by Zoe York
A silo full of threshed and cleaned wheat? Had she really been so naïve and eager for a happy ending that she’d assume that he would completely forget about 30,000 bushels of wheat? He was a stubborn asshole, not an amnesiatic asshole, for hell’s sakes.
She thought back through their tour of the farm. He’d never mentioned the silos, although it was hard to miss them, considering how gigantic they were. She’d been the one to bring them up, asking him what was stored in them. He’d said wheat, after it was harvested, and then…they were talking about something else. Smooth as butter. Never missed a beat.
He’d absolutely known about the wheat, had been reminded about the wheat in case he’d somehow forgotten, and still chose to keep it to himself. The one thing that would save five generations of Miller’s work and sweat and tears from the grasp of a bank wanting to develop a high-end ski resort.
How? Just…how? That was what kept tripping her up. She hated things that didn’t make sense, that didn’t fit into her neat columns and rows in an Excel sheet.
She found that she kept bouncing between mad as a wet cat, and heartbroken that she was leaving Stetson behind. Or, more accurately, she was heartbroken to leave what she thought they had behind.
His eyes, brown and warm and caring, telling her how beautiful she was to him. His eyes, brown and vulnerable and hurting, telling her how he wished he could just tell his mother he was sorry.
Sorry…
Never once, through everything that had happened between them, had he ever actually said the words, “I’m sorry” to her. He’d gotten close, but to Jennifer’s new way of thinking, close only counted with hand grenades and horseshoes. From here forward, she wasn’t going to put up with a man who refused to admit when he was wrong.
In fact, Stupid Stetson the Stubborn Shithead better be ready to downright grovel if he ever wanted to speak to her again. She’d accept nothing less. She deserved nothing less.
That was, if he ever did want to speak to her again.
The tears ran faster down her face.
She could only be grateful that traffic was light, because she honestly couldn’t remember much about the actual drive back to Boise. Pine trees and rocky hillsides and a deep ravine with a rushing river cascading through it ran alongside the road, but it was just there. Picturesque scenery flying by that she’d normally be oohing and aahing over, but now…
She just couldn’t care.
By the time she reached the outskirts of Boise, she was completely numb, a state of being she was happy to embrace. She didn’t want to feel or worry or think.
A part of her – a tiny part of her that she just couldn’t bring herself to listen to – was trying to warn her that she needed to go into work. Greg was probably frantic by this point. She had no doubt that he’d called her a half dozen times just that morning, but she’d turned her phone off hours ago.
If he wanted to talk to her, he could listen to her happy, professional, upbeat voicemail message and have a discussion with her there. She could give him nothing more than that; she had nothing else to give.
She crawled into bed, pulled the covers up over her head, and embraced the darkness. Here, nothing could hurt her.
Sometime later – hours, weeks, months, she couldn’t tell – she rolled over and pulled her phone out of her laptop bag, where she’d thrown it on the floor when she’d come home. She turned it on, waiting for the Apple logo to disappear and the phone to come to life. The clock on her nightstand said 6:32, but she didn’t know if it was 6:32 at night, or 6:32 in the morning.
Finally, her phone was alive. It was 6:32 in the morning, and it was Friday. That meant…she forced her brain to work, scrambling to put times together…she’d been hiding in bed for a little over twelve hours.
No wonder her bladder hurt so much.
She forced herself to make a trip to the bathroom, and then she snuggled back down in the bed. It was safe here. No one could touch her.
The part of her brain that was yelling at her to deal with the shitty situation she’d found herself in was yelling louder, though. It was right – she did need to do something.
So she did.
Ignoring the eleven voicemails from her boss, she called into the HR department for the bank and left a voicemail, stating that she’d caught a cold and didn’t want to pass it along to others. She’d be back to work on Monday. Considering how obnoxiously awful she sounded in that moment, her throat raw from crying and cursing Stetson’s stupidity, she was pretty sure they would believe her.
If only it was true. She would have much rather had a cold than a broken heart. A cold would go away. This…never would.
She laid there and thought about calling Bonnie to whine and cry her heart out, but the idea of having to explain it all to someone else…she was too tired. She would explain it later. When she could move and think and breathe again without pain.
Plus, Bonnie had to go to work. She couldn’t just sit around and act like a human Kleenex, soaking up all of the pain inside of Jennifer.
No, it was better to just keep this to herself. She’d already forced Bonnie to live through the tail-end of one break-up with a boyfriend. She wouldn’t force her to live through two.
Chapter 47
Jennifer
By lunchtime on Monday, her finger hung over the keyboard like the blade of a guillotine. Her hand slowly lowered and her eyes closed on their own. She felt her finger make contact.
Well, I guess that’s it.
She’d done it. She’d filed the damn report that would take the farm away from Stetson the Shithead and Carmelita the Cind. Karmelita the Kind?
Hmmmm…that alliteration wasn’t exactly working out the way she’d wanted it to.
She waved the hazy thoughts away. Everything was in a haze, really. She tried to care about the world around her, but it was like peering through cloudy glass, covered in hard water deposits. It was there, but not.
