38. Dove
DOVE
R ev didn’t let me get into the truck until I’d calmed down, promising her I would drive safely.
But what she didn’t realize was I had the whole ride over to work myself up again.
I tried. I tried hard to keep her words of comfort swirling in my head.
Stella was just working you up. She’s lying.
Josh would never do something like that behind your back.
It all repeated in her familiar voice in my head for about the first five minutes.
Then the words began to twist, my own voice mingling with them until it was, Stella knows something I don’t and wanted to rub it in my face.
Josh has been talking to Stella behind my back.
Maybe Josh never wanted the farm and I’m just keeping him tied to it.
By the time I reached the road that led to our driveway, I was fuming. My heart pounded with anger, my stomach was sick with sadness, and jealousy weaved itself around me like a python, taking my ability to breathe easy away.
I tore down the driveway like a murderer was on my tail, not caring that the gravel ricocheted harshly against the cherry-red paint. My stomach twisted when I saw Eddie’s car, completely forgetting he was here in the storm of my anger.
I was prepared to drive around back to the barn to find them, so imagine my surprise when I saw them lounging on the porch, shooting the shit, when I had expected them to be working on unloading. The sight only made my blood boil further.
The tires skidded to an abrupt halt as I slammed the brakes, parking haphazardly in front of the porch steps. I jumped out, knees protesting as I landed on the hard ground. Within seconds I was thundering up the steps, each one groaning under my assault.
Gunning straight toward them, my eyes met Eddie’s first. Soft with pity and edged with concern. Then Josh’s. His beautiful eyes were filled with regret, and in that instant, I knew .
My own eyes, which I'd managed to keep dry on the way over, flooded with moisture.
“How could you?” I all but shouted, voice cracking halfway through as the tears gave way, spilling down my cheeks.
Eddie turned to Josh, murmuring something that had him nodding in reply before his best friend got up to leave.
He walked past me, his goodbye nothing more than a buzz in the background of my mind.
All I could manage was a small, tight nod of recognition, too afraid to speak—too afraid of what might come out if I did.
My eyes remained glued to Josh’s, even as Eddie’s car revved to life and slowly disappeared down the driveway.
We remained locked in a stare down as silence settled like a shroud between us.
He rose from the porch swing, his movements slow, deliberate, like I was a wild thing he might spook. “Dove?—”
The sound of his voice breaking the silence forced mine to follow.
“I had to find out from Stella.” The words came out seething, both a statement and a question, the weight of betrayal heavy in my chest.
“I’m sorry.” The apology spilled from his lips like it meant something, but all it succeeded in doing was stoke the coals of anger burning in my chest instead of dousing them.
What was he sorry for? The fact I found out about it from Stella—or the fact he decided to sell the farm behind my back like it wasn’t the place I called home?
“I was going to tell you?—”
“When?” I closed the distance between us, furious and gutted that he hadn’t yet told me this was a giant misunderstanding. “When were you going to tell me, Josh? When they were hammering the fucking For Sale sign out front?”
Josh grimaced. “Stella shouldn’t have said anything?—”
“Oh, I’m glad she did,” I snapped. “I never would have found out otherwise, would I?”
Josh straightened, his posture stiffening. “That’s not true.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Then what is? Because you haven’t given me a damn thing to believe. ” My chest heaved with emotion. “I thought we were working toward something. I thought we were...”
He took a step toward me. “We are, Dove. If you’d let me explain? —”
“ Josh,” I cut him off, sick of excuses.
“I have given you plenty of time to explain. I asked you about the farm, asked you to tell me the important stuff. You chose to keep me in the dark. So what the hell am I meant to believe? That you actually want to be here?” I laughed bitterly, the sound cracking in my throat as my heart splintered in my chest. “You left me here before, what’s to stop you from doing it again?
” He grew blurry as tears gathered in my eyes, but I wiped them away angrily, hating that I was crying at all.
Hating that I was proving to him I was weak —because that had to be the reason he refused to see me as an equal.
My stomach roiled as a sudden thought struck—fast and sharp as lightening.
“Was this your plan all along?” I hated that I even had to ask. “To sell the farm and leave?”
