Chapter 16
They’re tending to the animals at the other farm when the illusion of happiness he’s felt creep up around him begins to shatter.
The air smells like hay and cold earth, sharp with the coming turn of the season. The animals are restless in a way that mirrors the tight coil of tension in Wyatt’s chest. It’s a low hum of unease that only increases his anxiety.
It’s been easy to forget certain things over the last few weeks.
To ignore the inevitable and pretend he could start fresh here with Addison.
Perhaps even cultivate something close to happiness.
He’s been careful not to let his imagination run wild with best-case scenarios, though a few have woven themselves into whatever mental level sits just above the subconscious, but below a daydream.
Small, harmless things. The way her laughter might sound when she’s just slightly tipsy.
The three of them looting shops in town like a well-oiled team.
A future he never planned for, taking shape without his permission.
Over the last few weeks, his attraction to her has flourished despite his insistence that they’re only friends.
Friends don’t cuddle in bed and hold each other after a nightmare.
Friends don’t inhale each other’s scent the way he caught himself doing when she was wrapped up in his arms the other night, breathing her in.
They certainly don’t call each other sweetheart without the sting of the usual annoyance or tease.
Keeping everyone at a distance has been his chosen path since the virus hit, maybe even before, and for good reason.
He holds enough guilt and shame from past relationships and responsibilities to last a lifetime…
and yet he made her cinnamon rolls in an effort to see her smile.
He is so fucked. It took every ounce of his willpower not to turn his head and capture her lips when she pressed hers to his cheek.
The ghost of that almost-kiss still lingers, hovering just out of reach, taunting him with what he wants and what he’s already ruined.
He didn’t chase her mouth because if she wanted to kiss him like that, she would have. He won’t be presumptuous about such things. But he wanted it so badly his nerves clustered up in his belly like he was about to nose-dive off the tallest cliff, waiting for a jump that never happened.
Yes, it has been simple to forget that everything they’ve built is crafted on a pile of lies as he’s become reluctantly smitten with her, but that all changes when Emma unearths a box of old photographs in the barn.
Dust clings to the edges of the cardboard like it’s been waiting to be disturbed for decades.
She brings them out to show her mother, and Addison picks up a weathered photo, her gentle smile accompanying a question that stops him in his tracks.
“Is this you when you were little? With your grandparents?”
Wyatt drops the feed scoop back into the bin and takes the offered picture as his gut sinks.
There’s a little boy playing in the garden with a fistful of tomatoes while his grandparents laugh.
Addison assumes it must be him, her expression so open and hopeful that he might share some long-lost memory with her.
Little does she know that nothing he could share started here.
The lie stretches between them, like a thin sheet of ice, threatening to snap under the weight of her kindness.
He stares at the image, the top of the paper shaking ever so slightly as he realizes that he can’t go another day allowing her to believe anything but the truth.
He owed her nothing back when he first crafted this tale about the house belonging to him.
Everyone lies now. Everyone steals. Everyone kills.
It is the way of what’s left of the world, so it was barely a blip on his moral radar to let her think he truly laid claim to this place.
Easier than arguing over it when he planned to leave shortly after, anyway.
That was before he started to fall for her. Before both of them began to weave their way into his heart.
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to talk about it,” she continues, after he’s taken too long to reply. “You don’t have to dig up any memories for us.”
Her compassion lands like a blow to the chest.
She reaches out to take the picture back, running a comforting hand over his arm as if he is heartbroken or traumatized by what he sees in that photo, when his heart is already in the very near future, breaking over how she’ll react to the truth.
“It was a long time ago,” he says softly, neither confirming nor denying her original question. “Emma? Can you put these back where you found ‘em, please?”
The girl nods and runs off with the treasure box she dug up from some far corner of a storage heap.
“I was thinking we might want to look further out for some horses. Maybe there are other farms with animals left?” Addison says absently, dumping feed onto the ground for the chickens.
“And there’s space for a windmill at the other property.
We could have electricity one day if we can figure that out. ”
He barely hears her. All he can think about is how easily she trusts him and how completely he’s abused that trust. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea. We should go before the weather really turns.”
“Wyatt?”
“Hmm?”
She moves in front of him, reaching for his hand to thread their fingers together. The contact nearly undoes him. “I’ll never push you to talk, but I’ll always listen if you need me to.” Her soft tone turns slightly teasing. “I promise I won’t even interrupt you with a million questions.”
He does not deserve her. He nearly snatches his hand back to keep from soiling her skin with his touch. “There is something we need to talk about.”
“Okay.”
“Not now. Tonight, after Emma goes to sleep.”
She tilts her head, her concern growing into uncertainty. “Alright. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay. I promise.”
Don’t say that. I’m a liar. I’ll only hurt you.
If there is one thing that has developed between them by now, it is a concerning level of trust. Anyone else might assume the worst, but Addison only nods, taking everything he says at face value, and that cuts his heart into pieces all over again.
This may be the last time she ever looks at him like this.
He wishes he could etch her face into his memory so he can pull it up long after she’s left him.
Swallowing hard, he turns back to his chores before his resolve breaks, and he spills everything at her feet right here in the barn like a church confessional.
He will tell her tonight. On the very last day of the deal they had made a month ago.
* * *
Wyatt finds her in the kitchen after night falls, ripping open a bag of ramen noodles from the stash and boiling water on the stove.
She has left it up to him to seek her out for this conversation, and she’s doing a solid job at pretending she’s not curious.
Addison sends him the sweetest smile when she spots him, such a stark difference from her expression the day they met, when she looked at him over the barrel of an antique shotgun.
It’s fitting that he tells her the truth in the same spot where she thought about killing him with a knife from the block right over her shoulder.
He only wishes that he had the same amount of apathy about the entire situation that he possessed that day.
Far too many feelings have grown since then, and they’ve threaded up through his limbs like vines on a thorn bush, puncturing little holes in him every time he looks at her.
“Are you hungry? I can make you some,” she offers.
“No. We need to have that talk.”
She grabs a cup and begins to smash the dry noodles still in the bag. “Okay, about what?”
Slam. Crush. Crack. Each hit is harder than the last, but she seems oblivious to the stress that must be radiating off him in waves.
“Can you…can that wait? It’s important.”
The cup rests on the table. “What’s wrong?”
Fuck. It’s now or never, and never isn’t an option as much as he wishes it was. If they have any hope of being something more than friends, it can’t begin on such a tattered foundation.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he says quickly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other in a nervous tic. “I lied to you when we met.”
She doesn’t respond, but he watches the brief flicker of amusement when she assumes he’s joking morph into wary surprise when it’s clear that he’s not. He does not look at her again as he launches into a poorly rehearsed explanation. If he does, he may not be able to get it all out.
“Omitting the truth is the same damn thing, even if I told myself it’s not. That house I found you in doesn’t belong to me. Never did. I never grew up there. You assumed that, and I didn’t correct you on it.”
“What?” Her voice hitches, and when he glances up again, her eyes shine the way his already are.
“I got the address from the owner up in Alaska. They said if I needed somewhere safe, this would be a good place to start. I never planned on coming, but everywhere I landed was worse than the last. By the time I got here, it was gonna be a bullet or the farm. It was my last try.”
“I don’t understand. It’s not like I could have stopped you. You could have just taken it, anyway. Why let me believe—”
“I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t know you.
Didn’t put a whole lotta thought into it at the time.
Felt like I was at the end of the line, anyway.
” He could have taken it. Easily. Something about raiding a home where a woman and a child were finding shelter felt worse than lying about returning home to somewhere he belonged.
“And maybe I didn’t like the idea of you looking at me like some random looter. ”