All I Want (A Farmers' Market Story) (19 page)

Charlie couldn’t argue with that if he wanted to, not in the presence of it. Love and family and support and appreciation.

But he didn’t know how to get
over
himself. He didn’t know how to deal with the word
love
echoing around in his head. “This was not the plan.”

Dell’s echoing laughter in response to that would stick in his head for a very long time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

M
ORNING
SICKNESS
WAS
HELL
.
Everything she ate sounded good one minute but then was rushing up the next. Every smell that usually soothed her turned her stomach. She could barely walk into the barn.

She wanted so badly to text Charlie this morning and tell him not to bother to come help. She didn’t
need
his help. But, unfortunately, today she did.

If Elsie had been a little bit stronger, Meg would have asked her, but the woman was still recovering from chemo—for all her clean bills of health, she couldn’t wrestle goats and carry heavy cans of milk.

So, no, Meg had to suck it up and let the man who didn’t
know her
help, because she legitimately could not take the smell of the goats this morning. Every time she tried to step inside, each cell in her being revolted.

“So much for pregnancy being magical,” she muttered, stomping around and pouting because she didn’t know what to do with herself. She had herbs to process and soaps to mold and package and all she wanted to do was lie on the bathroom floor hugging the toilet miserably.

“You’re worth it, Seedling,” she murmured, putting her hand over her belly on the offhanded thought the baby could sense her irritation, her restlessness. “You are, don’t get me wrong, but, boy, does this suck right now!”

Maybe she could move the entire milking apparatus outside. It would be a pain, and she’d have to hold her breath to make it happen, but...

The sound of a car on gravel had her head swiveling to the front. To Charlie. Her shoulders relaxed because
thank God
help was here, even as her heart tensed because, oh, what the heck was she going to do with him? Just looking at him hurt.

But she didn’t know how
not
to look at him. How not to follow his every move, because he was like some kind of sun she revolved around. A force she desperately wanted to be near, next to,
with
, but something always kept her away. Something like the universe and her own stupid head.

When he approached, she steeled herself to stand there and face him and not run away crying like part of her wanted to do.

“Hello,” he offered, his tone flat in a complete failure at geniality.

“Hi. I...I’m glad you’re here.”

“Are you?”

“I’m having some morning sickness issues and I need your help.”

His eyes studied hers, that penetrating gaze that made her feel like slime. Not because
he
thought she was slime, but because he didn’t. Because he could look at her and want something from her other than...bad things.

She closed her eyes.

“Meg, no matter what happens between us, I am always here to do whatever it is you need so that you can take care of the baby, yourself and your business.”

“Why?” She wished she could keep her eyes closed, but she wasn’t that much a coward. “Why? Why, why, why?”

His eyebrows drew together, all barely restrained frustration, and she wanted to push him for no reason she could make sense of.

“Why would I
help
you?”

“Yes. Why would you help me? Why would you want to? Why are you here?”
Why are you wonderful and gorgeous and something I want that will inevitably find out I’m not worth it?

“It’s simple.”

“It isn’t simple!” Oh, she was so
angry
and she didn’t even know why. Because she wasn’t really angry at him, except he was saying it was simple. Simple? Simple to feel so mixed-up and out of her depth and like she
used
to. When was the last time she’d felt so worthless and so insecure? It had been a long time.

So, no, this wasn’t simple, and as much as she wanted to keep those thoughts to herself, they seemed to have a life of their own, needing air, needing to be voiced. “It isn’t simple at all! Because I don’t understand! I don’t understand why you left, why you think you don’t know me, why you came back. I don’t understand
anything
and it isn’t damn simple.”

“You think I understand?”

“You just said it was simple!”

“Me helping you is simple. Me being here is simple. Feeling like I don’t know you?
Wanting
to be here? Listening to you talk the way you do sometimes when there’s terror in your eyes, no,
that
isn’t simple and hell if I know what to do with it.”

