Chapter Fifteen
If some part of me had been expecting (maybe hoping?) to see Harrison on the flight back to the East Coast, I was sorely mistaken.
Maybe sneaking out on him in the middle of the night after he’d rescued me, tended to me, and then been intimate with me had been the final straw for him.
Maybe he was done with me.
Seeing as that was what I wanted all along, there was no reason for that empty feeling in my chest as I went back to my hometown and faced the questions (and in the case of my male cousins—ridicule) of my family.
“Alright,” Kit, another of my cousins, said, dropping a cup of coffee down on the table in front of me. “Spill.”
“Spill what?” I asked, looking up at Kit in all her lavender-haired, goth-clothed glory.
“You’ve been crashing on my couch for a week.”
“So?”
“So, you could be staying at Willa’s little mansion. Or in your old childhood bedroom. Or, I don’t know, at the biker clubhouse. But you’re here. On my couch.”
“What’s the big deal?”
“You hate it here.”
“I don’t!”
To that, Kit rolled her eyes. “You do not have a country-living bone in your whole body.”
“That’s not fair. I like all the animals here.”
I did.
Kit and my other cousin Ariah had once been really successful van-life influencers.
But when they got sick of the road, they decided to settle down into another niche.
They bought a rare chunk of farmland on the outskirts of our hometown.
Then they worked diligently to carve out their new path in life as homesteaders.
I loved watching their videos, seeing the progress of this place. From a raw chunk of land to two separate off-grid tiny homes, sprawling gardens, orchards, and numerous animal pens.
She wasn’t wrong, though.
I was a city type of girl.
I liked the chaos, the adventures, the inability to predict what the next day might be like.
The routines of farm life didn’t exactly appeal to me, no matter how much I loved that Kit and Ariah got to live their dream.
“You squealed at one of the pigs yesterday.”
“He was trying to eat my pants.”
“You’d wiped your hands on them after feeding the chickens grapes.”
“I didn’t realize he had a nose like one of these,” I said, patting the head of the massive Great Pyrenees who was half sprawled over me. His white fur was, no doubt, all over me. But he was good company.
“Come on, Layna. What’s going on with you?”
“I needed to unplug,” I admitted. Kind of literally. They had awful reception on the homestead. “This feels like a reset.”
“After the whole accidental marriage thing…”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Yeah, that.”
“Relax. I’m not going to tease you about it. But if you want to talk…”
“Not really. Gracie and I have gone on and on about it. Which only felt like it was making it worse.”
“Okay. Well, I can also not talk about it. Are you going to the get-together tonight?”
I hadn’t been planning on it. Again, my uncles and male cousins were going to have a lot to say about my situation. But sitting around in silence at the homestead was only letting my mind wander.
And it always found its way back to, well, him.
Maybe talking to everyone else about what was going on with them would help.
Besides, I couldn’t avoid my family for the next few weeks, months, year, however long this was going on.
Last I heard from my lawyer, Harrison’s attorneys had been giving him the runaround, talking about meetings and trips and all kinds of scheduling conflicts. It sounded like it was going to be a while before this went to court.
So I was just going to have to move on while waiting for that day.
“I guess,” I agreed.
“You don’t have to act like it’s going to be torture. We always have a good time. And then we can come back here, and you can sleep on my uncomfortable couch and grumble at the roosters every morning.”
“Hey, it is not my fault they wake up at four-forty-five every morning.”
“It’s not their fault you don’t go to bed until two a.m.”
“True.”
“Is it just the jet-setting lifestyle, or are you having trouble sleeping?”
“Both, I guess.”
“I can brew you up some chamomile—don’t make that face!”
Yeah, I was totally making a face.
“You know how I feel about black tea. Can you imagine my feelings on herbal?”
“It’s good with a little honey.”
“I’ll bet it tastes like boiled grass.”
“You’re impossible. Well, the tea is in the cabinet over the kettle if you want to try it. I have to go get all the animals away before I shower and get ready for tonight. Feel free to clean up first,” she said with a pointed look at my hair that probably was looking flat and greasy.
“Can I borrow something to wear?” I asked. Of all my cousins, Kit was probably the one I was closest to, size-wise, even if our styles didn’t exactly overlap, save for both of us liking the color black.
“Definitely. Just don’t take my lace duster. I’m wearing that tonight.”
