Chapter 21

[Brock]

Sometimes the quiet click of a closed door says more than a slammed one, and as I exit my captain’s farmhouse and leave my heart shattered among the blankets on the living room floor, I climb into my truck, tossing my bag across the seat.

“Dammit,” I holler into the cold cab, noticing my hands are shaking as I fumble in my pocket for the key fob. Once the ignition starts, I grip the steering wheel with both hands, letting the cold seep into my bare palms.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I see a school bus painted in a pear-green color with Paradise Farms on the side.

How did he get that up the drive? Yesterday’s blizzard raged through the night. A school bus couldn’t have gotten up the gravel lane to the house. Still, I see a path plowed up the lane to the front of the barn where the bus is parked. I never heard a plow.

It’s then that I realize I walked through a deep pile of snow to get to my truck and icy clumps are slithering into my boots. And still, I don’t shake off the chill racing through my insides.

She tricked me. She used me. All those projects. All these days.

I was still having trouble processing everything.

Her dad waking us up. Her admitting she had feelings for me. Her defending herself . . . and me to Cap.

I scrub a hand over my face. Fuck . The scent of her is still on my skin. The taste of her on my tongue.

I have half a mind to rush back into the house. But I’m angry. She deceived me, strangely reminding me of my ex, although we weren’t talking about dollars and cents here. We were talking about hearts.

Pear’s and mine.

Hell, just yesterday I woke from a dream to find her staring at me. When she said she had something to tell me I thought she was about to express her regrets. Tell me she never wanted to see me again. Or couldn’t see me after the twelve days were served. Tell me she had fun while I fucked her but we were over.

The toll of a bell rang in my head, signaling the end, and I panicked. I didn’t let her speak. Instead, I wanted every last minute, every last drop, every last kiss to be spent with me.

Hadn’t I been deceitful as well? As I made her pick a card and set her on that wobbly chair, making her think we were playing a game when I’d been honest in all I said. Laying all my cards out for her to read. Handing her my emotions.

I wanted to worship her. I’d do anything she asked, but I couldn’t let her lie to me, and this is where I struggled.

Had she lied? She never said her dad gave her a list, only that she’d made a list. Fixing dresser drawers and mending fences. Building owl houses and making memories on a snowmobile. Plunging into frigid water and plucking at cow teats, all for her.

But it’d been good for me as well.

She even panicked at one point. She thought I’d left her when I went to the grocery store, reminding me when I returned that I could leave at any time. She wasn’t holding me captive.

Still, I stayed. And as much as I want to say I did it for me, to prove something to Cap, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave her.

I was lonely. You seemed lonely, too .

“Fuck,” I yell to the empty truck cab as the fog of my own breath fills the windows. A steaming bull trapped inside this vehicle.

She hadn’t been wrong. I was lonely. Or I had been until twelve days ago.

If she’d told me upfront, maybe I wouldn’t have stayed. I had my own issues to resolve, but then she became my resolution.

My redemption.

My restoration.

I’d have missed out on her if I had left that first day.

She was the fucking queen of hearts, and she reeled me in. She hadn’t planned to seduce me, she’d said to Cap. She has no idea how tempting she is .

Slowly, my shoulders lower and I place my forehead on the steering wheel.

“Fuck,” I whisper to myself.

A sharp rap on the driver’s side window has me lifting my head and turning toward the person distorted by the fog on the glass.

I press the button to lower the window and stare at Cap.

“You stuck?”

Am I? Metaphorically, I don’t want to move backwards. I don’t want to be the grumpy, grouchy guy I was before Pear was in my life.

“I haven’t tried to reverse yet,” I admit, still clutching the steering wheel with white-knuckled fingers.

“I’ll help you shovel yourself out.”

A snow shovel rests in each of Cap’s hands. If it weren’t for the blunt blade, I’d worry he’ll hit me over the head with it and then try to dig my grave.

Keeping the engine running on the truck, I step out of the cab and take the shovel he offers me. I don’t speak as I sink into the deep snow again. I don’t know what to say to him.

I defiled his daughter, who isn’t innocent or youthful, but a fucking temptress.

We work in silence. Him digging along the side of my truck; me digging out behind it, making a path to the singular strip plowed up the drive so I can back out of my parked spot. So I can return to my life.

Cap eventually clears his throat once we have a decent trench of snow removed around my pickup. He sets his hand on the shovel handle, extending his arm as he stares at our work.

“She gave me an abbreviated version of what happened. All that you did over the past twelve days.”

I squint toward the barn, not wanting to meet his hard gaze. “We lost power yesterday. Didn’t actually complete all my tasks.” I purse my lips. The tasks she assigned me, not Cap.

As I side-eye him, I see him nod, his gaze aimed in the same direction as mine. The owl house we’d hung on the eastern side of the barn .

“You took care of her these past twelve days.”

I choke, before realizing he doesn’t mean sexually.

“Kept her warm and safe.” Cap lowers his head. “That’s all I ever wanted for my girls. And for the men in their lives, if men came into them.”

I don’t respond. Pear clearly didn’t explain how I rubbed a snowball into her neck and took her on a cold snowmobile ride. Then I recall both instances. How she squealed and laughed. How it felt to hold her on that day I attacked her with snow and then she held me on our snow-path journey.

“She’s telling me I should give you one more chance.”

I nod, sheepishly glancing at him before glancing away. I hear the but he isn’t saying. He was done with me. He’d been correct. I’d been late to the last chance he was giving me. I fucked that up. That’s on me. Owning my mistakes, as Pear explained to her father.

But what mistakes had she made? So, she fibbed a little bit. So, she let me stay. What would I done if I’d gone home? Wallow in my loneliness because my kids were away? Drink too much, feeling sorry for myself that my ex found another person?

My person was inside the house behind me or so I thought.

“If you deserve another chance . . .” Cap pauses. “Don’t you think she does as well?”

My head turns so fast my neck cracks after a night sleeping on a blanketed floor. A night spent loving a woman with my body but also opening my soul to her.

I wanted her to let me into her heart because she was already deep within mine. Implanted by a Dutch pear pie and moonlight kisses. Fireplace confessions and tent blanket shenanigans.

“She didn’t tell me the truth,” I remind him.

He tilts his head. “True. And I don’t condone a relationship that starts on a lie.”

Another but hangs between us.

“However, she had good intentions. She wanted to help you ,” he reminds me .

“She did,” I whisper, my throat thick as I blink toward the owl house.

Valentine’s owls, and pears, and cows . I stifle a chuckle. Where will she be on Valentine’s Day?

I turn my head, staring at my captain, knowing the answer.

I want her with me. I want her as mine.