Chapter 4
I wasn’t sure I’d taken a full breath in the week and a half I’d been home.
It always felt like my lungs were being squeezed a little too tight. It always felt like I was tiptoeing around my family’s property and the town. It always felt like my smile bordered on nervous, and my laughter screamed my unease, and it showed in everything.
The tremor in my hands. The hesitation in my words. The way I struggled to hold myself tall and proud when no one bothered to hide their side-eye glances and whispers.
Again, you would’ve thought I’d run away from this town and came crawling back with a record a mile long rather than the degree I’d left for...with more on the side.
So, there I was, sitting in my SUV in the middle of downtown Huntley, gripping the steering wheel, trying to prepare myself for another morning of the same.
Jackson had finally called yesterday, extending the olive branch I’d been waiting for. But even though things had been strained and awkward when I’d gone to his apartment last night, he’d asked me to meet him for breakfast this morning.
Considering he’d only managed a dozen words before then and had struggled to hold my stare, I’d been floored and so grateful for the invitation until I’d realized what he was doing. He was trying to get us back into our routine—get me back into my routine.
Every morning since he’d gotten his license, he’d taken whatever delivery their family had that day to the general store: milk, lotions, eggs, or various cheeses. After, we’d always gotten coffee or breakfast—anything to spend a few minutes with each other before the rest of our day was devoted to school or the endless work of farming and ranching. It was the only time my parents had ever pushed for me to take for myself. Probably because it’d involved me and Jackson...not that I’d ever realized that until recently.
And maybe if he hadn’t asked about the farm or how the blueberries were looking four different times last night, I might’ve been able to make myself believe this morning was something different. But I knew better. I knew him better.
I climbed out of my SUV and took a step toward the diner, my gaze automatically sweeping to the general store on the chance Jackson was still there. When I saw him slip inside the propped open door, arms weighed down with crates, I turned and jogged across the street to help with the remainder of the delivery.
Grabbing the last crate of cheese out of the bed of his truck, I headed inside and into one of those hushed conversations that had been happening all around me this week.
“...you forgive her,” the owner’s daughter was saying, and just like that, the hands around my lungs squeezed tighter as I froze like a statue a foot inside the shop.
“I can’t do this right now, Heather,” Jackson responded as he methodically stocked the cheeses.
I needed to say something. I needed to let them know I was there. But I was still frozen in place, struggling to even take a breath, let alone make my throat work.
“So, what? She comes back from Tennessee, and you just act like the last six years never happened?” Heather pressed on.
Jackson stilled for a second before shooting her a warning look. “She was never gone for me.”
“Right,” she muttered on a surprisingly bitter-sounding laugh. “And how do you know it was the same for her?”
Jackson’s hesitation at her question broke something in me. I deserved the anger from him and my parents—I knew that—but for Jackson to doubt my devotion to him?
As soon as the thought crossed my mind, another pushed forward of a man I remembered with startling clarity. But that hadn’t been something I’d anticipated or encouraged, it’d been over in a second, and he’d been a literal stranger. One I would never see again. So, that didn’t count... right?
The guilt twisting my stomach disagreed.
I knew if it hadn’t mattered, I would’ve forgotten the man and encounter as soon as it happened. I wouldn’t still be thinking about that kiss nine months later.
“Jackson, she was lying to you?—”
“Hi,” I finally managed to say, the small word sounding more like a wheeze that snuck out of my strained lungs, but it stopped Heather and had them turning to face me as if I’d screamed it.
The same guilt I was trying to ignore swept across Jackson’s face as my name fell from him on a whisper.
“I grabbed the last crate,” I roughed out before either of them could say anything else. Forcing myself to take a few more steps, I placed it carefully on the edge of one of the display tables, then rocked back when Jackson took a step toward me. “I’ll, uh...just meet you in the diner.”
I hadn’t taken more than a couple steps outside when Jackson grabbed my arm to pull me back. One of his hands curled around my cheek, but I twisted my head away to avoid the worry and shame now burning in his eyes. “Lainey, I’m sorry.”
“I mean, it isn’t like she’s wrong,” I said, the words still sounding so forced as they scraped past the barbed knot in my throat.
“She was,” he tried to assure me, but I couldn’t help but think about that hesitation . That look on his face, like he didn’t know how to answer.
