Chapter 21
I wouldn’t be in danger of crossing lines I’m not supposed to as your employer or as a man who doesn’t want to destroy a relationship, I thought to myself. I wouldn’t be the reason you ever get on the Wrecker’s radar again.
“A lot of reasons,” I answered vaguely and watched as her suspicion grew before she turned to pick another blueberry.
Once she’d squished it between her fingers and given it to Kaia, she asked, “ Jack Ryan reasons or upsetting me again reasons?”
I ground my jaw at the reminder of how I’d hurt her, as if our every interaction this week and her devastating expressions weren’t enough.
“I guess both,” I finally said.
A humming sound rose in her throat as she put her entire focus on my niece again, subtly dancing with her and echoing her nonsensical babble for a few seconds before she shifted Kaia so she was facing the massive tree-like bushes in front of us. Gently taking the bunches of berries in her free hand again, Lainey began whispering to Kaia all about the fruit and what to look for when picking them between feeding her squished berries.
And I just stood there, watching the entire thing with rapt attention, not wanting to miss any part of the joy that poured from Lainey when she spent time with Kaia. Then again, I had a feeling I could easily watch the two of them together for hours.
That pit in my stomach whenever I looked at Kaia wasn’t so pronounced. That guilt wasn’t so suffocating. And I knew it had everything to do with their obvious adoration for each other rather than my own healing from losing my brother.
But with Lainey, life with Kaia felt doable. The thought of not having her around to help me through it was what had that suffocation setting back in. But with each fierce beat of my heart whenever my gaze focused solely on Lainey, taking her in and trying to commit every part of her to memory, I knew it wasn’t the thought of not having her help—it was not having her there at all.
Messing up my immaculate life. Stunning me with that effortless smile. Forcing my numb heart into a frenzy.
“You keep saying we and us ,” I said as she bent to set Kaia’s bare feet on the soil, a bright laugh leaving her when Kaia immediately pulled her feet back up. At Lainey’s questioning hum, I continued. “You were saying it earlier too, when we first got here—about the farm. Saying we and us like you were claiming the farm.”
Lainey went still for a second before slowly glancing at me. But just as soon as her eyes met mine, they fell to Kaia again as her tiny feet finally pressed to the earth beneath her. “Is there a question there?”
“Just wondering if you’ve changed your thinking on your expected role here—if you’re reconsidering everything,” I said, trying to gently ease into it when gentle had never been something I was good at.
Lainey was silent as she helped Kaia take a handful of clumsy steps before setting her on the soft ground and sitting beside her.
“I don’t know,” she finally said with an anguished sound that had me dropping to a crouch on the other side of Kaia so I could better study Lainey’s pain and indecision. “I don’t want to, but I?—”
“Hey,” I whispered at the choked sound that left her. Reaching for her, I lifted her face as heavy tears raced down her cheeks. “Lainey, look at me.” The command came out more of a plea when she shifted her head to the side.
A lifetime of avoiding physical contact and soul-bearing conversations, yet I wanted nothing more than to stay right there. Brushing away her tears and listening to anything she offered me. “I told you, if working for me is making things too difficult for you, I’ll find someone else.”
“I don’t want this,” she said between clenched teeth as her tear-filled eyes met mine. “I don’t want this to be my life, Asher, but my dad’s dying, and now they’re blaming me for his inability to rest because I haven’t taken over.”
“No.” I tipped her head up a fraction higher when her stare fell away again, bringing her that much closer to me, and repeated, “No. That isn’t on you, and they can’t put it on you. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry about your dad—but if he needed rest, he’d take it.”
A strained sigh left her. “You don’t know my dad.”
“Then tell me what you need.”
Glassy, blue eyes darted to mine, holding for seconds that felt so telling and significant, and had my heart pounding a fierce beat even after she looked away with a shaky exhale. “I, um...” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips before she abruptly shook her head in my grasp. “Why am I even talking to you about this?”
“I asked,” I reminded her as her slender fingers curled around my wrist to pull my hand away.
“Well, don’t.”
I hadn’t thought I could feel worse after this week, but the soft delivery of her plea informed me how wrong I’d been. “Lainey?—”
A soggy laugh burst from her as she reached for Kaia and quickly said, “We don’t eat that, sweet girl.” Forcing my stare down in time to see Lainey free the handful of dirt my niece had been lifting to her mouth.