Greg had been buzzing her office every 30 minutes since she’d shuffled through the front door that morning. He was, of course, threatening that if she didn’t send him that report right away, he’d fire her on the spot, which had the unexpected result of making her laugh out loud. He was making the fatal assumption that she gave a damn.
She didn’t.
She’d hung up, listening to his tinny voice let out a blistering tirade all the way down into the phone cradle, and then his voice was gone.
She wished it was that easy to get rid of him in real life.
But, she’d finally done what he was demanding – the only thing she could do under the circumstances. For once, this wasn’t Greg’s fault. She couldn’t point her finger at him and ask him how dare he do what he was doing. No, the only report she could give to the bank just happened to also be the report that would make Greg happy.
Some days, life sucked.
Pressing the intercom button, Jennifer buzzed the receptionist.
“Susan, Greg is going to buzz my line – again – in a few minutes. Will you be kind enough to tell him that the report is in his inbox and that I have gone home sick?”
Back to my bed, to darkness, to where nothing can hurt me. After having spent three days hiding in bed, she was finding that she didn’t like the outside world all that much. She wanted her cocoon back.
“Actually, you can’t leave just yet. You have an appointment. A client called this morning and asked to meet with you today; he said it was urgent. He’s here now. Should I send him back?”
I swear to God, if Paul walks through that door, there is no way I am not going to jail today.
“Yeah, send him back,” she said heavily, before taking a deep breath and putting on her happy customer service face.
A man stopped just inside her office door, a bouquet of flowers covering his face.
Jennifer froze, and for the second time that week, her whole world shifted to the side, cockeyed and weird and out of focus. This couldn’t be…it wasn’t…
But even w
ith the flowers covering his face, Jennifer absolutely knew who it was.
But I just sent that report! Oh Stetson, you’re too late! Too late by only minutes, but no, that wasn’t true because even if he was bringing her flowers, that didn’t mean he was also coming to pay off the farm, so actually, minutes, hours, days, it didn’t matter when he came with flowers.
He’d forced her to ruin his life, and she wasn’t sure who would hate who more once that came out – if she’d hate him more for making her do it, or if he’d hate her more for actually doing it.
“What…” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat to try again. Do not cry! “What are you doing here?”
He slowly lowered the flowers until she could see his dark brown eyes, warm and haunted and worried, but she could read him again. He wasn’t looking at her like she was the enemy.
Not yet.
“I came to tell you…” He paused, swallowing hard, shifting from foot to foot as he stared at her. “I came to say that I am sorry.”
He said it. She couldn’t believe he’d actually said it.
She blinked. The swirl of emotions inside of her was overwhelming everything and she just froze in place.
“Have you ever watched the movie Love Story?” Stetson asked, apropos of absolutely nothing whatsoever.
She blinked.
“Made in the 1970s; an adaptation from a book?” he prodded her.
She finally shook her head. She felt slightly ill. Was this a hallucination? She felt like she might be hallucinating. It was the weirdest hallucination ever, but then again, wasn’t that kinda the definition of a hallucination?
“My dad loved that movie,” Stetson said, not moving a muscle, holding the flowers, just standing there as he talked. “Rough ’n tumble farmer, but he thought Love Story was the best thing since sliced bread.”
She blinked.
“There’s a line at the end of it. The guy tells his dad, ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’ That’s how I was raised. My dad took pride in never telling us kids that he was wrong, or sorry, or that he’d screwed something up. You know how I told you that my dad said that I was his do-over, his chance to do things better than he had with Declan and Wyatt?”
She nodded numbly.
“He never told them that. He only told me. If he’d told them that, then he would’ve had to admit to their faces that he’d made a mistake in his life. My parents were married for 22 years. My dad never once told my mom he was sorry, because he’d never been wrong, you see.” He gave a sarcastic twist of the lips to that idea.
“I might just have more pride than my dad, and I promise you, that’s saying somethin’. I’ve only ever said I was sorry to my brothers, and it was only after I was beaten with a belt into doing it.
“But Jennifer…I’m sorry. More sorry than I have the words for.” His cheeks flushed red, and his eyes seemed to take on a suspicious sparkle, as if they were filling with tears.
Jennifer was willing to bet her right arm that he cried even less often than he said he was sorry.
Suddenly, her gaze jerked to her office door, where people were walking past, discussing interest rates and what the bond market was going to do…He moved out of the way as she hurried to the door and shut it, leaning against it for support as she stared up at Stetson. She didn’t exactly want the entire office to hear this discussion.
And then, she waited for him to go on.
She’d told herself that he’d have to grovel before she took him back, and she’d meant it. Although finally telling her he was sorry was a real nice place to start, it didn’t excuse everything else away.
It didn’t make everything better.
“I miss my dad more every day,” he whispered, a trickle of moisture spilling out of his left eye, the light green bruises the only remnant of the fight he’d had with Wyatt. “I thought it was hard when he passed, but sometimes, ignorance is bliss. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, until he was gone. He’d tried one time to talk to me about bills and taxes and insurance, and I’d told him not to worry about it, because he wasn’t going anywhere. I wouldn’t listen to him. I don’t know if I was more terrified by him dying, or me actually being left in charge of all of that. Unfortunately, they went hand-in-hand.”