“Just tell me one thing,” I softly began before meeting his stare again. “If I’d told you about the other major and my plans from the beginning, would we still be like this ? Or would things have changed between us regardless because I went away to school when you didn’t want me to?”
“Nothing changed. We’re fine.”
“Fine.” The word left me on a defeated laugh because fine wasn’t a word I would’ve ever used to describe Jackson and me before, and it wasn’t a word I wanted to describe us now.
Fine was the word you used when everything was falling apart, but you didn’t want to unload what was wrong in your life onto anyone else.
“Yes,” he said firmly as his other hand slid from my arm to curl around my back, pulling me closer. “We have things to get through because you didn’t tell me, but we will—we are . We’re gonna be fine.”
I steeled my jaw as my head bobbed unsteadily.
I hadn’t known I could hate a word so much until then.
“It’s always been you and me,” he said softly as he brushed his thumb across my cheek. “And it’s gonna be us forever.”
I accepted the kiss he placed on my lips—soft and quick and wrong because it was only fine.
It didn’t make my heart race. It didn’t have wings taking flight in my stomach. It didn’t have me swaying into him, desperate to make it last.
But as he pulled away, I told myself it had nothing to do with what I’d heard, the strain I’d placed between us, or an infuriatingly handsome stranger. We just needed to figure out how to be a normal couple again. We needed to adjust after having over eight hundred miles between us for the majority of the last six years. That was all.
“I’ll be done in a couple of minutes,” he said as he took a step closer to the General Store. “Meet you in the diner?”
“I’ll order,” I offered, the words coming out unsure, almost like a question, even though we’d gotten the same thing for most our lives.
At Jackson’s nod, I turned to cross the street just as my phone began ringing. Slipping my phone out of my back pocket, the corner of my mouth twitched in the beginnings of a smile when I saw who was calling.
“Good morning, Aunt Ada,” I said in way of answering.
“Well, good morning, my Ray of Sunshine. What have I caught you in the middle of?”
I paused with my lips parted, my stare quickly darting from the diner across the street to the store behind me. “Uh...just mornings with Jackson. You know how it is.”
“Yes, of course,” she said after a beat. “Happy to hear y’all are back to those.” But her tone had me coming to a stop in front of the diner because it in no way sounded like she was happy .
“Uh-huh,” I murmured, clearly unconvinced. “You sure sound happy.”
She made a scoffing sound. “Well, if it makes you happy, then I’m happy; but I’m actually calling to offer you a job, and that would pull you away from your morning.”
A defeated laugh tumbled free as I rubbed at my temple because the subject of my working had been a constant issue and source of heartache since I’d come home.
Despite putting in the same exhausting hours I had my entire life, my parents were still overtly frustrated with me.
Frustrated that I wasn’t doing more than was asked of me. Frustrated that I wasn’t at the level my dad expected of me. Frustrated that I’d started the application process for Huntley Academy.
With my degrees, I could apply at any school, I knew that. But ever since finding and falling in love with early childhood education, Huntley Academy was often where my thoughts led to, and it would be a dream to work at.
The massive, renovated barn that served as the only preschool and daycare for all the surrounding towns was a highly respected academy. On top of that, the white building was so stunning, it was even used as a wedding venue.
But in the middle of applying, my mom had walked in to see why I was late for dinner, which had led to another hours-long lecture about how disappointed they were in me. Jackson was siding with my parents. Aunt Ada had told me to ignore them when she’d stopped by a few nights ago, as if it were that simple.
Taking a job right now would only exacerbate the situation.
Then again, I shouldn’t have expected much else from my unapologetically defiant great-aunt.
“You can’t retire by putting me in your place, Aunt Ada,” I told her dryly, then added, “And I appreciate you trying to get me away from the farm, but I’m—” I swallowed back the word fine and nearly laughed at how much of a lie that word was.
“I’ll retire when I’m good and ready,” she said with an arrogant scoff, even though she threatened to nearly every time we spoke, “but this isn’t about me, for once.”
A fuller laugh left me at the dramatic way she delivered the line.
“Now, I haven’t magically created a teaching position for you, but I do have a baby that is in need of your help.”
