Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KNOX
I’d started out the day wrapped up in Gage Goodman, and I’d kinda planned to stay that way. We’d spent the night making love with tenderness I’d never experienced before… but it had felt strangely bittersweet, too. Like the air had been clogged with all the things we hadn’t said.
I’d slept well, because I always did with Gage, but the moment I’d woken up, I hadn’t wanted to let him out of my sight.
I felt like there was an invisible countdown timer running faster and faster, no matter how good things seemed between us.
In my case, I knew exactly what I’d been holding back, the words I hadn’t been saying: I was falling for Gage Goodman.
Hell, I was pretty sure I’d already fallen, hard and irrevocably, all the way to the bottom of the love pool, despite all the excuses and stern warnings I’d tied around myself like life preservers to keep myself afloat.
But how could I tell him how I felt—how could I burden him with that when he was finally ready to make the leap to having the career he wanted, whether at Rubicon or somewhere else? I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair.
Which was another reason I’d planned to spend every minute with Gage while I could.
“Y’all set over there, Knox?” Jack yelled across the expanse of blue tarp we’d laid across his roof.
I groaned. I could say definitively that I had not planned to spend a single moment of my day twenty feet in the air, on a roof with the structural integrity of a rice cracker, while the wind howled in my ears, but unfortunately for me, a random October snowstorm, Jack’s crumbling yellow Victorian, and my interfering brother had conspired to make other plans.
“This side’s done,” I yelled, securing the last screw in a tarp-wrapped two-by-four to the roof. “You need help over there?”
“Nope. Got it secured under the eave like you told me,” Jack yelled back, his voice caught by a gust of wind. “Just the last crosspiece now?”
“Yup. I’ll grab it.” I hurried down the ladder on my side of the house—at least as much as I could hurry while climbing down an aluminum ladder that creaked concerningly every time I shifted my weight.
“I need to lay off the pumpkin bread,” I muttered as I finally reached the ground. I hadn’t been to a gym since leaving Massachusetts.
I grabbed one end of a board I’d cut earlier and dragged it around the house so I could hand it up to Jack. “Got it?”
“Yeah. Fuck, man, you’re a lifesaver.” I heard the whine of the drill three times in succession, and then Jack leaned over the edge of the roof and gave me a thumbs-up. “We done?”
“Far as I can tell, we should be.” I held the ladder so Jack could climb down safely. “The tarp should hold the snow out for a little while, until you can get it fixed.”
Jack sighed in relief when he reached the ground.
“Yep. I’ll get to it one of these days. Webb thinks I bit off more than I could chew with this house, but sometimes you’ve gotta take a chance, right?
And she’s got a solid foundation and good bones, even if she’s not real—” He gently patted one of the turned spindles that comprised the railing of the wide front porch, and the whole section of railing fell down with a crash.
“—sturdy,” he concluded with a shake of his head. “Godfuckingdammit.”
“Well, I wish you luck,” I told him sincerely. “Hey, if you don’t need anything else, I might—”
“Can I get you a cup of coffee to warm you up before you go?” Jack asked. “Left a pot brewing in the kitchen.”
I looked dubiously toward the rear of the house, and Jack laughed. “I promise, the back side of the house is way safer.”
I still hesitated. Gage was at the orchard, possibly still in bed, and I was eager to get back. But then again, Webb and Drew were probably also there, so we wouldn’t get a chance to talk for hours anyway.
“Sure,” I agreed.
Jack led me around the back of the house and through a wooden door to a kitchen that looked an awful lot like the kitchen at home—the same scarred oak floors and white paneled cabinets.
The only difference was that Jack’s kitchen was filled with brand-new appliances and looked like it had been remodeled recently.
“The only room in the whole house that’s done,” Jack said proudly, echoing my thoughts.
“Hawk did all the painting and sanded the floors while I installed the cabinets and finished the countertops. I still don’t have working heat in my bedroom, but at least I can cook in peace.
” He smiled. “Priorities, right?” He nodded toward a solid-looking stool at the counter.
“Grab a seat. You take your coffee black?”
“Yeah. Can’t believe you remember.”
“Eh.” He slid the coffee over to me. “Occupational hazard. Anyway, thanks again for coming out here. I apologize for dragging you away from your day. I told Webb I’d be fine to wait and see, but—”
“But Webb would worry himself to death, so you just agreed?” I gave him a lopsided smile. “That’s Webb. Always trying to look out for everyone else.”
Jack’s brow puckered, even as he smiled back. “Funny. He says that about you.”
