“Fucking hell!” I screamed out into the night sky. Something wet trickled into my eyes. Ugh, probably sweat. I blinked furiously both from the sting and my own tears that were threatening to overflow their confines. My emotions were getting the better of me and unfortunately, it wasn’t the time or the place. I needed to stay strong.
Finally, after much pushing and shoving, I fell to the ground. Wet and cold, my hands touched both softness and shards of glass at the same time.
Pulling myself up, I wiped my hands on my jeans and surveyed the damage. Betsy looked beyond repair. Dented and scratched in more places than ever, broken lights, and shards of glass everywhere. The contents of my suitcase were sprawled all over the seats. And blood on the dash? I reached in and touched the spot with my hand. Reaching slowly back up to my throbbing head, I realized that was most likely the cause. I felt sore but not broken.
It looked like I’d be hitchhiking back to my hometown. My uptight family would never let me live this down.
Chapter 2
MATT
T-minus five hours until I needed to prove a lie. A big one. A stupid one. One that I didn’t even know why I had told.
As a lawyer, I liked to think of myself as a stand-up guy. A purveyor of truth. Yet, here I was, staring down the end of the work day and time was running out. But it was just one lie. One that could easily be covered up by another. After all, I certainly hadn’t done anything illegal. Far from it. Although my mother might possibly feel otherwise.
Shit. Mom was expecting me at the family farm by dinner time. It was already 2pm and I was still sitting in my corner office in the city. A solid four hour drive away. I needed to let her know that I’d be coming in late. I’m sure she expected as much anyway. Over the past year or so, I’d either been late or had avoided going home altogether. I had always blamed work and for the most part, it was true. My small practice had become a booming business in very little time and it had been overwhelming.
I leaned back in the chair and ran my hands through my hair. I needed a story and I needed one quickly. One that would be plausible to my mom and step-dad. But I had to be careful. Maple Cove wasn’t a bad place, it was just a town like any other. A small town where everybody knew everybody else’s business. And I hated people all up in my business.
Whatever. I’d figure it out. Somehow. Grabbing my phone, I sent off a quick text.
Sorry Mom but something came up with a client and I won’t make it to dinner.
Her response came back within seconds, as if she had been waiting with phone in hand to hear from me.
No problem sweetheart. I’ll keep a plate warm for you both. Looking forward to meeting your fiancée! I do wish you’d tell me her name before you get here though!
I groaned and pushed my phone away. The lights downtown were glowing, making the city look almost magical. Just below my office window, there was a world alive with music, drinks, and people looking for a good time. If I had it my way, I’d finish up this file and be down there getting it on with the best of them.
Instead, I needed to finish up my work and head home for a weekend with my parents and a fiancée that didn’t exist. It was a childish thing to have done, but up until this point, I hadn’t regretted it. It had been nice to not have awkward conversations with my mother about the type of girl I wanted to meet. I wasn’t sure what was up with her but lately, mother fancied herself a matchmaker. Constantly hassling me about settling down. Sending me photos and texts day and night about local Maple Cove girls. If she only knew that my idea of a good time had a lot more to do with spankings and punishments than it did with women who could bake a hot apple pie. But that wasn’t my only reason. I just wasn’t the settle down and be a family man kind of guy.
The city was a solid four hours from Maple Cove and it was my sanctuary. A place where I could forget the past. People meant well, but they didn’t have a clue about my life. My stepdad and his family had all been small town folks. A family with men that operated the corner store because they loved to talk to everyone in town. The women were homemakers and professional gossips. Just the idea of the big city terrified them.
My mom, on the other hand, was my world. My confidante. Or at least she had been. But ever since she’d married my stepdad, I felt like I’d lost a little more of her each day.
They married when I was eighteen, and almost as quickly as I had gained a family, I became the black sheep of that family. I just never seemed to fit in. I often wondered if it was because of my biological father and all the weight that came with carrying his name. Of course, no one talked about that. Everyone accepted that I was a Harris like my mom. At least on the surface. No one ever talked about how my last name used to be Clifton.
Maple Cove hadn’t always been our home. We had moved around a lot in my youth. But when I was heading off to college, my mom unexpectedly inherited the farm from her father. They had never been close, but when he died suddenly and left her the farm, she jumped on the opportunity to set down roots. I guess I couldn’t blame her. She finally had something of her own. And then when she married Dave, well, that was it, she went full country. It was just a hobby farm, but Dave and my mom worked it like it was their only hope. I suppose I couldn’t deny her pleasure, though. It was good to see her happy, even if I didn’t understand it. Except that now, she seemed to want to push that form of happiness onto me.
I knew from a young age that I would make my own way in life. School had been easy for me, and scholarships to universities came by the dozen. Once I had passed the bar and settled into my new life in the city, I knew I’d never have it any other way.
Except the small-town life permeated every inch of my mom and her new family and they had wanted to it be mine, too. In the beginning, they had accepted that I needed to “sow my city oats” as my stepdad would say, but truth be told, they had expected me to return to their version of normalcy when it was all said and done. When I didn’t, well, they didn’t even pretend to like me after that.
And now that I was inching towards the end of my twenties, my mother had been on a mission. For whatever reason, instead of shutting it down, I had cracked and given in.
What an idiot. Now I had to find a way to clean up my own mess. I should have done it earlier, but every time I had tried, she started to cry. Something was definitely going on with her and it was about time I found out what it was. My fake fiancée issue would have to wait.
Hence why I was hours from showing up at the farm late, with no fiancée in sight. Whatever. I’d come up with something. I always did.
Chapter 3
CARLY
I started to walk. One wet suede boot in front of the other, cursing out my choice of fashion over practicality with each step. I should have anticipated the weather up here. Winter always began to show her true colours by Canadian Thanksgiving, which was always right around the height of pumpkin spice latte season in the US.