“Seeing as I’m not entirely sure what a ‘duster’ is, I think there is a very low chance of me borrowing that,” I said as she made her way to the door, grabbing her comically large-brim sunhat as she went.
“Alright, buddy,” I said, petting the dog’s giant head.
“You gotta let me up. Your mom thinks I’m gross and need a shower.
” The dog seemed unmoved by my argument.
“You don’t care that I’m icky, do you?” I asked, giving his ears a good rub.
“Then again, you smell butts for fun, so I don’t know if you’re a good judge of stinkiness. ”
I folded down, resting my head on his fluffy white fur.
“Maybe I need a dog,” I said, getting a tail thump in response to my words.
“I mean, I probably travel too much. But if I get a friendly boy like you, he could hang out here on the farm when I’m out of town. Or maybe he would keep me from moving around so much.”
You could say I was having a bit of an existential crisis since crashing at the homestead.
Because all of a sudden, when I thought about traveling, when I thought about trying to find a good game, I felt nothing. No excitement. No thrill. No motivation. Just… nothing.
But when I tried to imagine doing something different, like finally getting myself a place to call home—something that should have felt new and exciting… again… nothing.
I was starting to worry that I was maybe getting, I don’t know, depressed.
It wasn’t something I’d personally experienced in life, but when one of my cousins explained his experience of it to me a few years back, he said it started with a loss of interest in things that brought him joy.
And, little by little, he didn’t want to do anything anymore, not even get out of bed.
I vaguely remember him saying that his road to overcoming his was paved with exercise, leaning into things that brought him joy, spending more time with loved ones, and, for a short while, medication.
I figured maybe if I incorporated the former things, I could avoid needing the latter. Not that I’d hesitate if it came to that, but I wanted to try all other methods first.
So, I was going to start with, you know, showering. Getting myself pretty. Then going to see my family.
And maybe in the morning, I’d start a new workout routine. Something really taxing. Like running. I was going to take up running.
I could give all those things a few weeks, see if they helped. If not, I could think about making an appointment.
“Alright, buddy, bath time,” I said.
That was the magic phrase.
He darted off my lap and whined to be let outside.
I spent the next hour scrubbing myself with all of Kit’s homemade soaps and lotions, then helped myself to her black mini skirt and a pretty, lacy black tank top.
It felt better to get cleaned up, but there wasn’t a whole lot of enthusiasm in me as I rode into town with Kit and Ariah.
Redemption was a local hangout for us ever since the bike club that our parents belonged to bought it a few years back.
It was all dark wood with a familiar, cozy vibe and absolutely packed with members of our family by the time we made it there.
“There she is,” my mother said when she spotted me, a strange look in her eye that I didn’t trust.
“What is it?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.
I was preparing for teasing about my whole marriage situation.
I was not expecting her to wrap an arm around me so I couldn’t get away as she turned me.
“Your father and I were just getting to know your husband.”
Then my father stepped to the side.
And there he was.
Harrison.
He’d smartly decided to forego his suit jacket and tie, but he still looked wildly out of place in a sea of jeans and leather biker vests, in his black slacks and button-up shirt.
And, of course, he had to roll up those damn sleeves again.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, trying to pull away from my mom, but she was enjoying this too much and only tightened her hold.
“I was invited.”
“You were invited.” I glanced between my parents, but didn’t see any kind of guilt on their faces. “By whom?”
Harrison gave me a shrug and a look that said, ‘I’m not screwing up my chances at their approval by ratting them out.’
“Willa?” I asked, since I knew the two of them had previous business encounters. Even if it would gut me to know she’d done something behind my back.
“No,” Harrison said, his gaze sliding across the room to where Willa was standing with a group of the other girl cousins.
None of them looked like they were paying us any mind. Almost like they didn’t even know he was here.
“It was one of the guys, wasn’t it?” I asked, seeing a few too many smiles in the crowd. “Of course it was,” I mumbled to myself. “Whoever it was, I’m going to find out. And then I’m going to hand your ass to you,” I called to the bar. “Why did you come?”
“It seemed rude not to when I was invited,” Harrison said.
Was it just me, or was there a bit of, I don’t know, hope in his voice? Like he thought I might be happy to see him?
I wasn’t about to admit to him that there was a sudden urge to move to his side.