Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gavin
I’m brooding like I’m a teenage boy after he’s been dumped. Which is exactly how I feel, so my reaction seems appropriate.
It’s been exactly six hours and seventeen minutes since Zoey hopped on a plane with my good buddy—sarcasm intended—and deserted me.
I should be sleeping. Instead, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of decaf and listening to my mother fret around the kitchen, cleaning up while pretending she’s not trying to cheer me up.
I reread Zoey’s text again, the words cutting me the same way every time.
She left. And she quit on me two ways, as Ella’s nanny (which was never my idea anyway) and at Morgan-Beckwith.
Even though that shouldn’t matter to me, even though I had planned to sell Morgan-Beckwith soon, it felt like a betrayal.
Why didn’t she tell me first? Or even tell me yesterday or this morning?
I feel weary from the thoughts stamping around my mind.
“She’ll come around,” Mama says, patting me on the shoulder.
“Maybe I don’t want her to.” I cross my arms over my chest. Now I’m a petulant child, younger than a moody teenager.
Mama clucks her tongue, brushing a wayward curl back from her face. “Now, don’t let your pride start taking charge. Let me ask you this: did you tell Zoey how you felt?”
I told her a lot of things I hadn’t even meant to in the barn, revealing more of my feelings than I meant to.
But I didn’t ask her for a commitment. We didn’t talk about a future, or even what we are in this present moment.
I could blame it on the fact that things were so unusual, what with my sickness and Ella.
“It’s only been a few days. I can hardly tell the woman I’m in love with her.”
“Sure you can,” Mama says. “You just open your big mouth and say it. ‘I love you, Zoey.’ See? Not hard.”
I shake my head. “Everything happened too fast.”
“Sounds to me like it’s been building for years and only just now blossomed. Nothing wrong with that. All of our timelines are different.”
“Easy for you to say. You and Daddy dated through college before getting married.”
Mom leans her elbows on the counter, a damp rag in her hand from where she’s been wiping the same spot for the last ten minutes. “That’s our story. Slow and sweet. You know that Patty and her husband got married after knowing each other only a week.”
“A week?!”
“Mm-hm. Lasted fifty years together, all the way up until he died. Loved each other and probably fought too, just like your daddy and I did. Maybe your story is unconventional in a few ways.”
I snort. “More than a few.”
Mama tosses the damp rag at my head, and I barely manage to catch it.
“Are you going to let that stop you? Ages and timing and all that? Where’s my stubborn boy who wouldn’t let go of what he loves?”
“She let go of me,” I point out.
Mama only rolls her eyes. “Don’t blame the girl for being scared. But I can tell you that more often than not, a woman running like that, running scared, needs to know you’d chase her down.”
“I’m not chasing her.”
“Suit yourself.” She turns her back, rinsing dishes that I think I just saw her dry moments before. I can see her irritation in the way her curls are bouncing with the force of her movements.
Maybe she’s right. Mama often is, even when she’s not. I learned that lesson in childhood. But in this, I do think she’s right.
Zoey was thrown into this with me, first when I got sick and texted her after ruining our date.
Then, when Ella showed up, and I pressured Zoey into coming with me to meet my parents.
I see now that Zoey asking to have a contract in place probably offered her some protection, a feeling of safety.
We went from boss and employee to something like an instant family, complete with child and meeting the parents.
It didn’t help that Thayden spoke out of turn, bringing up things I would have talked with Zoey about myself and certainly didn’t want to at that moment. I might have run too. I didn’t even notice Zoey was gone for a good hour.
When Ella called me Daddy, the moment eclipsed everything. She hasn’t done it again since, and when Ella realized Zoey left, she closed up tighter than a clam for the rest of the night.
At least until Mama said she could let the baby goat sleep with her. I still can’t believe Mama let a goat sleep in the house.
“Is Ella asleep?”
Mama nods, then bends to kiss the top of my head. “I’ll check on her before I go to sleep. And the goat.” She sighs, like she still can’t believe she’s letting the thing sleep inside either.
“It’s going to poop everywhere.”
“And my son is going to be kind enough to clean up its mess tomorrow,” she says. “We’ll leave our door open. If Ella wakes up, we’ll know.” She hesitates, standing by my chair for a moment. “We’ll keep an eye on her if you want to drive back to Zoey. It’s only a few hours there, a few back.”