My eyebrows drew close at the shift in her tone, at the seriousness there. Glancing back at the General Store to see if Jackson was on his way yet, I took a few steps away from the door of the diner and bent my head low as I asked, “What do you mean, Aunt Ada? Whose baby?”
She made a sound that was equally flustered and worried. “My boss just became the guardian of his eight-month-old niece, and he’s plumb lost. You’d think he’d never even seen a baby before with the way he’s been staring at this poor angel. But I told him about you, and he asked if you’d consider being a nanny.”
“Nanny?” I asked, nearly choking over the word.
“Now, I know it isn’t your goal, but maybe it could be on your path,” Aunt Ada said, the offer nearly sounding like a plea. “You’d have to talk to him about pay, but I’m sure he’d pay you well, and that couldn’t hurt.”
“Nanny,” I repeated, almost as if I was testing the word for the first time.
“He’s in desperate need,” Aunt Ada acknowledged. “I know I’ve told you he’s grumpy and surly, and I won’t take any of that back, but he’s still a good man. Bending over backward to take in his niece proves that.”
My heart clenched as my head shook because I couldn’t nanny for anyone. Not when I was still walking on such shaky ground with my parents and Jackson. Not when I was needed in the fields because picking season was just about to?—
It hit me like a punch to the gut that I was doing what I’d sworn I wouldn’t.
Jackson didn’t need to push me into my old routines, my guilt was enough to have me falling right back into what everyone else expected of me. It was frustrating that I was so quick to do whatever they wanted, if only to make them happy, after having spent the past six years working toward a career that made me feel so free.
And this ? Aunt Ada was right; it wasn’t Huntley Academy—or any school at all—but it was helping a child, and that was really what I wanted to do.
“When does he need me?” I found myself asking just as a familiar hand curled around my waist.
My head snapped up to find Jackson’s brow furrowed as he searched my face. It wasn’t until Ada’s “As soon as you can get here” came through the phone that I realized I was smiling as excited anticipation pounded through my veins. Those hands that had been crushing my lungs just minutes ago were all but gone as I breathed deeply for the first time in too long.
“Tell me where, and I’ll come right now,” I assured her.
“He lives in downtown Dallas, about half an hour from you,” she said gratefully. “I’ll send you the information and let the front desk know you’re coming so you can get inside. See you soon, my Ray.”
I think I whispered some sort of parting, but I was too dazed by the change in this morning—in this week.
“What’s happening?” Jackson asked as I lowered my phone.
“I have to go,” I said with an incredulous laugh, my head shaking as I tried wrapping my head around it all. “Aunt Ada’s boss wants to hire me as a nanny, and he needs me now—like, right now.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jackson said when I started for my car, bemusement coating his expression when I focused on him. “A nanny ? Why? You have no...” A harsh breath fled from him. “Lainey, come on, this isn’t you.”
I took a step away from him. “What isn’t me?”
“This,” he said adamantly, his voice low and rough and pleading. “Preschools, teaching, being a nanny . I know you, you’re country down to your soul, and that includes farming and ranching.”
I swallowed thickly as grief bloomed in my chest. “That’s what I was born into,” I said once I was sure I could speak clearly. “That’s what I feel like I have to stay in. That’s what I’ve tried telling myself would be perfect for us for so long, Jackson, but that isn’t me . And we’re never going to get past being fine if you don’t see that.”
“Lainey . . .”
“I’m sorry I’m leaving before we can have breakfast,” I said sincerely. “But this sounds like an emergency situation for my aunt’s boss and a great opportunity for me. So, I’m gonna go.”
I’d just started rocking back when Jackson closed the distance between us with one large step and pulled me into his arms, crushing his mouth to mine in a kiss wholly unlike the one just minutes before.
This kiss was us, the way we’d always been. It was so much more than fine .
At least, it should’ve been.
But it wasn’t . . .
My knees were still steady, and my body wasn’t buzzing with excitement or adoration the way it always had around Jackson. My breath was still firmly in my lungs and my heart wasn’t desperately trying to beat out of my chest.
“I know you. I love you,” he whispered against my lips. “We’ll get through this.”
I nodded before offering him a weak, hesitant smile and promising, “I’ll come over when I get back.”
“See you.”
I hurried away when he released me, feeling more unsteady than I had all week as I took this first step on my new journey.