Chapter 8 Leith
Leith
“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this.” I grinned at Clarke as she walked up the steps to the front porch of Toades. It was a little windy this morning, so the wind chimes sang around us.
Clarke’s dark brows were knit together, and her posture stiffened immediately. Pearl, however, seemed thrilled to see me. The giant dog trotted up the porch stairs and stopped at my feet. I gave her head a good, solid rub. What must it be like to have a dog this calm?
“Maybe you should stop showing up on my porches, then,” Clarke snapped.
Okay, so, yes, I had hated the cold civility she had given to me in our adult years.
But the rage she was pointing my way this morning was worse.
I thought we had a nice time on Friday night—even with the breaking and entering.
I thought maybe it might have…changed things?
At least made her a little bit warmer toward me—but now, this was feeling a little too warm. Fire came to mind.
I suppose I had Sweetwater Peakers to thank for the change.
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Clarke breezed past me to unlock the Toades front door.
She smelled like vanilla and oranges. Considering her greeting, I half expected her to slam the door in my face once she got it unlocked and open, but she turned back and held it open for me, though with some visible hesitation.
That was a good start. I waited for Pearl to follow Clarke before I went inside.
Then Clarke quickly locked the door, since the shop was closed to foot traffic on Mondays.
Pearl immediately hung a right and lay in a dog bed in front of one of the large front windows—assuming her post for the day, I guessed.
As soon as I got home on Friday night, I started going through my dad’s file. I didn’t immediately find anything noteworthy. It was all stuff that I knew, mixed in with a lot of legal jargon. I fell asleep with papers strewn across my bed and woke up with a drooly pillow.
The next morning, though, I caught something that made my stomach feel like it had turned into a rock that was going to fall out of my ass and brought me straight here today.
Toades looked different than I remembered.
It was in disarray. I mean, the place never looked organized, but it had always been put together in its own way.
Right now, it was the opposite of that. There were boxes piled up in nearly every direction, a notebook paper sign that read Sorry, This Room Is Closed, and it smelled like damp wood—unmistakable water damage.
Some areas of the hardwood floors had been pulled up—probably to dry out the subfloor underneath.
“I have work to do,” Clarke said once we were in the kitchen, her tone still icy.
“When I don’t get enough sleep, my mom calls me a grump-a-saurus,” I said.
Clarke narrowed her eyes at me. “If you think this is grumpy, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
“I can handle it.” I shrugged. In fact, I used to savor it. A part of me liked that Clarke only got this way with me—as far as I knew, anyway.
Clarke blinked her hazel eyes a few times—like she was using that to help her recalibrate. After a second, I watched her shoulders drop a little. “Do you want some coffee?”
“Sure.” I nodded. I watched as Clarke scooped a bunch of ground coffee into an old Mr. Coffee machine that had seen better days.
“That was like fifteen scoops,” I said, bewildered. “For a ten-cup machine.”
She was smiling a little. “We like it strong here.” She walked away from the coffeepot without turning it on—or so I thought, but it started brewing a few seconds later. Weird.
Clarke was headed toward the record player that was set up on the kitchen table. “How do you feel about Pearl Jam?”
“Best grunge band to come out of Seattle.”
“Good answer,” Clarke said as she slipped Backspacer out of its cover and put it on the turntable. A few seconds later, I heard the unmistakable sound of the needle hitting the vinyl, and then music. It surprised me when the music started. I guess I just didn’t see her moving the needle over.
“Well, then…” Clarke said. “Why the fuck are you here?”
I couldn’t help the shocked laugh that came out of me. I liked the Clarke who kept me on my toes. I always had. Just like she had with the kiss on Friday night. The kiss that I couldn’t stop thinking about. The kiss that had taken up residence behind my eyes.
Get it together, man.
“So, I read the file.”
“I figured as much,” Clarke said. Her eyes shot to the corner of the room. I turned to see what she was looking at, but there wasn’t anything there. “So?”
