Chapter 31 Rowe
Rowe
The moment we get home, I know something’s wrong. The house is dark. The workers are gone. The crickets are chirping.
But something’s off.
It’s in the air. It’s thick and weird, like the magic is frazzled, short-circuiting.
When Pane kills the engine, he turns to me. “Stay here.”
“I’m not staying here.”
His bottom lip dips in a frown. “But something’s off.”
“I know. That’s why I’m getting out.”
He mumbles something about me being stubborn, but doesn’t argue when I exit the truck.
Soon as I’m outside, a blanket of foreboding hits me right in the chest. The piggycorns are standing inside their fence, but they’re not leaping over one another and sliding across the grass on their rear ends to greet us. They’re standing in a neat line, looking straight ahead.
Something is definitely wrong, and whatever it is, it’s outside.
Pane must sense it, too, because his next words are, “You should go into the house.”
“I’m not doing that. This is my property.”
He sighs with resignation. “Do you have to be so resistant all the time?”
I shoot him a weary grin. “It’s why you like me so much.”
An emotion I can’t place flickers in his eyes. “Come on. Stay close.”
The first thing we notice is that the fence behind the house has been trampled. Pane curses. “We just put this up.”
Dread pools in my stomach as my gaze trails the fence. It’s not just been trampled. It’s broken into bits as if a herd of buffalo stormed through here on their way to—
“Oh my God! The starfizz berries!”
No no no no no! Please don’t let them be damaged.
I run off into the dark. Pane calls after me, but my heart is in my throat, and all I can think about is my plan B—the berries I’ve tended and worried over, giving them all my focus and energy, raising them from seeds—please, please let them be okay.
My legs are heavy as I race across the farm. They don’t want to work. They don’t want to go where I’m forcing them, but they must.
The world blurs as my vision narrows to a pinprick-sized tunnel.
Blood whooshes in my ears. It’s all I can hear.
I’m barely aware that behind me, Pane is calling my name.
I don’t have time for him now. This is about my home.
Not his. This was never his. He doesn’t care about it like I do. He can’t, because he’s leaving.
My shaky legs take me right past the ruined fence, past the gazebo, past the meadow, and right to—
“No!”
I collapse onto a patch of broken earth and take in the sight. The fence around the berries has been torn away. Chicken wire has been slashed and ripped from the wooden braces, curling into the air like the ends of Christmas ribbons.
And in the center of it all, the berries that only needed a few more days lay destroyed, trampled to juice that now soaks into the earth.
It’s so stupid. There’s no reason for me to cry. Pane’s saving the farm. He’s turning it into a spa. Realistically, I don’t even need these berries. I don’t need any of it.
We have his vision.
But it feels like a part of me has been ripped out and tossed to the ground, trampled just like these hedges have been—hedges I nursed from seedlings.
Pane comes up behind me and grabs my shoulders. “Rowe, it’s going to be—”
“No, it’s not!”
I rise up and whirl around, facing him. The moist earth soaked through my pants, leaving my knees cold and wet. I smack away clumps of dirt that cling to my jeans, sending them flying across the yard.
“It’s not going to be okay, Pane! You’re going to fix my house, but then you leave.
You’re going to fly off in your jet and leave me behind.
You’re going to abandon all of us.” I’m flinging my arms around like a thirteen-year-old having the hissy fit to end all hissy fits.
“And if this spa doesn’t work, if I don’t know how to manage it or, God forbid, I run it into the ground, then at least I have—or had—these berries.
I had them, and they were going to be mine.
Something just for me, a way to survive.
But now I don’t even have that. I don’t have anything.
All I’ll have are a few kisses from the Pane Maddox.
But kissing won’t save me, Pane. It won’t save anything. Not when my life is in ruins.”
Everything I’ve felt for the past few weeks word-vomits from my mouth. My fears, my worries, my angst—all of it ejects from me in that moment, and damn, but it feels good to finally say all of it, to tell him everything that I feel.
And guess what? I’m not done.
“And I like you, and I love kissing you, and I want there to be more, but there can’t be because you won’t be here in a few weeks, and I can’t endure being abandoned again.
My heart can’t take it. I just . . . even if I try to not care about it, I still do.
It matters because—” I place my hands to my head.
“I sound like such a crazy woman right now.” I drop my hands back down.
“If you think I’m nuts and want to return to the shamper, then I won’t blame you, because I even sound nuts to me. ”
I exhale a super-shaky breath that starts all the way in my chest and staggers from my throat.
“But I just . . . can’t do it . . . I don’t have it in me to care about someone so much that my heart hurts, to experience that feeling of being boundless, limitless, because I’m high on the euphoria of someone else. I can’t live in that and be destroyed again. Not by you.”
Tears stream down my cheeks and chin, splashing onto my blouse. My eyes are so full of them that Pane’s a blurry mess. When I blink, even more tears splash onto my clothes.
He steps forward. His expression is completely unreadable. He’s going to run. I don’t blame him. I would run from me, too. I’m a mess—a broken, dirty mess.
He cups my face with his hands and swipes at the tears with his thumbs. When he speaks, his voice is a velvety rumble in his chest that makes my knees become rubber bands. “Are you done?”
“No. Yes. I think so. Maybe.” I exhale again, this time stronger. “Yes. I’m definitely done.”
“Good. Because I know what did this.”
That’s all he’s got to say? I just poured my heart out to him—well, vomited it all out—and all he has to say is I know what did this?
Perhaps he’s trying to find a way to save my dignity.
It’s more than I would do for someone else who just made a gigantic fool of themselves and is crying with wet, sloppy knees.
Maybe I should cut my losses and pretend I never said any of what I did. Seems that’s what Pane’s doing. Okay, I should definitely cut my losses.
I shake out my arms, trying to get some of the blood back into them. It all went to my stupid mouth, apparently. “What did this?”
His jaw flexes. “Let me show you.”