Chapter 15
fifteen
JULIA
The last tomato start went into the ground with a satisfying press of my palms against the cool, dark soil. I sat back on my heels, wiped my forehead with the back of my wrist, and surveyed the damage.
Six plants were neatly planted in two rows, perfectly spaced, just the way August had shown me before he’d been called away to deal with a water trough issue in one of the horse paddocks.
My hands were filthy. Dirt was packed under every nail, ground into the creases of my knuckles, smeared up both forearms like I’d been mud wrestling instead of gardening.
My sunhat was slipping sideways, my cheeks were tight from the sun, and I was pretty sure I had potting soil on my chin.
I had never felt more like my mother in my entire life.
The thought snagged in my chest, sharp and sweet at the same time.
Mom in her garden in the backyard, dirt on her Chanel flats, ignoring our Dads’ protests that they had people for this.
She’d never cared. The garden was hers the way the business was theirs—nonnegotiable and deeply personal.
It was her escape, and now it was becoming mine.
I pulled out my phone, swiped to the camera, and held it at arm’s length. The angle caught my flushed pink cheeks shaded by my sunhat as I did my best “Vanna White” impression to show off the neat rows of little plants that looked like tiny green soldiers in their fresh mounds of soil.
I grinned and snapped the photo.
The group chat with my brothers had been buzzing since I left, all four of them constantly checking in. It was sweet, really, even if it reminded me how overprotective they were.
I dropped the photo into the thread without context and waited.
Typing dots appeared immediately, then four separate explosions.
Giovanni:
What the actual fuck?
Marco:
Julia Cristenello is that DIRT on your hands?
Dimitri:
Who is this woman and what has she done with my sister?
Tommas:
Are you being held hostage, Jules? Is this a coded cry for help?
A laugh punched out of my chest. I tapped rapidly against the glass, leaving brown smudges all over the keyboard.
Julia:
I’m finding my pioneer roots. I planted tomatoes. With my own hands. Without gloves.
Giovanni:
Someone check her for a head injury
Tommas:
I’m calling the authorities. This is clearly a hostage situation. Send a video and blink twice if you need extraction.
Julia:
You’re all ridiculous.
Dimitri:
Are you going to make sauce like Mom’s?
Julia:
Yeah. I have her recipe.
The chat went quiet for a beat.
Marco:
She’d love that, Jules.
Giovanni:
She really would.
Dimitri:
You look like her, you know.
My throat did that awful tightening thing I couldn’t seem to control lately.
Dimitri:
You doing okay out there, Jules? For real.
I chewed my bottom lip. The honest answer was complicated. I tapped back to the selfie, truly looking at myself. I barely recognized the woman in the picture, and I meant that in the absolute best way possible.
My thumbs moved over the keyboard, stripping away the armor I usually wore with my oldest brother.
Julia:
Honestly? This is all so new. I’m overwhelmed. I miss you guys, and Addy still won’t answer my texts. But yeah, D. I’m good. I’m happy.
Dimitri:
Good. We’re always here if you need us.
Giovanni:
And tell those cowboys we’re coming for dinner the second those tomatoes are ready. If you’re using Mom’s sauce recipe. it’s non-negotiable.
Marco:
I’ll schedule the jet.
Tommas:
I’ll bring the wine.
I was still grinning when I shoved the phone into my back pocket and stretched out the stiffness in my lower back.
My gaze drifted toward the grove. Grey clouds were building behind the distant peaks, dragging a cool shadow across the far pastures.
It was the kind of sky that promised rain at some point this afternoon.
I probably should’ve gone inside, but I wasn’t ready yet.
I hadn’t lied to Dimitri. I was happy. But happy didn’t mean simple, and right now my version of happy came tangled up with so many other things that some days I couldn’t tell where the joy ended and the overwhelm began.
Being outdoors and having a task to focus on, something productive to do with my hands, helped. Besides, digging in the dirt was infinitely cheaper than a therapist, and it didn’t require me to explain myself.
I grabbed the garden trowel and headed for the cottonwood grove.