Once she’d brushed the dirt off Kaia’s hand, Lainey scooped her up and stood. Her voice gentle and excited as she asked my niece, “Why don’t we get a basket and find more blueberries?”
“We need to talk about this,” I said as I followed her through the row.
“I said?—”
“It directly affects you working for me,” I said over her. “We’re talking about it.”
Lainey didn’t respond as she continued moving through the fields with ease, but I could see the frustration, pain, and indecision playing out on her features, shouting everything she wasn’t saying.
It wasn’t until she’d grabbed a basket from the rows near where everyone else was picking that she held it out for me to take, a rough whisper leaving her as she did. “I’ve never felt more torn over anything in my life, and I hate that I don’t know what the right path is. I know,” she added before I could begin to respond and pressed her free hand to her chest before wrapping it around Kaia, “I know what I should do. I should step up and take over.”
“But?” I prompted when she slipped down a new row.
“It breaks something inside me to actually consider it.” The words left her like a dirty confession. Those chaotic eyes found me for long, tense moments before she tore them away and focused on the giant bush in front of her.
“Have you told your parents this?” I asked after she’d carefully picked a handful of berries and placed them in the basket I was holding.
A bitter sounding laugh bled from her. “Yes—multiple times. But you don’t understand,” she went on, picking faster and faster the quicker her words came. “Before the whole college thing, I’d never gone against my parents. Ever. And even then, I was so sick over the thought of how they would react that I didn’t even really change my majors, I just doubled my workload by keeping the courses they’d demanded I take. Not taking over the company and working for you are the first true things I’ve ever done to defy them, and it’s...”
“It’s hard,” I offered when I realized she wasn’t going to finish.
She gave a subtle nod as she rolled a blueberry between her fingertips. “My entire life, I’ve gone out of my way to make everyone else happy; to make sure I never upset them. I’ve bent over backward to do everything that was ever asked of me, and more. And I hate that I’ve done that—that I do that—but I don’t know how to stop.”
With a sigh, she squished the berry flat and fed it to Kaia, who was pointing at the bush and talking animatedly to it. When I tried grabbing some from the same branch she’d been picking at, she swatted my hand away and said, “Those aren’t ready.”
“I wasn’t gonna take the green ones,” I said dryly.
“Well, you don’t want the purple ones either,” she said gently, then held out a new branch, gently brushing the fruit there. “It’s all about the color—weren’t you listening to me explain all this a few minutes ago?”
My gaze slid to the side to see her looking up at me, her eyebrows twisted up in frustration that made her look adorable. But I just held her stare because I couldn’t tell her the truth. That if it’d been when she was talking to Kaia, I’d been taking in everything—every single detail.
Except her words.
But I knew exactly how light and free she’d looked while pointing things out to Kaia. I knew from how content my niece was that she was eating up this extra time with her favorite person. I knew exactly how beautiful Lainey looked out here in the late morning sun, and how much more beautiful she was when she smiled or laughed.
And I knew her gentle spirit and the joy that radiated from her was affecting my niece in ways that I would never be able to repay her for.
With a roll of her eyes, Lainey held up a fat berry between us. “You want this blue; the others will be ready soon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, the corner of my mouth ticking up as I reached for the color she indicated.
For a while, we stayed just like that. Standing side by side but not saying a word to each other. Letting Kaia’s endless babble fill the silence as we picked berries and Lainey intermittently took breaks to play with my niece.
Watching them, listening to their laughter fill the air, had all those earlier thoughts rushing back as something foreign unfurled in my chest. Steadily burning hotter and hotter until it felt like I was struggling to contain it—struggling to breathe around it.
Because I wanted more time like this. More days. More of this dangerous distraction I’d never wanted any part of before.
A life with someone. A family. But not just with anyone...I wanted it with the unpredictable woman beside me. But she could barely stand to look at me, and the baby she was holding was never supposed to be mine.
Once the basket was full, and we were headed back toward the festival-style section, I asked, “What is it about me?”
“Uh...” A bemused sound left her and ended on a hesitant laugh.
