filter and the kind of side-eye that could knock down a lesser man—had actually greeted me.
Apparently, they were Mabel’s self-appointed watchdogs, just visiting Starlight Cove for the summer.
After five seconds in their presence, I knew they were the kind of women who didn’t just gossip—they deployed it like a tactical weapon. Thank fuck I could think on my feet and bullshit with the best of them, so neither had been privy to my epic what-the-fuck moment.
If they’d caught even a whiff of confusion on my face about why they were staying in my wife’s home and she wasn’t, I knew they would’ve called in the troops and launched a three-part investigation before midnight.
So, I’d done what I did best and distracted them with sweet talk and my dimples—not to mention all the shirtless flexing while rearranging the living room.
After promising Bernice and Pearl I’d stop by next week to help them move around the patio furniture for their seniors-only speed dating event, I made my way over to the converted silo on the other side of the farm to find my wife.
With its matte black siding contrasting the old corrugated metal of the silo, the building looked different now than it had while we were kids.
But the vines trailing up the trellis and the perfectly tended flower beds had Willa’s fingerprints all over them.
The two red rocking chairs on the porch didn’t match her usual scowl, but they made sense in a way.
Stubborn. Bold. Refusing to blend in. Willa in a nutshell.
This place used to be rusted out and ugly. Purely functional grain storage for the dairy cows, back when the Jameson farm was a bigger operation than it was currently.
Willa had started restoring the silo about a year after her dad passed away—when it had become clear that running a dairy farm on top of everything else was too much.
And as with everything she did, she hadn’t half-assed the renovation.
She’d sanded, stained, and sweated her stubborn ass through the entire process, accepting little assistance from others.
Fortunately, I hadn’t let that stop me.
She’d kept saying she didn’t need help. I’d kept showing up with tools and snacks. Eventually, she’d stopped threatening to bury me in the compost pile. That was basically a proposal in Willa-speak.
After pulling up the gravel driveway, I parked between Willa’s beat-up old truck and the ATV she used to get around on the property. With the number of times we’d stolen that thing as kids and gotten up to absolutely no good, I was surprised one of us hadn’t ended up dismembered or dead.
I grabbed my bags and guitar case from the back seat and strolled up the walkway toward the door, glancing around.
The last rays of the sun cast the treetops in burnished gold, and their shadows stretched tall across the fields surrounding the silo.
The trellis-framed porch was secluded enough where I could definitely get into some trouble with my wife.
If only she didn’t hate me…
I knocked twice before the front door swung open, and there stood Willa. Arms crossed, scowl firmly in place as she glowered at me while I dared to breathe.
“Honey, I’m home,” I said, voice far too chipper for the death glare she was giving me.
She narrowed her gaze at the duffel in one hand, my guitar case in the other, and the backpack slung over my shoulder. “I told you not to come here with your entire life.”
I smiled like I hadn’t caught her sharp tone. “Actually, you invited me with the whole, hey, do you want to get married thing. I’m just following through.”
“I invited you into a legal arrangement. Not into my very limited square footage.”
“’Fraid they go hand in hand, buttercup. And you knew I came with baggage. All the hot guys do.”
Her gaze snapped to mine, her lips pursed. “That’s not funny.”
“Oh, come on. The truth is always funny.”
Stepping inside the entryway that was smaller than my wingspan, I brushed her shoulder with mine because there wasn’t space to do anything else.
Holy shit.
She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said there wasn’t room here for two of us. I wasn’t sure there was room here for a squirrel, let alone a married couple.
I gave a slow spin, taking everything in and realizing I was about to get up close and extremely personal with Willa Jameson.
The whole place was one big circle consisting of maybe two hundred square feet.
Maybe. Along the far wall sat the postage-stamp-sized kitchen with its whitewashed planks for walls, white cabinets, and warm wooden countertops curved to mirror the silo’s shape.
A small butcher block island doubled as an eat-in table with stools, and the reclaimed wood stairs hugging the side of the wall doubled as storage—because of course they did.
Willa didn’t waste space, and everything was always pulling double duty.
Hell, her pulling triple duty all by herself was her favorite way to piss me off.
There were a pair of cozy-looking armchairs and a French door that led out to the patio, and…that was it. Not even a couch.
This was her entire life, crammed into what amounted to a shed with plumbing. Jesus.
“Let me guess,” I said, cocking a brow in her direction. “There’s only one bed?”
“Rethinking your whole, ‘we’ll make it fit’ bullshit?” she said, sarcastically dropping her voice to mimic me.
“First of all, I don’t sound like that. And second, I’ve never once rethought uttering that phrase.”
Instead of dignifying that with a response, she just narrowed her eyes on me, turned on her heel, and stomped up the stairs. I followed, because I was a married man now, and I wasn’t going to ask questions of my obviously very pissed off wife.
