The Rival

Chapter Twenty-Four

HEGOTTHEroad dug out as quickly as possible, and Quinn was fairly busy over the next few weeks setting up the store.

And he took every opportunity possible to stop in and see about the progress.

It was coming together beautifully.

They had fresh-cut flowers and beautiful-looking produce. They had hazelnuts and almonds and walnuts, all taken from the farm.

They had meat from the Kings and the Garretts. But they had taken chicken and lamb from some other places that were local, and pork, as well.

And there was a little display in the corner of processed foods, John’s stock, and it aesthetically did not go with the store at all, but if anybody passed through and they wanted a bag of chips, they could buy that, and the money would go back to John.

The care and thoughtfulness that the sisters had taken to include the community really was something.

He was...proud of Quinn.

He couldn’t deny that.

The grand opening was coming up quick, and more often than not, Quinn slept at his place.

That was strange, too.

He had been domestic all of his life, but not with a woman. And somehow, it felt different. Different from the life he had been shoved into at eighteen. A life he hadn’t been certain he had the ability to keep going.

Yes, it felt pretty damn different.

Being with Quinn in the house that he had built was something entirely different from being with his siblings in a house that his parents had built and decorated and put together.

The new house, which, of course, they’d been in now for a few years, was something that he and his siblings had designed together, but mainly, it had been something that he wanted, because he’d known that he would be the one that stayed.

It felt...chosen. This life. Waking up with Quinn every morning and going to bed with her every night.

Well, almost every night.

She’d worked late at the farm store last night and hadn’t come to his place. She did remind him sometimes that she had to go and get new clothes, even though he had insisted she did not need to wear clothes when she was at his house.

The house felt empty now, and not in a good way.

What a strange thing. He had been looking forward to the emptiness. It was something he’d felt like he’d earned, and yet now he didn’t enjoy it all that much. Because not only did it mean his siblings were gone, but that Quinn was, as well.

He picked up the phone and called Damien without thinking, as he sat there at the kitchen table all by himself with his cup of coffee.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself.”

“Is Jessie there?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think either of you would like to come down here for the grand opening of the Sullivan sisters’ farm store?”

“What?” Damien asked.

“The Sullivan sisters are opening up a farm store...”

“I got that, but are you there to spray-paint it with invectives? Because you aren’t really a huge fan of the Sullivan family.”

And this was the problem with not being the kind of guy who shared what was going on in his life. His best friend was confused, and rightfully so.

“Well, it’s just that she’s started up this farm store and I agreed to let them use my land to take the cars through, and I dug a road and...” He realized there was still no context, and his explanation didn’t make any sense.

“Yeah, I’m confused,” said Damien. “Who is she? And why does she matter?”

“I...I’m in kind of a relationship with Quinn Sullivan.”

“You’re in a relationship?” The scream that came through the phone was his sister Jessie, and indicated that Damien had in fact had him on speakerphone.

“Not anything permanent—don’t go getting sentimental. But I got to know her, and I just thought it would be good if people come out and support the opening of the store. Because now I support the opening of the store. You know, by extension of being in a...relationship.”

“Holy hell,” said Damien. “Honey, go outside and look and see if there’s a pig flying in the sky.”

“Knock it off,” said Levi. “I let you off easy when I found that you were sleeping with my sister, so maybe don’t be a huge jerk to me now.”

“No one’s being a jerk,” said Damien. “I’m just surprised. It’s unlike you, all of this. Any of it.”

Yeah. It was. But so what? Yeah, it was unlike him. And so what.

Why couldn’t he be unlike himself?

Maybe he wasn’t actually being unlike himself.

Maybe this was what life would have been like for him if he hadn’t been raising kids for years and years.

Nobody’d ever thought of that, he bet.

“I’m happy for you, Levi,” Jessie said softly. “We worry about you.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” he said. “I spent all those years taking care of you, and now that you’ve moved out, you suddenly worry about me? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s just it. You spent all those years taking care of us. While we got to grow and change and do whatever we wanted. While we got to grieve. And when did you, Levi?”

That really did suck all the breath from his lungs. And every word from his soul. He couldn’t speak. He felt frozen with it. “I’m fine. I don’t need to do that.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “I think you do. And I think that we’ve all been waiting to see if you were going to collapse without us here. Or entrench and become the meanest old man in the history of the world.”