Only when he mentioned seeing her terror did she realize they’d been yelling, that things were getting all kinds of out of hand. She tried to breathe, but it was hard to do evenly, smoothly. She placed a hand over her stomach, that center of calm and sanity. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bull. Shit, Meg.”

She blinked at him.

He took her by the shoulders, somehow both gentle and firm at the same time. His dark eyes bored into hers, desperate and determined and all sorts of formidable words and scary feelings.

Scary because they were feelings she wanted, she recognized. Scary because she didn’t know how to have those things.

“You know what I’m talking about. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Sometimes you go somewhere in your head and you look petrified and anytime I’m a little extra nice you look a little horrified before you settle into it. You know exactly what I mean when I say the blood simply
drains
from your face anytime I mention
anything
that has to do with your parents—even if
I
don’t know it has to do with your parents.”

His grip tightened and he didn’t so much shake her as give her a little jerk. “What is it that goes through your head?”

This was even worse than yesterday. Yesterday had hurt. He didn’t know her and he walked away and it hurt like hell, but she knew what to do with that. With hurt. She didn’t know what to do with someone...wanting something more from her. Because he cared instead of wanted to mold her into something else entirely.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered, because couldn’t he see she didn’t have the words? Couldn’t he understand she didn’t know
why
she felt this way, that it was only that she did?

“Because I think I’m in
love
with you and I don’t know what to
do
with that!”

It was like a bomb had exploded, taking out everything around them. She couldn’t hear a thing. She couldn’t move. She wasn’t even sure she could breathe.

Love. He’d said...love. In regards to
her
. “B-but you said you didn’t even know me,” she managed, her voice nothing more than a high-pitched whisper.

“I don’t! I don’t know the whole you because there are all these things you keep hidden, all these secrets you refuse to let me in on, and it drives me insane. But I know you remind me of sunshine when you smile, and I want to touch you always. I like being here and it should be the last place I’d ever want to be, but you’re here, and you make anything and anywhere the place I want to be. I don’t know how or why, I only know that is how I feel and it’s
insane
.”

Oh God. Oh God, oh
God
. “Charlie.”

Suddenly he let her go, so suddenly she all but tripped.

“I have to go,” he muttered, shoving his hands through his hair, taking determined strides back toward his car.

“What?” she nearly screeched, scurrying after him.

“I have to go figure this out. I can’t do it here with you looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

He whirled on her. “Like it’s possible, Meg. Like anything...” He shook his head, turning back to his car and jerking the driver’s-side door open. “No.”

“Charlie, you can’t just drop that bomb on me and
leave
.”

“Fine.” Before she knew how to prepare for it, his mouth was on hers. His arms banded around her and held her so close to the uncompromising hardness of his chest she could barely breathe.

But he was kissing her,
holding
her, apparently loving her, and she didn’t want to breathe. She wanted to sink, to melt. So she did. She leaned into him, pliant and willing, meeting the soft glide of his tongue, sliding her palms up his back as his fingers got lost in her hair.

She didn’t know how long they stayed like that, how long they let one kiss lead to another, touch after touch. Exploring and soft, but not demanding.

Because he thought he might
love
her.
Her.

He pulled back a fraction of an inch, his eyes blinking open in time with hers. He gave a sigh, something sad contained in it. “Meg.” His fingers traced her hairline, his eyes searched hers.

“Don’t stop.” Stopping would mean talking, and she’d rather explore and feel and show.

She didn’t have words. She didn’t have a way to verbalize all the fear and insecurity inside her, but she could show something in the way she touched him, the way she gave herself to him.

A few insistent bleats filled the air and she had to sigh against the unfairness of goat schedules. “Except we have to stop. They have to be milked. I haven’t been able to stomach it.”

“I’ll do it.” His thumb grazed her jaw, back and forth, soft and sweet. “And then we’ll talk, okay? Really talk?”

