Chapter 9
ROGAN
The sky opens up halfway to the barn.
One moment I'm crossing the field behind Ivy, watching her braid swing against her canvas jacket. The next, the clouds split and dump what feels like the entire Pacific Ocean directly onto my head.
"Shit!" Ivy breaks into a run.
I follow, boots slipping in mud that materializes in seconds. Rain hammers my shoulders. Turns the path into a creek. By the time we reach the barn door, I'm soaked through to my socks.
Ivy yanks the door open. We stumble inside. She slams it shut behind us, and the roar of rain becomes muffled, almost peaceful.
Almost.
Because the roof is leaking in three places I can see immediately, and probably six more I can't.
"Perfect." Ivy strips off her jacket. Wrings it out onto the dirt floor. "This is exactly what I needed today."
"Could be worse."
"How?"
I point at the rafters where a brown goat with one crooked horn stares down at us like we're idiots. "That one could be peeing on our heads."
"That's Houdini. Give him five minutes."
The goat bleats. Definitely sounds judgmental.
Ivy grabs a bucket from the corner. Shoves it under the worst leak with more force than strictly necessary. Water plinks against the metal, steady as a metronome.
"There's tarps in the loft." She doesn't look at me. Just points up. "We patch the roof from inside, or this whole place floods."
"Got it."
I climb the ladder. Wood creaks under my weight, old but solid. The loft smells like dried alfalfa and dust. Tarps are folded in a neat stack against the wall because of course they are. Ivy probably labeled them by size and waterproof rating.
I grab the biggest one. Start back down.
Houdini appears directly in my path.
"Move, buddy."
The goat chews thoughtfully. Doesn't budge.
"Seriously. I have work to do."
Houdini leans forward. Grabs the corner of the tarp in his teeth.
"No. Bad goat. That's not food."
Tug of war ensues. I pull. Houdini pulls harder. His hooves scrape against the boards as he digs in, stubborn as every chef I've ever worked with and twice as unreasonable.
"Rogan!" Ivy's voice floats up from below. "What's taking so long?"
"Goat negotiation!"
"What?"
"Your demon spawn won't let go of the tarp!"
A pause. Then her laugh, bright and unexpected. The sound hits me square in the chest.
"Pull harder. He respects strength."
I yank. Houdini releases abruptly, and I stagger backward into a support beam. Pain blooms across my shoulder blade.
The goat trots away, tail flicking.
"Asshole," I mutter.
Another bleat from somewhere in the shadows. This one sounds smug.
I make it down the ladder without further goat interference. Ivy's already dragged over the tall stepladder, positioned it under the largest leak. She's got her hair twisted into a knot at the base of her neck, sleeves rolled to her elbows.
Rain drums against the roof. The leak spreads slowly across the boards overhead, dark as a bruise.
"Hold this." She climbs up. I hand her one end of the tarp. Our fingers brush. Wet skin on wet skin.
She pulls back fast.
We work in silence. She secures her corner with twine she produces from her pocket because of course she has twine. I tie off my end, looping it around a rafter twice for good measure.
The roof still leaks. But slower. More manageable.
"There's another one by the seed cabinet." Ivy climbs down. Moves the ladder without asking for help. Sets it up with quick efficiency.
I grab a second tarp.
This time when our hands meet, passing rope across the gap between ladder and rafter, neither of us pulls away quite as fast.
"You're good at this," I say.
"At what?"
"Fixing things."
"It's a tarp."
"Still."
She knots the twine with sharp, practiced movements. "You don't grow up on a farm without learning how to patch what breaks."
"Must be nice. Knowing how."
"It's practical." She descends the ladder. Wipes her palms on her jeans. "Not nice. Just necessary."
The rain picks up. Thunder rolls somewhere distant, a low growl that rattles the barn walls.
Ivy checks the buckets. Adjusts one that's starting to overflow. When she straightens, there's a smear of dirt across her cheekbone and her braid is coming loose and she looks nothing like the careful, buttoned-up woman who confronted me about sourcing three weeks ago.
She looks real.
"We should wait it out." She nods toward the back corner where hay bales are stacked like a fort. "Storm sounds like it's settling in."
"How long?"
"However long it takes."
She walks to the hay. Sits. Pulls out her field notebook and a pencil, like she's planning to document weather patterns while we're trapped.
I follow. Sit close enough that our shoulders almost touch.
The silence stretches. Not comfortable. Not yet.
Houdini wanders over. Sniffs my boot. Apparently decides I'm boring and leaves.