The bench was waiting for me, same as always. Patient and silver-grey in the shifting light, its legs still half-wrapped in the vines I hadn’t gotten to yet. But the section I’d cleared on my last visit had held. The border stones were visible now, river rock smooth and pale against the dark earth.
I dropped to my knees beside the left leg, assessing where to start. The ground was soft from yesterday’s watering, which made the weeding easier. I worked my way along the base, yanking out dead roots, untangling vine from wood, tossing the debris into a growing pile behind me.
The methodical work felt good, occupying my hands and freeing up everything else.
“So,” I said to nobody, tugging a stubborn root free with both hands, “I told a parking lot full of elementary school parents that I’m Colt Calhoun’s Omega yesterday.”
A bird startled out of the cottonwood overhead. I took that as commentary.
“I did. I grabbed his hand in front of God, that gossipy Melissa, and whoever else was watching, and I said it like we were already a done deal.” I sat back, tossing the root onto the pile.
“And the worst part? I don’t think I did it only to make a point.
My mouth just opened and the truth fell out before my brain could catch up. ”
I yanked another vine free, shaking the dirt from its roots.
“And that’s the confusing part. The man barely talks to me.
He sits at the far end of the table. He watches from doorways and then disappears before we can have any sort of meaningful conversation.
” I thrust the trowel into the soil harder than necessary, then sighed.
“I don’t think I’ve heard him utter more than forty words since I met him, and thirty of them were directed at the kids.
But that’s what’s got me tied up in knots.
He’s so damn present with the kids. I thought I could just write him off…
until I saw him switch Sunny’s shoes to the right feet without ever scolding her.
He quizzes Wyatt on his spelling words like it’s the most important thing he’ll do all day…
I thought Colt was cold and unfeeling at first, but he’s not. The man is confusing.”
My hands stilled.
“He doesn’t want me. He’s made that abundantly clear.
The man practically runs from the room when I walk in.
But when I grabbed his hand in that parking lot and called myself his Omega in front of the entire town, he didn’t flinch.
He didn’t pull away. He didn’t correct me or laugh it off or do any of the obnoxious Alpha posturing he could’ve used to put distance between us.
” I sat back, staring at the cleared patch of earth.
“He just... held on. He wrapped his fingers around mine and he held on like I’d thrown him a rope. ”
My voice dropped.
“You don’t do that if you don’t want someone. You don’t hold a woman’s hand all the way across a parking lot or carry her heavy packages if she means nothing to you. You just don’t.”
The trees rustled above me in answer as the wind picked up and the grey clouds rolled overhead, but I wasn’t ready to call it yet. Getting all of this off my chest was cathartic, and I needed it, even if I was talking to the air.
“He scares me the most,” I whispered to the grove.
“Not because he’s distant. The distant part I can handle.
I grew up surrounded by men who turned emotional avoidance into an Olympic sport.
” I brushed soil off a border stone, my fingers tracing the smooth river rock.
“He scares me because when he does let me in for five seconds, for one look, it feels more real than all his avoidance. And that’s the kind of thing that could take me out at the knees. ”
I latched onto a stubborn, gnarled, woody vine that refused to budge.
I put my back into it, tugging hard. “The thing is,” I muttered, wrestling the vine with both hands, “I can’t strategize my way through him.
Every other guy in this pack, I can read.
Or… I at least know what to expect. But Colt?
” I grunted as the vine finally gave way, falling back as a shower of dirt rained across my lap.
“Colt just happens to me. I never know what side of him I’m going to get and that means I don’t see him coming. ”
I tossed the vine into my growing pile of debris and brushed dirt off my knees.
The first raindrop hit the back of my neck, fat, cold, and impossible to ignore. I looked skyward, noticing how the sky had gone from grey to serious in the time I’d been venting.
“Yeah,” I murmured to the same air that held all my confessions. It was silent, save for the rustle of leaves and the patter of rain as the clouds released their yield. “I don’t have any answers either.”
Then the sky opened and I gasped, then laughed. I was drenched in two seconds flat.