“What?” Josh’s face slackened with disbelief, but I wasn’t having it.
“Do you even want to be here with me? Do you?” I asked again, voice rising.
“Of course I do, Dove.” He reached for me, but I stepped back before he could touch me.
The moment his hand fell away, so did his expression.
Somehow, that made me feel worse.
“My father left a lot of loose strings,” he rushed to explain. “I was gathering everything together?—”
Frustration swelled in my chest like a cresting wave, threatening to engulf me. “ Don’t lie to me,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
“Dove.” He pinched his noise, exhaling sharply. “Can I please explain?”
“Fine.” I crossed my arms, glaring at him. When he just stood there staring at me silently, I gave an impatient wave of my hand, urging him to go on.
He raised his eyebrows skeptically. “ Without interruptions?”
I mimed zipping my mouth shut, but the rage bubbling under my skin was impossible to hide.
He fiddled with the brim of his hat, looking guilty. “I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
I scoffed. “You didn’t want me to find out at all.”
“Well, that didn’t last long,” he tried to joke, but I was far from amused.
“Nothing about this is funny to me.” Anger stormed through me, fast and destructive, looking to leave nothing in its wake.
The words flew out of me before I could even process them.
“You’re just like everyone else, thinking I can’t do it.
That I can’t handle it. Well, I’ve been handling it, Josh.
Maybe... maybe the farm isn’t doing well,” I conceded, however much it killed me to, “but it’s still here.
I’m still here. It may be easy for you to leave your home behind, but it’s not that easy for me. ”
His voice was hard as steel. “It was never easy.”
“You sure could’ve fooled me,” I shot back, my tone just as biting.
Our gazes met in a battle of wills, both of us stubborn and hardheaded, neither willing to bend.
That is until his eyes softened the way they always did when it came to me, his shoulders slumping with a sigh. “Dove, I never meant for it to happen like this.”
All I heard was I never meant for this to happen at all.
Those words, however unspoken, broke me.
“You know what? Go if you want to go.” I pointed toward his vehicle, the one I’ve always hated because it reminded me of a life he lived without me.
One he clearly has been wanting to return to.
“If that’s one of the reasons you’re so keen on selling the farm, then I don’t want you here.
” The lie scorched my tongue, turning to ash the moment it left my mouth.
“I can do this without you. I’ll find a way. ” Another lie, this one just as bitter.
Josh’s face tightened into a cold mask, closed off and detached. It was a familiar look, though I hadn’t seen it in a while. He reserved it for his father, and he’d never aimed it at me before.
“If that’s what you want,” he responded calmly to my ire, which only managed to piss me off further.
“What I want?” I laughed through a sob, the hollow cavern where my heart use to be aching . “What I want is for you to never have come home in the first place.” I threw the words at him like a deadly, sharpened dagger, aiming straight for the bullseye of his heart.
He flinched at my harsh words.
Direct hit.
Josh rocked back like the words were a physically blow, but then swayed forward, taking a step towards me. “Dove?—”
With a shake of my head, he stopped.
“Why’d you come here?” I whispered, voice shaking.
“Just to get my hopes up, making me believe you’d stay and help me here when it was the last thing you wanted to do?
All the while making me think we could…” I swallowed the rest of my sentence, the words too painful to voice. They sounded too naive now.
I should have known.
I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with a steady inhale, grounding myself.
Josh wasn’t my safe space any longer, if he ever truly was.
It’d been a fallacy, something I’d wished to be true more than it had been, apparently.
Even if it pained me to think it, that didn’t make it any less true.
What I’d overheard Stella say, what he’d been planning to do…
How could he do that to me after everything?
Maybe I didn’t know him like I thought I did after all.
Even though every fiber of my being wanted to rush over and beg him to explain, my head told me to stand strong and tall.
I’d done enough thinking with my heart and look where it had gotten me.
Squaring my shoulders, I turned my back to him, heading inside, unable to look him in the face as I ordered, “Just leave, Josh. It’s what you’re good at, anyway, right?”
He sucked in a sharp breath, like my callous words had knocked the wind out of him.