Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
WILLA
Beau:
You’d tell me if you were in trouble, right? Or if something was wrong?
Willa:
Nothing’s wrong and I’m not in trouble. But ily for caring.
Beau:
You answered that text awfully fast considering you completely ghost me when I ask for an update on your life. Wtf is going on over there?
I was exhausted. But for the first time in a long time, it wasn’t the kind of exhaustion that came with crippling pain or delusions brought on by sleep deprivation. This was the kind of tired that came after a long day’s work—one where I gave as much as I could but no more.
And it was…enough.
Between Lincoln helping more now that he’d halved his hours at the bar and Laurel pitching in on afternoons and weekends along with a few other of the high school staff, I was no longer stretched quite so thin. Found I could actually breathe.
Which was a really nice change.
With a glass of wine in one hand, I sank into one of the armchairs just as my husband burst through the front door of the silo, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
I startled, nearly spilling some of my wine. “Jesus, Linc. You scared the hell out of me.”
He bent to kiss me like it was second nature, and I ignored the flutter in my stomach that thought caused. “Sorry, wife. Too excited to tiptoe in.”
Smirking, I raised a brow. “You finally beat someone at pool?”
“Not quite.” He flashed me a grin before slapping a wad of cash in my lap. “I have a business proposal for you.”
“Please tell me you weren’t stripping on Main Street.”
“Nope,” he said, smiling like he could barely contain himself. “But I did sell a single jar of your blackberry cardamom jam for five hundred bucks.”
I split my gaze between him and the pile of money in my lap, mouth agape. “What the hell, Linc? Did you hawk my jam on the street?”
“It was at the bar. And, yes, I did steal it from the pantry, but it was for a good cause.”
“That makes it worse, not better.”
“We’ll see.” He dragged over a stool and set a laptop on it. “Consider this my formal application to become your sex slave and jam salesperson.”
“My what now?”
He opened the laptop and turned the screen to face me. A PowerPoint presentation flickered to life with the title Operation: Make Willa a Household Name. And then in smaller letters below it: and Make Her Moan Mine Daily.
“What is this?”
“This is my market penetration presentation. I sell the shit out of your delicious jam during the day and do unspeakable things to your delicious cunt at night.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “So you’ll do unspeakable things to me only at night?”
“Good point. Sex enthusiast 24/7, at your service, wife. But the rest stands.”
With that, he flicked to the first slide and gestured to it with a flourish. “Slide one—market analysis. True, this was based entirely on drunk bar patrons, but I stand firm that it’s accurate.”
I huffed out a laugh and shook my head. “You’re not selling me yet, husband.”
“I figured as much.” He forwarded to the next slide. “Which is why this next section is all about why you’re a culinary genius.”
“Linc…”
“Right, okay. You already know you’re a culinary genius. Of course.” He grinned, his smile infectious. “But this next slide is gonna hook you.”
The third slide, titled Eye Candy Sells, featured a shirtless selfie of him holding a jar of the jam he must’ve stolen, giving the camera that smolder I used to swear he practiced in the mirror every morning.
“Sex appeal works,” he said. “And I’m here to please, wife. Use me however you want.”
I didn’t miss the not-so-subtle undertones of and not just with jam sales dripping from his words.
“How many slides are there?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just sit there and look pretty. Next up—distribution channels. We spread this far and wide—like your legs later tonight.”
I braced my head in my palm and breathed out a laugh. “Oh my god, Lincoln.”
“Mabel would definitely be our scandalous influencer. All it would take was one hooky video, and the honey sticks would go viral.”
“Do you even hear yourself?”
“Don’t want to go for the overdone shirtless angle? Bam!” He flipped to the next slide of him in a suit, looking hot as fuck, honey sticks poking out of his breast pocket. “Fake CEO vibes but make it sticky.”
“When the hell did you even do this? I just made that jam this morning!”
“Almost done, hellcat. Next up is my artisanal pricing breakdown. Small batch, locally sourced, infused with hot farmer wife energy.”
“Lincoln. Be serious.”
“Oh, I am, wife.” He turned to the next slide, his grin cocky, his voice smug. “Slide seven—jam so good you’ll want to marry the maker. Too bad, I already did.”
The image was of him licking jam off his ring finger, his black wedding band prominent and his sex eyes on point like he was posing for the cover of a romance novel.
I snorted a laugh, my annoyance quickly fading to amusement. “That one was pretty good.”
He flashed me his dimples before turning to the final slide. This one featured him staring straight at me, that smug look wiped off his face. No jokes, no pretenses—just him. And above him in a speech bubble were the words, I’m serious, wife.
It would’ve been easy to write this off as a stunt, but it wasn’t. He wasn’t smirking, wasn’t having fun. He was just standing there, looking at me like this mattered. Like I mattered.
Doing something like this had been my dream for longer than I’d admit. But I hadn’t even told my brother about it. Why would I, when I couldn’t even make what I already had work?
But somehow, Lincoln had seen right through me. Through all my bluster and bravado and straight to the heart of what I really, truly wanted.
Not only that, but he believed I could. That we could.
“How the hell would we fund the increased production this would need?” I asked.
“You let me worry about that.”
“And what if your brother is our only customer?” I said, trying to sound flippant even as my chest went tight.
“He won’t be.”
Of course Lincoln would say that. He didn’t know how to be anything but confident. Confident enough to stand shirtless next to jam jars and lick it off his finger and make PowerPoint slides full of all the images.
But this wasn’t a joke. This was my life…my livelihood. My legacy.
“What if he is?” I asked again, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be.
Lincoln just shrugged, like that wasn’t a big deal. “Then we take Atlas for all he’s worth. Pretty sure he can afford a hundred-dollar-a-day jam habit.”
I huffed out a laugh, meeting Lincoln’s gaze when he squatted in front of me, his hands on my hips.
“I know you’re not used to someone betting on you, Willa,” he said, quiet now. Serious. “But I’ve believed in you since we were kids. Just took me a while to say it out loud.”
With that, he pressed a soft, sweet kiss to my lips before heading upstairs to shower. And there I sat, wineglass long forgotten as I stared at the laptop, the final slide glowing on the screen.
I’m serious, wife.