He laid the bouquet down on the guest chair opposite her desk, and used his freed hands to dash the tears away that were running down his cheeks. He stared at the door over her shoulder as he continued quietly, “It’s stupid to have put so much emotion into a damn crop. Somehow, in my mind, it became so much more than just a pile of wheat. It was actually the last of my dad, and it meant letting him go. Once it was sold, I’d have nothing left to hold onto.
“You know, other than the recliner in the family room, the Fainting Goat Chair in his office, and pretty much every tool and piece of equipment on the farm.” He rolled his eyes at himself. “Wanna know why I didn’t get a new office chair, even though that one has fallen over on me a couple of times? Because my dad used that one. Wanna know why I didn’t switch to a closer bank than Intermountain? Because Intermountain was where my dad banked. For the past year, I’ve been clinging to everything I could, not wanting to let go or admit that he was truly gone.
“Luke called me an idiot, by the way.” She jerked her head, startled by the comment. Stetson gave her a wry smile before going back to staring at the door. “He’s my best friend. We joke that we’ve been friends since we were in the womb. His mom and my mom were pregnant at the same time. Anyway,” he waved his hand, brushing that aside to the side, “Luke doesn’t pull punches. If he thinks you’re being an idiot, he’ll tell you that you’re being an idiot. It’s one of the many reasons that we’re best friends. He’s my kind of blunt.
“But he told me that I needed to pull my head out of my ass, because if my dad were here, he’d be telling me the same thing. My dad didn’t beat me with a belt after I got taller than him, but Luke said that for this, he probably would’ve at least given it his best shot. Luke is right, of course. My dad would never want me to give up the Miller Family Farm because of some sentimental attachment to wheat, for God’s sake.”
His eyes, red and swollen, dropped from the door to hers. “So, I’m here. I want you to know that I know that I screwed up. I am openly and plainly admitting that I was wrong, and I am genuinely sorry for reacting the way I did. You were just trying to help, and I treated you like shit. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but someday, I hope you’ll see your way to giving it to me.”
“Oh Stettttsssoonnnn…” she cried, and her heart, already stomped and broken up into a million little pieces, broke completely apart. Her legs gave way and she slid down the door, collapsing into a pile on the floor where the tears just poured out of her.
How she could still be crying was beyond her. She’d never cried so much in all her life as she had in the last four days. And yet, somehow, they still came.
His arms wrapped around her and he rocked her, back and forth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he whispered into her hair. “Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” she hiccuped. He was never going to forgive her. Never. “I sent the report recommending foreclosure right before you showed up. Stetson, they’re taking your farm away.” She dissolved into a puddle of tears.
“Well, that explains that,” he said, a bit of an ironic lilt to his voice.
She pulled away from his soaked chambray shirt to stare up at him. He’d lost his ever-lovin’ mind. The stress of it all broke him.
He looked down at her with a small, self-satisfied grin. “When I handed the check over to cover my delinquent payment in full, plus fees, your boss looked like he was about to have an epileptic seizure.”
“You…hold on, what?!” she burst out. Now she was the one losing her mind, and hearing things. Things that he couldn’t possibly be saying.
“Well, after Luke gave me the kick in the ass that I needed, I didn’t just sit aroun
d all weekend, trying to find the guts to tell you I’m sorry, although I will admit that I did have to really work myself up to that. No, I also called a grain buyer buddy of mine and explained the situation. He gave me $6.45 a bushel. He said the extra twenty cents was a bonus for all of the years my father was a loyal customer. Anyway, that gave me enough to come current on the loan, with just enough leftover for the flowers.”
I am so in love with this man.
She launched herself at him, showering him with kisses and running her fingers through his hair, wanting to make sure it was real. He was real. It was all real.
“Greg kept ranting about some damn ski resort when I handed him the check,” Stetson said between kisses. “Do you know what he was talking about? I’m wondering if he’s a little screwy upstairs. I own a cattle ranch and row cropping farm. There is no ski resort on my place, or Sawyer at all. That tourist shit can’t be found until you get past Franklin, thank God. Do you think he’s lost his mind?”
“I’ll tell you all about it later, I promise,” Jennifer said, a bubble of happiness welling up inside of her, spilling out into giddy laughter. “I can’t believe you did this. Oh Stetson…”
Which was when their kissing finally became serious for the first time. She flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and kissing him so deeply, the world disappeared. When they finally pulled apart, she was breathless.
“What do you think of the flowers?” Stetson asked, tilting his head toward the chair. Oh. Right! Somehow, among everything else, she’d forgotten about them. Getting up off the floor, she saw Stetson following her lead as she picked up the bouquet to bury her face into the bundle of red roses offset by white Calla lilies. The scent of roses filled her nose and made her head spin.
“I even wrote the card myself,” he said proudly. She found the card, stamped with a logo from some place called Happy Petals, and read the words to herself. There were only two words on the card, but still, she didn’t understand them.
“Will you…?” was all that was written.