“I’m thirty-six. Your fiancé is thirty-six also.”

“It’s a state of mind,” said Damien.

“Yeah, thank you. Fuck off.”

“I’m not trying to offend you,” she said. “But you were able to take care of other people and not really...”

“I did what I had to do. And I had my own feelings. Believe me.”

Except he knew she was close to truths he’d identified a long time ago. But what did it matter? He didn’t know what to do about it.

He’d had to keep running.

It was all he knew how to do.

“I know you did,” said Jessie softly. “And a lot of distractions, too. And you made it so that we never suffered. But I just wonder who did that for you. Who took care of you. Nobody, and I think we want to rectify that.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m good.”

“Do you love her?”

That question hit him square in the chest.

He couldn’t say no. In these past weeks, he’d been a strange, bittersweet happy he hadn’t even known existed.

Quinn brought a softness and a sharpness into his life that he hadn’t known he was missing.

She was funny and quick. She had a temper, but she was also cute, and she turned red when he called her carrot. And he really did care about the girl a whole hell of a lot.

But love...

Love wasn’t in the cards for him, simply because it couldn’t be.

Because love made him think of his father. Stumbling around for months, gray and lifeless, and nothing like he used to be. A man whose soul had gone out of him when his other half left the earth.

And then he could remember, clearly, the day his father had gone to the ground out in the field.

It made his own chest ache to even think about it.

He had often thought he had his father’s heart. He’d been to see several doctors, cardiologists, who’d said that what his father had was not hereditary. Not a genetic heart condition or anything like that. The widower phenomenon was real. The stress that grief put on your heart was something many people couldn’t get past. It was common, Levi had found out, for spouses to die the same year as each other.

But he had his dad’s heart. For the land, for his family.

He had his dad’s heart.

“She’s a great woman,” said Levi. “Let’s just leave it at that. I enjoy spending time with her, and I care about her and her store. So can you come?”

“Yes,” said Jessie. “We’ll be there.”

“Good.”

QUINNbrOUGHTAbig duffel bag full of clothes over to Levi’s the night before the grand opening of the farm store.

She planned on having him help her choose dresses, which was kind of a funny thing, because normally she would have done that with her sisters, but she wanted his opinion.

One of the most charming things about Levi was that he actually really liked to watch her try on clothes. She had a feeling it was because she got naked in between, but he seemed completely captivated by every new outfit she put on.

It made her smile a little bit just thinking about it. When she got there, she was shocked to come into the kitchen and find Levi there pulling a roast out of the oven.

“What are you doing?”

“Cooking. For you. You’ve been working so damned hard.”

“I have been. But this is like Sunday dinner.”

“Yeah. Well. I thought it might be good to have the leftovers. Jessie and Damien are going to stay the night down in the cabin tomorrow.”

“Really?” She felt instantly nervous at the idea of meeting his other sister.

“Yeah. They’re coming for the store opening.”

She just stopped and stared at him. Levi Granger.

Her...

She didn’t know what he was to her. Her lover. Undeniably.

But he felt like more than that. She crossed the space and put her hand on his face, stretched up on her toes and kissed him on the lips.

“You are wonderful,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Today we got all the artisan stuff into the store, and it looks amazing. Clay pots and handmade baskets, trivets made out of marble and wood. Glorious. Everything is all set up, and I am so excited. We’ve baked so many pies, and they’re gorgeous. I’m really sorry I didn’t bring you one. I should have. I’ll get one from the store tomorrow.”

He waved a hand as if he was chasing her apology out of the air. “You don’t need to be wasting your pies on me.”

“It isn’t a waste. You deserve it.”

“Do I, carrot?”

“Yes. You do.” She tapped her chin. “I need to come up with an appropriate corresponding nickname for you.”

“No, you don’t,” he said.

“I do. My darling radish.”

He grinned, albeit reluctantly. “I’m not your radish.”

“Rutabaga.”

“Nope.”

“Turnip.”

“My masculinity is shriveling.”

She frowned. “Eggplant?”

“I mean...”