I valued my junk too much for that.
I also wasn’t going to mention how her mad walk made her thick ass sway and jiggle in front of my face in a way that should’ve been outlawed. But I was absolutely going to be saving that imagery for future reference.
At the top of the stairs was an open loft bedroom that held a bed, a pair of small nightstands, a tiny dresser, a chair, and a door that presumably led to the bathroom. Even the domed ceiling, which made the space feel larger than it was, didn’t help much.
She threw out an arm and gestured at the room. “See? This is it. Barely enough room for one person, let alone two, when the other one is you who takes up so much damn space.”
“Been taking up this much space since junior year, pooh bear. I didn’t hear you complaining then.”
“I must not have been loud enough,” she said flatly.
I grinned and set down my bags and guitar case. “This is gonna be great. I knew this would bring us closer.”
“Closer to divorce, maybe.”
“Relax. I promise not to try to seduce you while I’m here.”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Please. If I ever fall to your charms, it’s because I’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury and don’t know who you are.”
I ran a hand along my jaw and smirked at her. “Damn, that was good. You been rehearsing that one?”
“Yeah. I practice insulting you every morning. Helps lower my blood pressure.”
She turned her back on me and started shoving my bags with the toe of her boot, like maybe she could make them and me disappear with enough force. Meanwhile, I was trying not to recall, in great detail, the sway of her hips as she’d climbed the stairs in front of me.
Fuck.
“You mind if I shower?” I asked.
“Please do. I can smell you all the way over here.”
She was a lying liar because Pearl and Bernice had both appreciatively leaned in for more than one sniff, but whatever Willa wanted to tell herself.
She obviously needed some space. I very much needed a cold shower. And this tension between us that was thick enough to slice with a butter knife needed to chill the fuck out.
I hadn’t seen a bathroom this small since that one tour bus my dad’s band had been forced to use when their usual one had broken down.
There was a toilet, sink, and—technically—a shower. But I had to tilt my head to the side to be able to fit under the peaked roof, and I’d lost count of how many times I’d cracked my elbows on the tile walls.
Forget trying to jerk off in here.
That meant I was going to have to get creative on just how the fuck I was going to release this tension that always simmered when Willa and I were together. Otherwise, I wasn’t lasting for months here. Hell, I wasn’t sure I’d last till the end of the week.
Ten minutes later, I stepped out in a pair of joggers and scrubbed a towel through my hair. Willa stood on the opposite side of the small room, glancing at something on the floor.
“You better not have wasted all the warm wa—” Her words cut off as soon as she caught sight of me, her gaze dropping to my chest, then lower to my abs, then lower still before promptly shifting to look everywhere but at me. “Did you forget clothes when you packed up the rest of your shit?”
“We live in a silo, wife. I didn’t realize there was a dress code.”
“I didn’t realize you needed to be told to wear clothes.”
After hanging my towel on the hook next to hers, I shot her a grin. “I figured it’d take me strolling around in my boxer briefs to hear that scandalized tone. Which I’m happy to do, by the way. I usually sleep naked, so the whole sweatpants thing is a bit much.”
She narrowed her eyes on me until they were tiny slits. My little angry goblin. “I’m going to take a shower, and if you’ve lost even a stitch of clothing by the time I’m done, I’m going to murder you with my bare hands.”
Then, without another word, she marched past me carrying a pile of clothes and slammed the bathroom door behind her, the lock clicking into place a second later.
Goddamn, she was so easy to rile up. I smirked to myself, thinking of all the fun we were going to have being crammed together like this. Especially if she—
My thoughts came to a skidding halt and the smirk evaporated from my face when I found what she’d been working on while I’d showered.
In the small nook next to the stairs was a pallet with a blanket and a couple of throw pillows set up on the floor. It was functional, if not exactly cozy, and comically small. Obviously meant for her, not me.
Fuck. No.
Willa and her bad back would sleep on this uncomfortable pile of misery over my dead, shirtless body.
While the shower was still running and I was trying diligently not to imagine her in there, soaping up all that gorgeous skin and scowling at the thought of me in her space while she was at it, I made myself at home on the hobbit-sized pallet.
I’d follow her rules and keep my pants on.
I’d even let her bark orders at me all day long.
But one thing I was absolutely not going to do was allow her to sleep on the fucking floor.
Not when she went through most days with more pain than the average person would have to endure in their lifetime.
Not when she was already wincing every time she bent over, which meant it was an exceptionally bad day.
Not when she needed someone to take care of her for once.
Unfortunately for my brand-new wife, she’d married the guy who’d been waiting longer than he’d care to admit for a shot at doing exactly that.