She knew what that meant, what he wanted, and more, she knew that if she had any hope of this really being love.
Love
love, she would have to be willing to talk. To put to words her fears, and the things that had shaped her.

She would have to give him things she’d wanted buried. It was the only option with love on the table, because as much as she didn’t want to lose that, she knew if she kept this from him, she didn’t have love at all.

“Okay,” she said, more than a little terrified. “We can talk.”

He brushed a brief, gentle kiss across her mouth before stalking to the goat barn like a man on a very unpleasant mission.

But he was milking her goats, and telling her he might love her, and she had to do something. Grab on to it. Not just for the baby, but for herself.

Which was scarier than everything else in her life put together.

* * *

W
HAT
WAS
HE
DOING
?
What are you doing?
“What am I doing?” It was a constant three-part refrain as he went through the process of milking Meg’s goats.

It was oddly relaxing. There was a repetitiveness to the system that gave the thoughts in his head a certain kind of lulling rhythm.
What am I doing?
Pull—squirt.
What are you doing?
Pull—squirt.

He’d kept himself distracted as he worked through the entire herd of milkable goats, and then he went through the process of sanitizing and storing the milk. But once he was done with the heavy basics of Meg’s usual chores, he could no longer deny the simple truth.

He’d told her he might love her. He’d grabbed her and kissed her and been some kind of crazed version of himself and it wouldn’t do. It would
not
do.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to scrub some reason or sense into his brain, but it didn’t work. Nothing
worked
. No amount of thinking, processing. No number of attempted plans he’d tried to work out over and over again lying in the twin bed in his old room at his parents’ last night.

There were no answers, there were no plans, there was only this bone-deep feeling of uncertainty and confusion and fear and...

Yeah, that love thing. He couldn’t get over the fact that he wanted to be here, with her. That, baby aside, he liked the man he became when he was with Meg. Even this one—the one who had no idea what he was doing.

Because it was real. A lot realer than he’d ever been. It took no masks and it took no swallowing his tongue. It took no careful words. He didn’t have to be perfect or responsible or the epitome of a businessman. He didn’t have to impress anyone, or prove that he’d made the right choices to anyone.

Yes, anyone probably meant most especially his father, which had then become something like showing Dell. He’d lived the majority of his life trying to prove something that...well, he’d never really had to prove.

Because Dell had taken the farm even against Dad’s wishes, and he’d built a life he was sickeningly happy with. So all the attempts to build the life someone else wanted of him had been wrong.

He’d been good at what he’d done, and there had been parts of it he’d enjoyed. But there had been an emptiness to it he’d ignored, because it didn’t fit the
plan
.

Now he had Meg. He had his family seeking his expertise. It felt like people knew him, understood him, and that had done a lot to fill up that emptiness or tear down that armor or whatever it was.

Love. He
loved
her. There was a chance here to have a real life, without a plan, without forcing himself into a hole he didn’t really fit in.

He stood in the doorway of Meg’s barn. He didn’t love milking goats or processing milk, and he didn’t love helping Dell with farm chores. He didn’t hate it, but it wasn’t as though farming had become a new passion.

But there was something to be said for building something that was your own. For being outside and seeing the sky.

Maybe, just maybe, there was something to be said for moving forward without a plan.
That sounds idiotic.
Because the reasonable part of his brain hadn’t simply rolled over and died, but it refused to give him a better alternative.

So he marched toward Meg’s cottage having no idea what he would do when he got there, only knowing he needed to move forward. He needed to move, and if there was no set of footsteps to follow, no concrete goal to reach, well, maybe that was just a life he’d been avoiding for as long as it could be avoided.

Now it was here.

He forced himself up the stairs of the stoop. He stepped into the cottage like he might have stepped into any potentially fraught business meeting.

And then winced at the comparison. But she stood with her back to the door, carefully pulling a piece of toast from the toaster and placing it on a paper plate.