“I can explain,” I started, scrambling to my feet.
His eyes followed me as I rose. “I don’t know that there’s a way you could explain this one away, Olivia.”
He was so calm, so sharp, I didn’t think I’d ever been so afraid of what he’d say. The wild, angry bear could be met with a roar. But this I didn’t know how to fight.
“He just gave it to me yesterday—”
“You should have told me the second you came home. Just like you should have discussed it with me before you tried to put the farm up for a loan.”
“After you said … when you said …” I stammered. “What was I supposed to do, chase you down and hand you two hundred grand from the Pattons? I was never going to cash it, Jake.”
“I don’t believe you.”
A hot flush bloomed on my cheeks, the sting of my nose warning of tears. “You don’t actually think that I’d—”
“When you accepted this scrap of bullshit, you betrayed me, this farm, and everyone who depends on it. Which is apparently everyone but you.” He crumpled up the paper and dropped it. “And again, you lied. You didn’t tell me about the money—I had to find out about it from him.”
“Do you honestly believe that I wasn’t going to tell you?”
“You’ve kept things from me before. Why not now? It tracks—you’ve been pushing for peace with the Pattons since you got here. Since Pop’s funeral. This is what you want, it’s what you’ve wanted for a long time, but if you’d been here instead of leaving us all those years ago, you’d know just how grave that mistake was. I told you I’d figure all of this out, but you didn’t have any faith. Instead, you ran off to the bank to try to borrow off the farm without even mentioning it to me, and then you accepted a check from the devil. Be honest, Olivia—you don’t trust me anymore than I trust you, or you would have come to me with the loan, the check, the truth about James Patton and his intentions. If we don’t even have trust between us, we don’t have anything.”
“What are you saying, Jake?” The question trembled.
“You’re dangerous, Olivia. You are a danger to this farm. You're the weak spot, just like the Pattons figured you for, and that check proves it. If you’d just fucking gone home, none of this would have happened. The sick cattle, the fire, the missing stock—it was all a scheme to steal the farm through you. And you let it happen.”
“That’s not fair,” I said softly, painfully. “I tried to tell you.”
“Not very hard.”
For a long, pregnant moment, we stared at each other.
“Tell me what to do, Jake. Tell me how to make it right.”
He shook his head. “There is one thing in this world I hold above all else—loyalty. I believe you think you’re helping. I believe you think you have the answers. You told me you’d never hurt me on purpose. You’d never hurt the farm on purpose, either. But here we are, and both are broken, thanks to you. And the good you’ve done was erased when you put your faith in the fucking Pattons over me.”
“And you’re so scared to trust anyone that you’d push me away, accuse me of sabotage. I do trust you. How was I supposed to throw that check away when we need it so desperately? It warranted a discussion, at least. But I should have known. I should have known you’d throw it back at me when you know I would never betray you.”
“I can’t do this.”
I paused. “Do what exactly?”
“Fight you. Forgive you. Let this go. I can’t do it, Olivia.”
My lungs burned, my breath still. “Don’t say that. You can’t mean it.”
“Have I ever been anything but honest with you?”
“No—”
“No, I haven’t. Unlike you.”
“Where does that leave us? What do we do?”
He met my eyes with white-hot pain and betrayal. “I don’t know.”
I stilled. Read the writing on his face. Felt the ground tether me, felt the weight of gravity across my skin.
It was over.
Whether I’d intended to or not, whether I was right or wrong, I had breached the trust I’d earned, the trust he’d given with such rare faith. I knew it was bad, but I believed there was a path back to each other, even if it took time and mending.
But that was all gone the second he’d found that check on my desk, and I couldn’t say I blamed him. Not knowing him as well as I did, which, despite his insistence, was very well.
His eyes shone, his jaw set. But behind his anger, I saw his pain. I saw the fight in him as clearly as I could see my own.
Tears welled, blurring the room and the betrayal on his face. For that, at least, I was grateful.
He turned away, leaving the barn.
And he took my heart with him.
29
Mutual Assholery
OLIVIA
“I don’t like it.” Presley stood at the end of my table at the diner with her arms folded and her eyes narrowed. “I don’t like it at all, starting with whatever this is.” She gestured to me. “When was the last time you showered?”
“Tuesday? No, Monday. I think.”
“If you have to think that hard, it’s been too long.” She slid in across from me and leaned on the table, braced by her forearms. Her shoulders made an M that matched her eyebrows. “He just … walked away?”
I nodded and smoothed my hands over my hair, deciding to retwist it in the four hundredth bun I’d put it in since it was last washed. “It’s been three days, and the only thing I’ve managed to do is cry buckets and buy a plane ticket back to New York. Everything is fucked.”
She tried for an encouraging smile. “It must be, throwing the F-word around so casually. Good thing Cilla’s not here.”
“How much of that money actually goes in the jar?”
“Who knows. I think she’s hiding a cache of quarters somewhere behind her pile of stuffed animals like a squirrel.” She paused, her face softening. “When are you leaving?”
Instantly, tears threatened to spill. “Monday.”
“I hate this.”
“Me too.”
“There has to be some way to get through to him. There has to be some way to convince him to see your perspective.”
“Maybe before, but not now. That was it, the last straw. I should have thrown the check away. I should have gone straight to Jake.”
“Why, so he could yell at you? Listen, I think Jake’s a great guy, but he can be a real asshole.”
“I know. But so can I. Mutual assholery.”
“You’re not an asshole.”
“I pushed and pushed him, listened to Chase when I shouldn’t have. I didn’t tell him that James Patton was after us. With a feud this deep, with this many years between their family and ours, there’s nothing to consider but the people who have been here all the time I haven’t. We could have figured out another option for the money, or at least tried. I could have backed Jake up, but I didn’t. I suggested he join forces with the enemy, and what’s worse—I took their money.”