Chapter 17 Leith
Leith
Clarke and I were walking around the hardware store. I told her I needed a few things for the roof, which I did—and stuff for the back door at Toades—but I also had plans to clean and reattach her rain gutters at home, if she’d let me.
“You walk so slow,” Clarke whined. She’d been at least five steps in front of me this whole time—checking things off the list she’d made herself by forcing me to repeat everything I needed at least three times.
Every time I threw something in the cart that wasn’t on the list, she sighed. I was enjoying it immensely.
Truthfully, I enjoyed Clarke immensely. It wasn’t that I had thought spending time with her would be a chore, but this had all been…surprisingly easy.
She was easy to talk to when she put her boxing gloves down, which she was doing more and more around me. There was an ease to our interactions that I’d never experienced in a relationship—real or fake—before.
Admittedly, that made the lines I’d drawn in my head around this whole situation start to get a little blurry. But when I was around Clarke, it was hard to care about that. There was something about this that made me feel like I could fake it with her for a long time.
“You got places to be?” I asked.
“Yeah, away from you.”
I gasped dramatically. “Is that any way to talk to your doting boyfriend?”
Clarke turned her head toward me. “Where is this doting you speak of? All you do is make a mess at my place of business and embarrass me in public.” She was right about making a mess at Toades, but that’s how any sort of home improvement or renovation went.
It got worse before it got better. I fought a smile thinking about the scene I made at Sevens, and the way Clarke blushed so hard and looked so pretty doing it that for a second I thought I was going to lick her face to see if that blush tasted as good as it looked.
Blurry fucking lines.
“And I was just about to start making caulk jokes,” I said. “How do you want to be doted on?” I asked.
“In general? Or by you?” Clarke asked.
“In this relationship,” I said.
Her steps paused for a second, and I caught up to her with the cart. “Does that really matter?” she said softly.
I used the back of my hand to move her long hair behind her shoulder. “Yeah,” I said. “It does. Just because it isn’t…real doesn’t mean it can’t feel good.” I whispered the last part. Clarke went stiff as I absentmindedly dragged a knuckle up and down her arm. “I want you to feel good.”
“Oh, well, I…I like…I like the touching,” she breathed.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Like…I like it when you put your hand on my waist or do what you’re doing now.”
“Why?”
“Probably because I’m starved for affection,” Clarke said and then shook her head. “I didn’t mean that.”
“It’s okay if you did,” I said. “I feel the same way sometimes. I think there’s a closeness and comfort that comes with someone else touching us that we…can’t accomplish in any other way.”
“It’s just embarrassing to admit…” Clarke said softly.
“I don’t want you to be embarrassed with me,” I said. “There’s literally nothing you could do to make me think any less of you…because I think a lot about you. I mean…of you. You know what I mean.” I moved my hand from her arm and rubbed at the small of her back.
“I think…I think I believe you.”
“Good,” I said. She smelled like oranges and vanilla, and I loved it. When I went to the grocery store this week, I picked up a box of Creamsicles, even though it’s still freezing outside, just because they made me think of Clarke.
They are still delicious when it’s freezing outside, and I’m sure Clarke would be too.
Jesus Christ.
* * *
“Mr. Wilkes,” someone said at the other end of the aisle, and Clarke basically jumped away from me. I didn’t realize how close we were until she did it.
“What’s up, Gary?” I asked, tearing my eyes away from Clarke. Gary was a few years older than Clarke and me. His family had owned the hardware store for as long as I could remember.
“I just wanted to let you know that Flynn came by today,” Gary said.
Flynn didn’t get out and about much—especially in the winter.
Even if everything with the farm wasn’t happening, a Flynn sighting had never historically been a good thing.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“And he tried to put everything he was buying on the farm tab.”
That was a bad thing. A very bad thing.
Could Flynn possibly know how close he was to getting the farm? Or was he just being his normal asshole self?
“Did he get aggressive with you?”
“No more than usual,” Gary said.
“So, yes.” My shoulders dropped. “Thanks for telling me. I’m sorry that happened.”
“No big deal, sir, just wanted you to know. It’s been a while since he tried anything like that.”
“Yeah, it has,” I said. Flynn had to know that it would get back to me. Maybe that’s what he wanted?
Gary nodded and walked back toward the register. “I’ll be up here when you guys are ready.”
“Thanks, Gary,” Clarke chimed in before turning to me. “What was that about?”
