Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Finn was in the rows at five, which was not unusual, except that today he was in them the way you go somewhere when you need to think rather than the way you go somewhere to work.
The Cherokee Purples were at late-season peak.
He’d known they would be. He’d been tracking them since July, watching the acidity curve change as the heat of summer pressed on, noting the way this year’s pattern was doing something to the flavor profile he hadn’t seen before and had been documenting carefully.
They were extraordinary this year. He’d predicted they would be, and the knowing had become a baseline fact.
He walked the row in the early gray of five a.m. and touched the fruit the way he always did; not picking, just assessing the pressure and give that told him what he needed to know. Everything he needed to know about this row he could get through his hands without thinking about it.
Which was good because he was thinking about other things.
He had been awake since three-thirty. Not anxious—just awake. The particular wakefulness that came after a dream couldn't top reality. The kind of awake that your brain wanted to think about and your heart wanted to relive all night long.
He'd kissed Ivy. Not once, not twice. He'd lost count of how long they stood in her doorway kissing. But they had eventually stopped as her neighbors had tried to get past them.
He hadn't gone inside. It would've gone too far if he got her truly alone, and there was so much more they needed to discuss.
So he'd come home early and lain in bed awake all night long and confirmed what he already knew: he was halfway to falling boots over roots for Ivy Lopez.
How could he not? The woman was his pin-up girl in a chef's hat. She had an amazing palate. She talked about food the way a sportscaster who loved the game would. And she tasted like a dream from her fingertips to her cheeks to her mouth.
Yeah, he was a goner. So he'd gone to the rows.
Boyd arrived at six, which was either coincidence or he’d seen Finn’s truck at the end of the drive and known.
He came through the gate with his own coffee and found Finn in the Cherokee Purple row and didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just walked beside him in the gray morning with the ease of a man who had done this for years and had learned when to wait.
At the end of the row, Finn sat down on the empty crate he’d left there the day before. Boyd stayed standing.
"You like her," Boyd said.
Finn looked at the next row.
"I know that’s not news, but I think you’ve decided you’re allowed to, which is news. But probably bad news in that orderly head of yours."
Finn had told Boyd about Sloane three years ago, in pieces, the way he told things that required more than one conversation. Boyd had just listened, and asked a few questions, and at the end had said: that was real, and it hurt, and it isn’t a prediction for future relationships.
Except he'd been wrong.
"She might not stay," Finn said. “Ivy. She might leave after all of this is over.”
"Doesn't make her Sloane."
The morning was cool, the first real turn of the season, the shift that happened overnight and changed everything.
"With Ivy, at least she puts the camera down. Sloane always wanted the story."
"Yeah," Boyd said.
“Ivy wants to keep us private. Some parts, at least. The kissing part, at least.”
"That's a good sign," said Boyd.
"She grew up here," Finn said. "She has ties. Eva —Fran's wife. That's her cousin."
"And now she has you."
Finn pressed his lips together, as though he didn't think he was enough of a reason to stay. Instead of looking at Boyd, he looked down the row."She might still leave. I'm ready to give this woman my heart after a few kisses, and she might still leave."
Boyd didn’t say anything.
"She has a life outside this. Work that moves. Places she goes." Finn’s gaze stayed on the lines of the field. "I don’t. Here, this farm, the restaurant, that's my endgame."
Boyd nodded once.
Finn sat there for a moment longer, then looked out over the farm—the rows running clean to the tree line, the barn’s familiar red, the workshop with its newer roof that he and Boyd had put on the second summer.
Three years. Three years of work that had also been recovery, that had also, gradually, become just life.
He thought about the restaurant. The number on the prize sheet. The way the recipe had become something real between them, built in the kitchens, assembled from different directions.
He thought about the kiss. No cameras. No noise. No one else.
It had been real. Nothing fake about it. She'd made sure of that. That was the point.
"You should tell her how you feel," Boyd said.
"I’m not even sure if we’re dating."
"Start with that question. Make it a statement. Tell her you want to date her."
"And when she’s ready to leave?"
"You’re future-casting. Decide what you want right now and go after that.
You know as well as every man and woman on this ranch that tomorrow is not promised.
So grab what you want today. And if that’s her, hold her tight and don’t let go until she makes you.
And even then, there's room to negotiate. "
Boyd left him with that, boots quiet against the dirt as he headed back toward the barn, like he trusted Finn to do what he always did: sit with it until it made sense.
Finn didn’t move right away. He stayed where he was, the empty crate solid beneath him, the rows stretching out in front of him in clean, deliberate lines.
He let his gaze track them the way he always did, following the order of it, the intention.
Every plant in its place. Every inch of soil accounted for.
It hadn’t always been like this. When the farm had first been folded into the program, people came and went.
They did the work while they were here, did it well enough, but no one stayed long enough to see it through.
Crops went unharvested. Windows were missed.
Soil that should have been turned sat fallow.
Things rooted without direction, or not at all.
It hadn’t been neglect. Just… absence. No one to carry it forward.
Finn had fixed that. He had stayed. Paid attention. Made the next right decision, and then the next, and then the one after that, until the place held together because he did.
The rows in front of him were proof of it. Consistency. Presence. Follow-through. That was what made something thrive.
His gaze shifted, unfocused now, seeing something that wasn’t there.
Ivy, in the greenhouse, putting her camera down.
Ivy, at the stove, arguing about butter like it was a structural necessity.
Ivy, at her door, saying What if I want it to?"
If she stayed, he knew what to do with that. He knew how to build something that lasted. He knew how to show up, day after day, and tend it until it took root and held.
If she left—
His jaw tightened.
He knew what that would feel like, too. Like a field that had been carefully prepared and then left empty. The structure still there. The work still done. But nothing growing where something should have been. Rooted, with nowhere to go.
He let that sit for a moment, the weight of it, the truth of it. Then he shook his head once.
Boyd was right. That was tomorrow. This was today.
Finn looked back out at the rows, at the life he had built here with time and attention and the refusal to walk away from something just because it might not last forever. He could do the same with her.
He stood, brushing his hands against his jeans, the decision settling into place the way it always did once he’d worked it through. He wasn’t going to plan for her leaving. He was going to choose her staying. And if she didn’t…
He would deal with that when it came.
For now, he knew exactly what he wanted. He picked up the crate and headed back toward the barn. He had work to do.