"So." I rub the back of my neck. Water drips from my hair onto my collar. "About earlier."
"Earlier when you took developer money?"
"It was catering money."
"Same source."
"Different intent."
Ivy's pencil stills against the page. She doesn't look up. "Intent doesn't matter if the outcome hurts people."
"I needed to pay my suppliers. Keep the doors open. Feed my staff."
"And in three months, when Webb uses your success as proof that local businesses thrive under his watch? When he points to you as the model while buying out everyone else?"
The words land heavy. Sink in.
"You think that's his play?"
"I don't think. I know." Now she looks at me. Eyes sharp. "I saw the map, Rogan. The rezoning proposal. Your bistro is marked. Highlighted. You're not a success story to him. You're a strategic acquisition."
A phantom pain shoots through my stomach. "He approached you?"
"Tried to. Lunch tomorrow. Neutral territory." She taps the pencil against her knee. "He wants to spin the narrative before I can tell anyone what I found."
"What did you find?"
"That you're the linchpin. The property that connects his whole development corridor. Without the bistro, his project stays fragmented."
Thunder again. Closer.
I lean back against the hay. Stare up at the patched roof where water still drips in slow, steady beats.
"So I'm fucked."
"Only if you sell."
"And if I don't sell, I'm also fucked. Because the debt doesn't disappear. The bills don't stop coming."
"Then we find another way."
"There isn't another way, Ivy. I've run the numbers a dozen times. The catering gig bought me weeks. Maybe a month. After that?" I spread my hands. "I'm out of moves."
She closes her notebook. Sets it aside with deliberate care.
"My family's farm went under when I was sixteen."
I turn to look at her.
"Dad held out as long as he could. Took loans.
Worked himself half to death. Mom picked up shifts in town.
They did everything right. Followed all the advice.
Diversified crops. Cut costs. Sold at farmers markets.
" Her voice stays level. Clinical. Like she's reciting facts.
"It didn't matter. The margins were too thin.
The competition too big. One bad season and we lost everything. "
"Ivy—"
"I watched my father sit at the kitchen table and cry.
Watched my mother pack our lives into boxes.
Watched strangers walk through our house deciding what they'd keep and what they'd auction off.
" She picks at a piece of hay. Twists it between her fingers.
"I swore I'd never let that happen again. To me. To anyone."
The rain fills the silence she leaves behind.
I want to say something. Anything. But words feel useless against that kind of loss.
"I'm terrified," I say instead. Quiet. Raw. "Every day I wake up and think this is it. This is the day I prove everyone right. That I'm just some city cook who doesn't know what the hell he's doing. That I took this place from my aunt and destroyed it."
Ivy shifts. Her shoulder presses against mine.
"I can't fail her." My throat tightens. "She left me this place because she believed I could do it. And I don't know if I can."
"You can."
"You don't know that."
"I do." She turns. Looks at me straight on. "You're chaotic and reckless and you make decisions that give me hives. But you care. About the food. About the people. About doing it right even when right is hard."
"That's not enough."
"It's everything." Her hand finds mine in the space between us. Fingers threading through fingers. "Caring is what makes the difference. It's what separates you from Webb and every other vulture circling this town."
Her palm is rough. Callused from dirt and tools and work. It fits against mine like we've done this before. Like it's easy.
"I'm scared too," she whispers. "Of losing the land. The seeds. Everything I've built here. But I'm more scared of not fighting for it."
The lantern on the workbench flickers. Casts her face in gold and shadow.
I should pull back. Should keep the distance. Should remember that this is complicated and messy and we don't even like each other most of the time.
But her eyes are on my mouth.
And mine are on hers.
And the rain pounds the roof and the world shrinks to just this. Just us. Just the way her breath catches when I lean in.
"Rogan—"
I stop. An inch away. "Tell me to move and I will."
She doesn't tell me to move.
She closes the distance instead.
Her lips meet mine and it's nothing like I imagined. Not soft. Not tentative. It's fierce. Hungry. Like she's been holding back as much as I have and the dam just broke.
I cup her face. Angle deeper. She makes a sound low in her throat that travels straight through me, lighting every nerve on fire.
Her hands fist in my shirt. Pull me closer. We're too close already, pressed together on hay bales in a drafty barn with goats as witnesses, but it's not close enough.
I taste rain on her lips. Smell earth and wet wool and something green and alive that's just her.
She bites my lower lip. Not hard. Just enough to make me groan.
"Ivy—"