Part of me is tempted. But when I think of the sleeping girl upstairs, I know that I can’t leave her too. “We’ll talk tomorrow,” I say. “I can leave early in the morning to drive back.”
“If you say so.”
I’m not sure it’s the right decision. Part of me wants to tear out of here, sending the gravel flying under my truck’s tires.
But I really don’t feel I can leave Ella and be the third person this week to walk out on her.
Tomorrow. I can wait. Even if I feel sick, and know I won’t sleep well, wishing I’d gone tonight.
The stairs creak as Mama makes the climb.
Sighing, I lean back in my chair and run my hands over my face.
Mama and Daddy are getting older, too old to keep running this place.
If my brothers refuse to take it over, I know I would rather move here than see it sold off.
Would Zoey even want that? One more thing we should have talked about.
But if she doesn’t and my brothers don’t, I’d let it go. For her.
Realizing this only makes my regret deepen.
I should have moved quicker. Months ago. A year ago.
Maybe if I had kissed her sooner. Maybe if I’d told her that she made me rethink my stance on marriage.
Maybe I should go to bed.
Tonight, I could sleep in my old bed upstairs. It’s empty and familiar, certainly more comfortable than the couch downstairs. But I know it would smell like Zoey, so I stretch out on the couch, squeeze my eyes closed, hoping I’m not making a huge mistake not chasing her down tonight.
* * *
I’m awoken by a sharp jab to my ribs.
When my eyes fly open, it takes a moment to make sense of my parents standing over me, grinning like terrifying versions of the Joker, all the manic but without the makeup and the menace.
“You have to see this,” Mama whisper shouts.
It’s the gray light of almost dawn. I remember this color streaming through the windows from so many days waking up to do chores, watching the way color bleeds out over the sky to announce the arrival of the sun as I filled troughs and feed buckets.
I yawn. “Are you going to make me feed the pigs?”
Daddy rolls his eyes with such force that I swear I almost hear it. “Get up, son.”
I stand, too tired to argue with them, even if I don’t understand why they’re behaving like lunatics. “Is this about the goat? Is there goat poop all over the house?”
“Probably, but who cares about a little goat doody?” Mama waves a hand and shoves me toward the stairs. She has the strength of a bull when she sets her mind to it.
Still trying to shake the vestiges of sleep, I climb the stairs, skipping the familiar creaking ones that I memorized when I was in high school, trying to sneak around.
Trying being the operative word. Mama and Daddy were wise to me, and one of them always seemed to be waiting by the door on the nights I tried to sneak out.
Unsure where to go, I check Ella’s room first, still shocked by the transformation of the basic room my brothers used to share into what looks like a cupcake factory exploded. The bed is empty, and sure enough, there are goat droppings everywhere.
I follow the trail, which leads to my old room. Did Ella go sleep alone where she’d slept with Zoey the night before?
I push open the door slowly, not wanting to wake her, thankful that Daddy recently must have greased the hinges so it doesn’t squeak. When the bed comes fully into view, I freeze. Because Ella isn’t alone.
There’s the little girl, spooning a baby goat. Enough to knock my heart off its axis. Lying curled up against Ella is Zoey. Her hair is down, fanning over the pillow like white gold. She came back. I cross the room, freezing when a loud groan sounds from the floor.
Stupid old house and its stupid creaky floors.
When I don’t see movement, I step closer and gently brush my fingers over Zoey’s hair before I can tell myself to stop.
It’s then that I notice her smile. I’m about to pull my hand away when her eyes open, finding mine.
She looks a lot more awake than I did when my parents got me up a few minutes before.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi?”
Her smile grows, and she begins to wiggle under the covers, like she’s about to get up. “No,” I tell her. “Wait a minute.” Spying her cell phone on the bedside table, I pick it up. “May I?”
She nods, and I unlock it, taking a few photos, then texting them to myself.
I set the phone back down, and now she does wiggle out of bed.
She’s wearing thin cotton pajama bottoms and a fitted tank top.
It’s the most casual I’ve ever seen her, and she’s never looked more beautiful with her hair cascading loosely over her exposed shoulders.
Now that we’re almost nose to nose, she covers her mouth with her hand. “Morning breath,” she says. “Can we talk downstairs in a minute? I have to brush my teeth.”
I hope her desire to have clean breath means she wants to do more than talk.
We separate, and I duck into the bathroom downstairs to brush my teeth. For talking. And whatever else.