“Me?” I shook my head. “I mean, I love them all, obviously, but I lived in Boston until a month ago.” I thought about it. “I mean… five months ago.” Damn, that had gone by fast.
Jack made a noise of disagreement. “The way I heard it, you moved to Boston all those years ago partly because you wanted to take care of them. The way Webb tells the story, you told your dad to leave Webb the orchard.”
I shook my head harder. “No. I mean, yes, it’s true about the inheritance thing. But I wasn’t meant to live here. I was always more interested in hard numbers than apple varietals. If I’d stayed, the orchard would have suffered.”
“Whereas Webb was interested in the apples and not the numbers.” Jack said this easily, casually. But I wasn’t fooled.
“His heart was here,” I said firmly.
“And where was yours?”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. “Boston. Naturally. I was focused on my career.” I lifted an eyebrow. “And I’ve done fairly well at it.”
“Oh, no doubt.” Jack sipped his coffee and leaned back against his refrigerator. “And then you sent money home so Reed and all the younger kids could go to school. And you bought your way back into the business when you came home. Am I missing anything?”
For some reason—probably because I’d been hanging around with Gage so much—I wanted to argue with Jack. Lecture him. His facts were correct, but I felt like he was drawing a conclusion that wasn’t true.
“Seems about right,” I said lightly. “You know how it goes. Family is family.” I took a big sip of coffee and set my mug down with a clack. “I should really be getting back.”
“Sure. But seriously, thanks again for coming.”
“Anytime.” I smiled ruefully as I stood. “Don’t tell Webb I said that, though, or he’ll have me out here twice a day.”
“No shit. Hawk and I were talking about that just yesterday. Webb’s my best friend, and he means well, but he’s oblivious.” Jack shook his head with a grin and trailed me toward the back door.
Privately, I thought Webb was not the only oblivious one. Jack seemed to feel sort of big-brotherly toward Hawk, but I wasn’t sure Hawk’s feelings were quite so platonic.
“In particular,” Jack went on, “Hawk thinks it’s hilarious that Webb doesn’t seem to have noticed that you and Gage are in love, and I can’t decide if it’s my duty as his friend to fill him in or just let him keep bumbling along.” He grinned.
Meanwhile, I stopped short in the doorway with one foot in midair.
“You… Wait, what?”
“Oh, no, I was kidding! I’m not gonna say shit.
It’s your business. Yours and Gage’s. I’ll let you be the ones to tell him,” Jack assured me, misunderstanding the reason for my shock.
“I just think it’s kinda weird that Webb hasn’t sensed it.
Like maybe all the shit with Amanda has, I dunno, made it harder for him to spot romantic love, even when it’s happening right in front of him?
” He wrinkled his nose. “I worry about him sometimes, you know? I hope he finds a woman who’ll love him. ”
I couldn’t think about Webb at that precise moment. I set my foot down—inside the door. “You think I’m in love with Gage.”
Jack blinked. “Uh. Yes. Are you not?”
“No, I—” I hesitated, my heart beating hard. “I am.” I couldn’t deny it. “I just didn’t know it was so… obvious.”
Did Gage know, too? Had he sensed it?
I felt like I was thirty-nine going on twelve. Did he like me? Did he know I liked him?
And why was I even surprised anymore? I hadn’t been able to control my emotional response to the man since the day he’d arrived and literally hurtled himself into my arms. He made everything seem so simple. So possible.
So terrifying.
“Ah. Well, I mean, it’s not that obvious—” Jack paused for a second.
“Actually, I’m lying. It’s super obvious to anyone who has eyes and a brain…
assuming they haven’t also been fucked up by their ex-wife leaving them, and their mom dying when they were a kid, and their former stepmom leaving their dad, and therefore conditioned to believe that being happy and in love is a precursor to doom because love isn’t permanent.
In other words, to anyone but Webb.” He shrugged.
“But, hey, congratulations anyway, man. I haven’t gotten to know him that well, but Gage seems pretty awesome.
And he clearly cares about you a lot.” One side of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile.
I couldn’t return it.
In fact, I was pretty sure I needed some of Dr. Travers’s breathing exercises, stat. Wouldn’t it be just my luck to have a panic attack over a revelation like this?
“I’ve gotta go,” I told Jack, and then I strode… half jogged… full-out ran for my truck, needing to get back to the orchard and Gage immediately.
Gage cared about me a lot.
I mean, I knew that.
I’d known that.
Of course I did.