Chapter 8
EIGHT
TRICIA
The next morning, I almost drive past the employee entrance.
I want to.
It would be so easy. I can just keep driving until the road curves back toward town.
I could go back to the cabin and crawl into bed. With the extra chill in the air and gray skies, it’s the perfect morning for hiding under a comforter and pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
“But”—I tell the fog settled in the valley—“I made a commitment.”
And if there’s one thing my parents taught me when I was growing up, it was always to finish something you started.
Even if facing Quinn and his siblings feels like the hardest thing in the world.
It’ll be almost as bad as welcoming guests who have no doubt seen footage of my walk of shame. The picture and subsequent video has made the rounds on social media courtesy of Karen.
“If ever there was a woman who lived up to her name,” I mumble as I put my car in park.
Taking a deep breath, I turn off the car, grab my bag, and force myself to get out.
I eye the barn, where other staff members are arranging who will ride to their worksites with who and change my direction. I’d rather walk than be forced into a one-on-one conversation with any of them.
Tightening the grip on my bag, I start the long trek to the front office. I’m nearly through the pumpkin patch when a horn honks.
“Jeez.” I nearly jump out of my skin as Dylan’s truck pulls to a stop beside me.
He rolls down the window. “Hop in.”
“That’s okay.” I avoid making eye contact. “I can walk.”
“You can. But you might also lose the feeling in your toes before we even open the gate.”
He makes a fair point. My pride slips and, with a sigh, I open the passenger door and climb into the cab.
Dylan doesn’t say anything. He hands me a piping cup of apple cider.
“Thanks.” I wrap my hands around it, savoring the warmth and the scent of cinnamon and apple wafting through the air.
He nods, puts the truck in drive and pulls back onto the gravel path. A country song plays lightly over the radio.
Dylan doesn’t say I’m sorry. He doesn’t say I heard. “I know we haven’t known each other long,” he says, eyes on the road, “But for the record, you don’t strike me as the walking type.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you’re the type of person who doesn’t give up and still shows up. Even when it’s hard.”
My throat tightens. I swallow around it. “Showing up doesn’t fix everything.”
“Doesn’t have to,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just the first thing that makes the next thing possible.”
We roll past the hay-rack turnoff, the maze entrance, the field where the apple cannons sleep. The patch looks naked without families layered over it. Winter is closer today than it was yesterday. I feel it in my ribs.
“I’m not fishing,” he says after a beat. “But if you want to talk, I’m here. If you don’t, that’s fine too.”
A wet laugh slips out. “You’re good at this whole comforting big brother role.”
“Lanie trained us well,” he says. “Look—Quinn’s been… wound. For a long time. I forgot what he looks like when he’s having fun. You reminded me.”
The window fog blurs the view. “Smiling isn’t the same as saving the farm.”
“Feels related from where I’m sitting,” he says. “And the numbers are better. Not just because of the signs, or the map, or the website. Because people can feel it when a place is alive.”
I stare into my coffee. “I’ll finish the season. I promised. But I won’t be back next year.”
He doesn’t pretend to be surprised. He nods once, a small acceptance that hurts more than if he’d argued. “Patience,” he says anyway, soft. “My brother’s slow. He tries to fix things by himself until his hands bleed. But he’s not stupid. He knows when something’s worth keeping.”
We pull into the lot by the office. He puts the truck in park but doesn’t cut the engine. The heater keeps humming. Outside, a crow stalks the fence post like it’s considering a career change.
“Thanks,” I say again, and my voice is steadier than it feels.
“Anytime.” He tips two fingers off the wheel. “Oh—and if Karen says anything, do not hesitate to call me. I’ve got a list of synonyms for ‘busybody’ saved in my notes.”
“Noted,” I say, and push out into the cold.
Lanie has two coffees waiting on the desk in the front office.
At this rate, the Carvers are going to make me the most caffeinated employee on the property.
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” she says, sliding a cup in my direction. “You don’t owe anyone here one.”
“Thank you.”