I rubbed at the back of my neck. “So, my dad died almost exactly five years ago.” Clarke nodded. “And the farm has been in my family for generations.”
“Leith…”
“I’m getting to the point—I promise.” Clarke took a deep breath. “So, my dad inherited the farm instead of his older brother, Merritt. I thought it was because Dad was, like, a named heir or whatever, but it’s because of a technicality.”
“A technicality?”
“Merritt wasn’t married anymore when my granddad died. My mom and dad were.”
Clarke’s eyes narrowed. “So…you have to be married to inherit the farm? Seems a little outdated.”
“It is, and it’s a little bit more complicated. There are provisions that protect the inheritor for five years after the death of their predecessor if they’re over eighteen, which I am obviously.”
“And if you don’t meet the requirement by the five-year mark?”
“It goes to the next person on the list.”
Clarke knitted her brows together until a line formed in between them. I could see the wheels turning behind her eyes. It was the same look she used to get in English class. “A farm in the middle of nowhere having such an intense line of succession is kind of…unexpected.”
“From what I can tell, it started with my granddad, so there’s not a long history.”
“Who’s next in line?”
“My cousin, Flynn—Merritt’s firstborn.”
Clarke visibly grimaced. “But Flynn’s a dick,” she said.
She was right. Flynn was a money-hungry, trophy-hunting, flub-dubbing son of a bitch, and he wasn’t getting anywhere near my farm. He spent most of his time getting kicked out of the Old Church bar and avoiding every other Wilkes in Sweetwater Peak—including his daughter.
“I have about two and a half months, until mid-May, to fix it—that’s when the five-year mark hits,” I said.
“And I don’t even know if I’d want the current provisions to stay in place.
Like, ideally, I’d leave the farm to Lainey, but I don’t know if that’s a possibility.
” Lainey was Flynn’s biological daughter.
He was never involved in her life, and when her biological mom died when she was four, my parents took responsibility for her.
“And by fix it, you mean get married?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe I try to find a fancy lawyer who can help. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just can’t lose the farm—not to Flynn.”
Clarke turned to grab two coffee cups off one of the open shelves in the kitchen and poured the motor oil—I mean coffee—she’d brewed into each.
She slid one mug across the counter to me. It was dark green and said Moon Lake on the side. “Where’s Moon Lake?” I asked.
“It’s Boone’s,” Clarke said. “His brother brought it back from his honeymoon as a souvenir or whatever.”
“Shit,” I said. “So, this thing is probably older than me?”
“Almost everything in here is.” Clarke smiled wistfully. Then she grabbed a small jar of sugar and a carton of half-and-half out of the fridge. “Just in case it’s too strong for you.”
I stirred a heaping spoonful of sugar into my steaming mug, followed by a little cream. “Some of us like to enjoy the taste of our coffee,” I grumbled.
“Sure.” Clarke nodded.
After a moment, she asked, “Okay, so why don’t you ask Ali to marry you? You could tell her what was going on and…”
“I can’t ask her. Can’t tell her. She would want to do it because she wants to marry me.”
“Someone’s a little overconfident.”
I took a sip of my coffee—nice and hot. It’s not like I hadn’t thought about just going back to Ali, but I didn’t want to. It would be real to her—serious. But to me, it would just be a way to keep my inheritance.
“It’s why we broke up,” I admitted. “For good. She asked me if I saw us ending up together forever, and I said no.”
Clarke tilted her head at me, like that surprised her.
“It’s obviously got a little more nuance than that—like ten years of nuance,” I said—feeling a little defensive at the way Clarke was looking at me. “But that’s the gist. I can’t bring her into this. I can’t hurt her on purpose.” We’d hurt each other enough.
“So what are you going to do?” Clarke asked.
I put my mug down and gave her my best puppy dog eyes. I knew that Clarke was smart enough to pick up what I was putting down, so I waited.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I kept staring and tried to throw a dash of pleading in there.
It was hard not to smile as I watched the wheels behind her eyes work.