I moved my head from side to side to crack my neck—trying to release some tension. “I think it was a warning.”
* * *
“You’re being quiet,” Clarke said when we got into my truck.
“Sorry,” I said. “Flynn is just…a tough topic for me.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Did I? “Well.” I closed my eyes for a moment.
“First off, there’s the Lainey of it all.
” Flynn had never cared about being Lainey’s father.
“She’s…she’s just everything to me, you know?
And when I think about the fact that she came from…
that, and that there’s probably always going to be a part of her that wonders why she wasn’t good enough for her dad to want to be her dad, I want to lose it. ”
Clarke reached across my bench seat and grabbed my hand. I didn’t know if she’d ever initiated contact between us before.
It was nice—nice enough for me to keep talking.
“And Flynn fucking sucks—he’s the worst—but there’s also this part of me that worries that the farm would be better off with someone who’s…not me.” My voice cracked on that last word, and I immediately sealed my mouth shut.
“Hey,” Clarke said, squeezing my hand. “It’s okay.”
I couldn’t swallow.
“Why do you think that?”
“I— I’m not that…good at being the guy on top,” I said honestly.
“I’m a great farmer. I love being out on the land.
I like being a steward for that corner of the earth.
I like teaching people about farming and working with the farmhands.
But I don’t like the logistics and the money and the business and the bullshit. ”
“Can you hire someone to do that part for you?” Clarke asked.
“No one ever has. Every aspect of running the farm has always been left to one of the Wilkes family.”
“But it’s yours now,” Clarke said. “If something needs to change, or if it’s better for you that it does, you can make that happen.”
“I just…I don’t want to let my dad down. Which is crazy because my dad was a fucking dick, Clarke.” I regretted it as soon as I said it. I wished I could suck it back down, but it was too late. It was thirty years of feelings shoved down finally bubbling to the surface.
“I didn’t mean that,” I said half-heartedly.
“It’s okay if you did,” Clarke said—repeating my own words back to me. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always,” I said. I meant it.
“You’re clinging to your farm. You talked me into being your fake girlfriend to save it. Why would you do that for something you don’t seem to want and for someone who you seem to have, um, mixed feelings for?”
I rested my head on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”
“Try me,” she said.
“My dad didn’t think I could do it,” I admitted.
“He told me so—right before he died. He said I wasn’t ready, said I didn’t care enough, said that he was mad at himself for letting me skate by.
” I’d never told anyone this before. “I yelled at him. Told him that everything I am was his fault. I told him that if he died tomorrow, I’d let the farm run itself into the ground just to spite him. ”
“Leith…” Clarke’s hand was on the back of my neck, massaging.
“And then guess what he did, Clarke?” I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “He died the next day—fucking aneurysm.”
“That’s…heavy.” And it was. Every day I felt like the weight of it was going to crush me.
“I don’t want to prove him right, Clarke.
I can’t prove him right.” My cheeks felt wet.
Fuck, was I crying? “But I can’t love the farm the way he did.
It was his only priority—the only thing he cared about, and I’m just…
not built that way. He loved it as an entity, as a provider.
I love it because of what it is for me and what it gives to people I care about.
I could never live with myself if something happened to the farm, and one of the consequences was the livelihood of this town.
I already have one thing I’ll never forgive myself for. I don’t know if I can carry two.”
Her hand moved under my chin, and I looked into her soft, hazel eyes.
“I miss him, Clarke,” I said softly. “I wish so badly that he were here. He would know what to do, and even though I’d hate it, I’d do exactly what he said.”
“Grief is a roller coaster and a spiderweb all wrapped into one,” she said.
“I don’t know if this is grief,” I whispered. “It feels…angry. When I think about him, I feel…rage.”
“What do you think grief is supposed to feel like?”
I shrugged. “Soft, maybe. Melancholy. I didn’t think it would last this long.”
“It can be that,” Clarke said. Her hand cupped the side of my face. “But it can also have its fists up.”
I leaned into her touch and took a deep breath. “Do you mind if we stay here for a second? Watch the sunset?”
“That sounds perfect,” she said. “There’s nothing better than a Sweetwater Peak sunset.”
I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her flush against me. She put a hand across my middle and tucked her head under my chin.
“I guess they’re a good reminder,” I said.
“Of what?”
“That endings can be gentle too.”
I held Clarke close to me as we watched the day fall apart in colors to create something beautiful.