“You said you’re careful not to upset anyone; that you bend over backward to keep everyone happy and to do whatever’s been asked of you. And I see that,” I claimed. “Even if I hadn’t heard stories from Ada, it’s clear in how torn you are to keep doing what’s expected of you, no matter what it cost you. But from the day I met you, you’ve stood up to me in ways that don’t sound like the person you described.”
I felt the corner of my mouth tilt up as I took in her slowly reddening cheeks. What I wouldn’t give to know what went through her mind right then.
Her slender neck shifted with a clearly forced swallow as she glanced at me before facing straight ahead again. “Um, I...”
“Honesty.”
She forced out an irritated breath. “Probably for that reason,” she mumbled, then gave me a pointed look. “‘Honesty, Miss Pearson.’”
A shocked laugh punched from my lungs at her imitation of me, complete with a scrunched-up expression and low, gruff tone. “Is that what I sound like?”
Amusement left her on a hum, but the way she was fighting a smile right then was everything to me.
“I didn’t say that a year ago,” I added meaningfully. “And the honesty thing began because you started apologizing for telling me something about myself and my home that you should’ve never felt the need to apologize for.”
“I thought we weren’t talking about last year,” she challenged, but her voice and the light in her eyes were almost playful as if testing the boundaries of that topic.
“There’s a lot we aren’t talking about, Lainey.”
She studied me for a few seconds longer before her expression fell as she quickly looked at where Kaia was playing with a lock of Lainey’s hair. Almost as if there was a deeper part of her that kept wanting to give into the tension between us—to fall into this place of comfort and ease—before she remembered all over again that I’d destroyed her.
“I wasn’t totally convinced you weren’t a psychopath last year,” she finally said, her words taking on that same subdued pitch I’d been growing used to all week. “As for the rest...” One of her shoulders lifted in a weak shrug. “I guess it’s just an automatic response to your glowing personality.”
I wanted to know what her response would’ve been if I hadn’t hurt her. I wanted to know the truth. But I had a feeling I wouldn’t get that as long as this weight of hurt and betrayal was between us.
“You...Lainey, I respect you more than I could ever begin to explain,” I began and noted how she stumbled a little before correcting her footing.
“Asher—”
“So, I won’t go into what you overheard even though I can explain it.” I waited until her stare flashed my way before adding, “I’ll wait because of the reasons I gave you earlier and because, even though you already know I won’t lie to you, I don’t think you’ll hear me until you’re ready. But we’re talking about everything else we’ve been avoiding.”
A mixture of surprise, bemusement, and worry pulsed from her as I brought her to a stop, but when her lips parted, I hurried to say, “I stand by what I said last year: I go to that coffee shop almost every morning and saving people is what I do, but you were extremely lucky I was there at that exact moment and happened to see what they did.”
“I’ve been told,” she whispered as I continued.
“Helping people is what I do. Saving people is what I do,” I repeated as I stepped closer, my voice soft and low as I watched her eyes flare. “Now, I’m not the kind of person who dwells on jobs once they’re done. I don’t see the faces of people we’ve helped. But I saw you.”
Shock and denial stole across her features, battling with the blush I was slowly becoming addicted to that was so prominent right then.
“I looked for you every time I set foot in that shop until, suddenly, you were standing right in front of me, in my apartment.”
“You...” A baffled sounding laugh left her. “No, because—no.”
“Lainey—”
“You were so cold and—and—and rude,” she said, stammering as she clearly struggled to accept what I was telling her. “You were so irritated with me. You’re always irritated with me,” she went on.
“Not in the way you’re probably thinking,” I admitted, seeming to shock her before she gave a quick shake of her head.
“You said we weren’t talking about last year as if you wanted no reminder of it,” she said softly but no less firmly. “As if you hated that it’d happened at all.”
“Because it complicated things,” I corrected her, gesturing to where Kaia was resting her head on Lainey’s shoulder. “For one thing?—”
“ Lainey .”
My head snapped to the side at the sound of her name, filled with an anger that had me tensing in preparation for whatever was coming. But when I saw who was stalking toward us, my own anger was quick to rise. Sliding into my veins and bubbling just beneath the surface as I fought to control it.
“ That ,” I said through clenched teeth and forced myself to take a breath. “That’s one of the complications.”