She laughed. They were ridiculous sometimes, and she never really had a person she could be wholly ridiculous with. At least, not in her memory. Not recently. She just... She was really working overtime to not think what she was beginning to feel, because she was afraid that when she thought it, she was going to say it. And she was afraid that once she said it she was going to disrupt this. She did not want to disrupt this. Because it mattered far too much to her. It mattered far more than anything.

They got plates out and set them on the table, and she loved that they were using real plates, real silverware. Because it felt official. Not like a picnic or like easy cleanup for guests. It felt like maybe they shared this place. Like it was their kitchen.

The idea of that made her heart squeeze, made her stomach go tight.

She chatted more about the farm store while they ate, and she could see that something was on his mind. She could read him now. As easy as anything. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Levi,” she said. “I know it isn’t nothing.”

“It was something that my sister said,” he said.

“What?”

“I haven’t told anyone this,” he said, the words coming rough. “Because I was never going to tell the story to my siblings, and I’ve never been close enough to anyone else to tell it, not even Damien.”

“Tell me,” she said.

“I saw my dad die. I saw him go down in the middle of the field, holding his chest, but he didn’t... He didn’t cry out in pain or fear or anything like that. He just went straight down. And I ran to him, and he looked up at me, but he didn’t really see me. He was looking past me. And he just said her name. Two, three times. And that was it. I called for help, but he was beyond resuscitation by the time they got there. It was a massive heart attack. The kind that just takes you. And they figure it was because of the stress. The stress of his loss. A broken heart. That’s what I figured. That’s what I know. He didn’t want to stay.”

She didn’t have any protection left. Not any. Not from that truth. Not from the raw admission that had just come out of his mouth.

“You saw your dad die.”

He nodded. “Yeah. And, you know, I think it’s right. Because he watched her go, and somebody needed to bear witness. To him. What he lost. To his light going out.” He was quiet for a long moment. “His light went out when she died, though. That was when it changed. Forever. It changed forever.” He coughed, like it was a replacement for a sob. “I couldn’t ever talk to anyone about it. But I want you to know. I want you to understand.”

He looked up at her. “I had to go on,” he said. “For everybody, I had to go on. I wasn’t perfect. I was a little bit messed up, and I made mistakes because of it. But I tried. I had to. I couldn’t... I couldn’t let my own heart give out. I had too much left to take care of.”

“Levi, you are incredible. You have done so much to make everybody as okay as you possibly can and you...” She realized that while he had told her the story, he hadn’t actually said what his sister had said to make him think of it.

“What did your sister say to you?”

“I asked her why they all acted like they needed to take care of me. She said I never had any time to grieve. Because I was too busy taking care of them. But what she doesn’t understand is that taking care of them helped keep me together. It was a good thing. But if there’s one thing I maybe needed to get out, it was that. So, thank you. Thank you for letting me tell you.”

She reached across the table and put her hand over his. “Of course. Whatever you need. I’m here. Whatever you need to say, whatever you need... Whatever you need, Levi.”

“Thank you.”

She didn’t know why she was the one that he confided in. Why they were the ones that seemed to fit each other. Or maybe her instincts had been better at fourteen than she’d realized. That was pretty funny. The idea that maybe... Just maybe her dad had been so wrong about her, even then. It almost made her want to laugh.

Instead, she helped Levi clean the kitchen up, and then they went up to bed. And when he made love to her, fierce and hot, it took everything in her to not say what was burning in her chest.

I love you.

She really did love him.

And she had tried so hard not to.

But maybe that was the lesson.

You couldn’t live life protected.

You had to let yourself be broken open. Or you could never be everything that you could be.

Tomorrow, the farm store would open, and she and Levi weren’t talking anymore about the inevitability of the end of all this.

Maybe it wouldn’t end. But maybe it would.

Or maybe she was going to have to figure out how to fight, not just sharp and pointy, but soft.

And with everything that she had. With everything she was.

Everything he had shown her she could be.

Because she was Quinn Sullivan, every part of her. Not just controlled, motivated and perfectly held together.

She was Quinn Sullivan. Brave and afraid, determined. Confident but willing to listen. She was Quinn Sullivan. Every single part of her. And it made her feel both stronger and weaker than ever before.

And that, she figured, was just how she knew she was on the right path.