She wiggled her fingers, and I grabbed her by the wrists, laughing.
“You are!” Her hands darted out like cobras.
“Stop it.”
“If this wasn’t the worst day, it’d be the best day of my life.” She giggled as I fought her off.
“You are so weird.” I laughed.
“Why, because I want to wash your armpits?” She’d moved around so much, her whipped hair sagged sadly, the curl slipping into her face.
“Yes.” I grabbed her by both wrists and held them in front of her, the two of us laughing like idiots.
“The indestructible Jake Milovic is ticklish. It’s a beautiful day for mankind to learn you have a weakness.” Soap ran down her forehead toward her eye, and she slammed it shut, blowing up the length of her face with her bottom lip to try to stop it.
“That’s what you get.” I let her go and swiped the soap away before drawing her into my chest. “Come here.” I turned us around slowly and put her under the stream to rinse out her hair.
“God, I am going to tickle you so much, and you’re never gonna see it coming.” Her eyes were closed, her lips smiling.
I tilted her head back to get her hairline. “I will end you, Olivia.”
“Oh, it’s gonna be so good,” she mused, ignoring me. “In the middle of the night when you’re dead asleep. Bam! You’ve got your hand up a heifer’s vagina, bam! Ninja tickling, coming at you like hi-yah phrlebrepthhhhh,” she spat when I forced her face under the water.
“Told you not to mess with me.”
She was too busy laughing to sling a comeback. Instead, she swiped the water from her face and switched places with me again.
When she composed herself, she looked up at me with velvety brown eyes, bar of soap rolling around between her hands. “After today, I couldn’t imagine I’d ever laugh again, but you proved me wrong. You’re good at that.”
“I’m good at all kinds of things.”
She slid into me, smiling slyly. “You are.” But her smile faded, the weight of the day heavy behind her eyes. “I couldn’t do this by myself. Any of it. And I can’t imagine running the farm with anyone but you. I’m sorry you’ve been so alone.”
I stroked her jaw, not knowing what to say.
“Did you read Pop’s letter?”
I shook my head. The letter had been sitting on my dresser since I’d gotten it. I couldn’t bring myself to open it, knowing it was the last thing he’d ever say to me.
“In mine, he said he gave us both the farm because he knew we’d need each other. At the time, it felt like a cruel joke. You didn’t need me.”
“I did,” I said quietly, pain striking like a match in my chest. “I needed you more than I knew. I needed you even though I didn’t want to. I was just too stubborn and foolish to admit it.”
“Good thing I was too stubborn and foolish to walk away.”
“Good thing.”
It was all I could say without saying too much, so I kissed her to rid us of words for a moment.
She disarmed me completely, exposed me entirely. I often found I said too much, showed her more than I intended. She was quite possibly the only person left on God’s green earth who understood me. She understood me when I didn’t want her to. Sometimes when I didn’t understand myself.
She was a person I could share my life with. I’d been sharing it for months already. Owning the farm together, we’d share it for a long, long time whether we wanted to or not.
My breath hitched at the thought that someday, we wouldn’t want to.
And the realization of what that implied hit me like a freight train.
But for once, I didn’t run. I held on to her, emptied my heart into that kiss, into her.
Because of all the paths my life could take, I knew the one that ended with her was the brightest.
23
Drive Shaft
OLIVIA
“All right, you ready?” Jake asked from the grass beneath me.
“I’m ready,” I assured him from my perch in the tractor.
“It’s not like driving a car.”
“Yes, I know.”
“It’s gonna be loud.”
“Jake. I grew up on the farm. I’ve been on a tractor.”
“Yeah, yeah—I know.” His face did not know. “Okay. What speed are you at?”
“Low,” I recited.
“And you’re not gonna go out of first gear.”
“Nope.”
“Then turn the key, honey.”
“Thank you, dear,” I said and fired the engine. The rush at the rumble and thunder shook me, the sound louder than I remembered. Laughter bubbled out of me in my exhilaration, and I bounced in the squishy seat, my cheeks high and flushed.
“Okay,” he shouted, barely audible over the engine. “Push the clutch and put her in gear.”
Grinning, I did what I’d been told, and the tractor lurched forward. A squeal shot out of me, my hands white-knuckled on the wheel. When I glanced at Jake, his face was open and bright with laughter I couldn’t hear.
The last week had been a little slice of heaven.
Without discussion or decision, we’d slipped into a natural, easy cohabitation. It was just understood that when we weren’t working, we were together. And even sometimes when we were working, we were together.
I’d learned more about the inner workings of the farm in a week than in my whole life. I’d been all over the property with Jake as he oversaw operations. I’d driven an RC car in the bull pen to distract them while Jake and a couple of the guys mended the fence. I’d marked cows for checkups with neon-green chalk at Jake’s and Miguel’s direction. We’d wandered through herds of breeding heifers, checking the stickers on their flanks that changed colors when they were in heat.
In turn, Jake had run around with me, picking up orders for the shop and unwillingly becoming my photographer for social media. He took direction much better than my tripod. And to my absolute and utter delight, he’d even let me take some pictures of him. The brawn of our operation got way more engagement than anything I’d ever posted.
This was unfortunately not enough encouragement for him to green-light my calendar.
Unsurprisingly, I had not given up the ghost.
The rest of the time, we were just together. The logic center of my brain did its best to remind me that being together this much, this fast, was dangerous. But the logic center of my brain was a drag.
I was convinced that nothing that felt this good could possibly hurt me.
The farm continued to perform, and we’d expanded our tours to Wednesdays and Fridays last week with the shop open the same hours. My debt had been paid in full a couple weeks ago, so everything we made now went straight into the mortgages.
The matter of the fire hadn’t been resolved, not with the fire department labeling it arson and as such, dooming any help from our insurance. Jake was certain it was the Pattons, but he was the king of conspiracies. A fire in a hayfield seemed too small a scale for corporate warfare, beyond its lack of imagination. Many a heated discussion had occurred over the subject. Neither of us were convinced. But it didn’t matter. It was behind us. And things were looking way up.