She takes a sip, then lowers her voice. “But if you need to scream, the hay maze has excellent acoustics. Plus, people will just think it’s part of the experience.”
I give a short laugh. “I might take you up on that later.”
“I’m on your side, Tricia. I have been since you face-planted in our mud and didn’t sue.”
“I wouldn’t have sued.”
“I know.” She glances toward the door, then back to me. “And I’m holding out hope my oldest brother will stop being a dumbass before I lose the twenty bucks I bet on him.”
A startled laugh flies out of me. Relief and sadness collide in my chest like two birds meeting a window pane. “You bet on him?”
She winks. “Never bet against a Carver’s capacity to be wrong and then fix it loudly.”
“Good to know.”
We get to work because it’s what we do. I answer emails, process a set of group reservations, schedule a post about the Great Pumpkin Festival that I’m not sure my heart can survive if we pull it off.
People trickle in. Vendors dropping invoices, a delivery guy with a pallet of cider, a teenager asking about weekend hours. I make the kinds of decisions that make a place run. Yes to more wristbands. No to three more tubs of glow sticks.
My weary heart starts to steady as I control the things I can.
It lasts about as long as it takes for the bell over the door to ring and the temperature in the room to drop ten degrees.
Karen breezes in with a to-go cup and a smirk. Her perfume arrives before she does—sharp and expensive, like a warning label.
“Good morning,” she says to the room, which is just me. “How’s the family establishment?”
“We open at ten on weekdays,” I say evenly. “How can I help you?”
She makes a show of glancing around, lands on a flyer for the festival, and tsk-tsks.
“Parading around decent folk with your… antics.” She takes a delicate sip. “I’m amazed you people have time to run a farm when you’re busy sleeping with the help.”
My palms go cold. The instinct to fight rises hot under my tongue, and I press it down.
“If you’re here to complain, the suggestion box is by the door.”
“This is me suggesting,” she says brightly, voice projecting for an invisible audience. “That a young lady who can’t keep her hands to herself should perhaps find employment somewhere less… public. Men like Mr. Carver need to focus. This place requires serious people.”
I keep my voice level. “I came here to work. That’s what I’m doing.”
“Oh, of course you did.” She sets her cup on the counter, leans in like we’re sharing a secret. “It’s a shame, though, isn’t it? How fast some girls move when there’s a paycheck or a piece of property involved.”
The door opens again, and the shift in the air tells me who it is before I look. Quinn steps in, sleeves shoved up, grease on his forearms, jaw set. There’s a bolt in his hand and a look in his eye that turns the room solid.
“Mrs. Montgomery,” he says, voice calm but carrying. “You’re out of line.”
She straightens, startled. “I’m addressing a legitimate concern.”
“No,” he says mildly. “You’re harassing my employee.”
“She’s more than your employee,” Karen says, syrup curdling. “She’s—”
“Someone I respect,” he cuts in. “Someone who’s made this place better. If you can’t recognize the difference between gossip and truth, that’s your failing, not ours.”
Color rises under her makeup. “Your parents would be ashamed.”
“My parents taught me to stand up for people who do the right thing,” he says.
He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t have to.
“And they taught me not to throw stones when my own house is made of glass. Maybe watch who your husband’s own late night activities before you come throwing words like brothel around my land. ”
Silence falls around us. Somewhere outside, a truck rumbles past. The clock on the wall ticks like it’s afraid to be heard.
Karen’s mouth opens. Closes. She snatches up her cup, the lid pops off, cider sloshes onto her manicured hand, and she flinches like the farm itself bit her.
“This isn’t over,” she snaps.
“Good,” Lanie says from the doorway, and we all startle because none of us heard her come in. She leans against the frame, arms folded, cool as a blade. “I’d hate for the city council to think you’d stopped lobbying the bank on behalf of your timber interests. See you at the festival. Or not.”
Karen glares and leaves. The bell smacks the doorframe on the way out.