Clarke has a very specific thinking face.
It broke a little when her eyes shifted to look at something behind me.
I turned my head to see what she was looking at. There was nothing there.
After a beat, her eyes widened.
“No,” she said almost immediately. I knew she’d get it. “No fucking way.” I didn’t say anything yet. I was sure Clarke’s brain was moving a million miles an hour, and I wanted to give her time to settle—maybe not be in full-fledged fight-or-flight mode—when I started talking again.
“You wouldn’t actually have to marry me,” I said quietly.
“And I’m not asking. I think I just need to be in some sort of romantic relationship that I could convince Ron in the next month or so that the endgame was marriage, so that he’ll put everything in my name.
” Clarke was shaking her head. “Ron already thinks we’re together, and now the entirety of the town does too,” I added sheepishly.
“So just…fake dating, then.” Clarke scoffed. “In a way that makes the town think we’re going to end up married? No one is going to believe that we’re actually in love—especially Ron. He’s a bit of a mess, but he’s not stupid.”
“Normally, I would agree with you,” I said.
“But that was before he caught us in his office and before it got plastered all over Sweetwater Peakers.” Clarke let out a frustrated huff.
“We’re already Sweetwater Peak’s newest whirlwind romance, and that’s why it’d be believable if it got whirlier and windier. ”
I didn’t know if she’d already seen the posts on the site, so I went to grab my phone out of my pocket to show her, but she stopped me. “I’ve seen it,” she said. She didn’t sound happy about it, but I never thought she would be. But maybe if there was a way I could make up for all of this…
“And there’s something in it for you too,” I said.
“What could possibly be in it for me?” Clarke said. “Getting to be seen with the town golden boy?” Her tone was dripping with sarcasm, which seemed to be her default setting when she was around me lately. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it.
“No. I know Toades needs a lot of repairs right now, and repairs require labor. Labor that I am willing to provide—for free.”
“So you’re a roofer now? And a foundation expert? And a carpenter?” Clarke asked.
“No,” I said honestly. “But I have a lot of favors that I’m ready to cash in on.” Mostly, I was depending on the fact that there wasn’t anything I couldn’t fix and that if I couldn’t or didn’t want to, I knew somebody who could. And they probably owed my family some sort of favor.
Sweetwater Peak was dependent on its favor economy. It’s how we took shelter from and weathered any storm.
It was time for my big swing. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do for Toades? Like if the roles were reversed, and you needed me to help save it, and all it would cost is some of the money in your savings account and a couple of favors, wouldn’t you do it?”
Clarke chewed on the inside of her cheek as her eyes darted around the shop. “You’re taking a lot of liberties with your assumptions today, Leith.”
“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think I was right, and I wouldn’t ask if I thought you had reason enough to say no.” I liked being right too much. That’s why I came here with every piece of this puzzle placed so that Clarke had no choice but to see the big picture.
“God, you’re full of yourself,” Clarke said. “Why me? If you’re worried about Ali, I’m sure every other woman in this town above the age of twenty-five would be thrilled to be your fake girlfriend or whatever.”
“I already told you. The fact that the town is already talking about us gives us a leg up, and…” I looked down into my coffee cup.
“I trust you, Clarke. I trust you in a way I could only trust someone I’ve known my whole life.
” There was just something about someone who had grown up alongside you.
They knew you through all your phases, embarrassment.
And I’d had plenty of those in front of Clarke.
But she had always…been there. Steady. Constant.
Always with a deep eye roll, but still. I just trusted her—implicitly.
“Plus, I know you’re not going to fall in love with me or anything and mess the whole thing up.”
Because if Clarke Cartwright was going to fall in love with me, she would’ve done it already.
That actually got a laugh out of her. A sardonic and mildly condescending kind of laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. I picked up my mug and downed my coffee. “I’m the one with nearly everything to lose here, so just think about it, okay?”
Then I stood from my chair and walked out before she could tell me no.