The adrenaline leak is slow and disorienting. I realize my hands are flat on the counter, my breath a careful measure. I look up at Quinn, and he’s looking at me like I’m the only person in the room.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
“I’m fine,” I say, which is half true. “You didn’t have to—”
“Yes,” he says. “I did.”
The words soften something in me I was trying very hard to keep hard. It hurts.
“Smart,” I say instead, reaching for levity like a life raft. “Pretending you care about me. Good public relations.”
He blinks, and in the pause I realize that was the wrong thing to say. His face changes—not hurt, exactly, but stripped of everything except honesty.
“I wasn’t pretending,” he says. “I haven’t been pretending since the day you showed me what this place could be. I’ve been falling for you since Pumpkin knocked you into the mud, and I’m not interested in playing that down so we look better on the internet.”
My mouth goes dry. Lanie quietly disappears down the hall and shuts a door, which I think might be the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.
Before I can respond, something small and golden and paint-splattered barrels in from outside and collides with my shins. Pumpkin sits, proud, his tail sweeping the floor, orange flecks dotting his fur like confetti.
“What—” I start, and then Quinn is there with his hands behind his back, awkward as a boy.
“I, uh,” he says, clearing his throat. “I made something. It’s not… good. But I had to do something after the smoke cleared last night and I came to my senses.”
He brings it out like a shy child during Show and Tell.
It’s a pumpkin. Medium-sized, lopsided, clearly chosen for personality over symmetry. Across the front, in uneven block letters smeared with thumbprints and hope, it says:
I’M SORRY I WAS A JACK-O’-ASS.
I laugh.
I clap my hand over my mouth and laugh harder, and by the time I can breathe again there are tears in my eyes and Quinn looks torn between relief and terror.
“You painted a pumpkin,” I manage.
“I also painted my dog,” he says, glancing at Pumpkin, who beams. “Accidentally. And my forearms. Also accidentally.”
Tiny colorful constellations dot his skin up to the elbow. There’s a streak across his cheekbone like he forgot about his face entirely. The effect is ridiculous and devastatingly endearing.
“I stayed up,” he says, words tumbling. “I started three of them. They all looked like… abstract art. Dylan said I should buy you flowers. Lanie told me to get on my knees and beg. Chase said to get you a pie. I figured this—” He gestures between us, pumpkin and paint and nerves. “—was the more of our language.”
“It is,” I whisper, touching a letter.
The paint is nearly dry. It leaves a faint dusty smear on the pad of my finger. Without thinking, I press my fingertip next to one of his smudges, a small print beside a bigger one, and my chest goes molten.
He swallows.
“I don’t care what Karen says. Or anyone else.
I care about this farm. And I care about you.
I want you here for the rest of the season, and then—if you want—to stay.
With me. We can tell people, or we can keep it ours until the festival’s over.
I don’t… I can’t promise I won’t panic again. But I can promise I won’t run.”
The world narrows to the stubborn slope of his jaw, the way his eyes won’t leave mine, the pumpkin between us that is both apology and offering. I feel the precise moment my hurt and my hope tip, and hope wins.
“You’re ridiculous,” I say, voice shaking.
“I know.”
“And brave. And a little messy.”
He glances at his arms. “Occupational hazard.”
“I’m not going to make this easy on you,” I warn.
“I wouldn’t know what to do with easy,” he says, and his smile breaks my heart in the best way.
I reach for him. He meets me, and my lips, halfway.
The kiss is warm, sure, and anchored in a promise we both just made without needing to say anything more out loud.
When we part, the day seems brighter than it was when I walked in. Maybe it’s the light shifting. Maybe it’s me.
“Lunch?” Quinn asks. “There’s leftover pulled pork and an apple pie with our name on it if we get to it before Chase does.”
“I like the way you think.”
He picks up the pumpkin carefully, like it’s fragile, and places it on the desk next to my chair. His other hand finds mine. Paint flecks dust my skin like a secret only we know.
Maybe love can’t balance a ledger. But it can make the risk worth taking.