CHAPTER FOUR
EVELYN
“God, Evelyn. I’m so sorry.”
On the verge of tears, Jenny stands behind the small desk at Inglewild’s bed and breakfast with a big, fluffy robe wrapped tight around her thin frame. She had been locking up for the night when I pulled up to the curb in my rental and hurried to let me in, robe and all.
“It’s just—you did such a good job for us the last time you were here. We’ve been booked solid since. And there’s a kite festival at the beach this weekend and—“
I’ve sent her into a tailspin. She flips open the paper ledger and sorts through the pages like it’ll say something different than the computer sitting on the corner of her little desk. She swallows and glances up at me before continuing to flip back and forth. It’s bad enough that I’ve held her up after hours. Now I’m about to give her a nervous breakdown, too.
I reach over and catch her hand in mine, keeping her fingers from ripping the pages out of the book. “Jenny. It’s alright.”
It’s not like I booked this trip in advance. Or put any thought into it other than—
I was happy standing in that field with my boots sinking into the mud and maybe I should go back and see if I can find my happy again.
A stupid idea. A whimsical one. One that seemed brilliant after six empanadas and Josie fist-pumping across the table while I booked my ticket. I pull back my hand and tug my hair into a ponytail. I feel greasy and gross from the plane trip, my shirt clinging to the small of my back. I stare at the ledger mournfully. Damn. I had been looking forward to a long soak in the giant clawfoot bathtubs Jenny has in every suite.
“It’s alright,” I repeat, and try to convince myself of the same. I’ll just find somewhere else to stay. No problem. “Can you recommend another place close by?”
Jenny swallows hard and looks down at the desk. She mumbles something, her hands clenched tight around the edges of the ledger.
“What was that?”
She exhales. “With the kite festival,” she begins slowly. “Everything is booked up. I’m not even sure the bigger chain hotels down at the beach will have anything available.”
Shit. Well. Okay. I didn’t know people liked kites that much, but that’s—it’s fine. That’s what I get for my impulsivity, I guess. I shouldn’t have jumped on a plane without making some reservations first. I didn’t even call Stella to see if it’s a good time for me to visit the farm.
But I know myself. I know if I gave it a day, I would have talked myself right out of it. I would have found something else to occupy myself with—a new project, a new task—and in a week, a month, a year, I’d probably still be stuck in this same rut, this endless loop of numb ambivalence.
I frown and glance out one of the big windows that looks out over Main Street, the street lights wrapped in vibrant green vines with flowers starting to peek open in bloom. Mabel, the stunning and slightly terrifying woman who runs the greenery, must have put them up to welcome spring. The last time I was here, there were wreaths hanging from every front door, garland and lights strung neatly from pole to pole—a row of perfect gingerbread houses wrapped in tinsel and lights, guiding you to Lovelight Farms at the very edge of town.
I’m glad people are finally discovering this gem of a town. I only wish it wasn’t when I needed it, too.
“Any other ideas on where I could stay?”
Maybe I’ll check local listings tomorrow morning and see if anyone has a space they’re willing to rent. I have no idea how long I plan on being here, but I do know that this feels like my best chance at getting back to myself. At figuring out what’s wrong.
Jenny’s face brightens for the first time since she came padding down the front steps in a pair of bright blue slippers. “Oh! I could use the phone tree.” Her face collapses into a frown almost as quickly. “Shoot. But we’re not allowed to use it past seven unless it’s a true emergency.”
“You have a phone tree?”
She waves her hand above her, like she’s calling upon the spirits to explain the mysticism of it all. “It’s how we communicate across the town when there’s news. I could use it to figure out if anyone has a place for you to stay.”
“But you can’t use it past seven?”
She shakes her head sadly. “There has been some … abuse of the system lately. Gus did a town-wide call last Tuesday at 10 pm to ask if anyone had extra tortillas to spare for taco night at the firehouse. The Sheriff almost disbanded the entire system. It was only on account of Caleb stepping in with the curfew rule that the phone tree was salvaged.”
“Uh, thank goodness.” From the gravity of her tone, it seems like the right response.
She nods. “I’ll use it in the morning, do some digging for you. In the meantime, I think you might find some spare room at Lovelight Farms.” I’m not sure, but it looks like a smile curls at the edge of her lips. A thoughtful look knits her brows together. “It used to be a hunting retreat, I think.”
I remember Stella saying something about that the last time I was in town. I also remember her little cottage at the edge of the pumpkin patch, filled to the brim with various odds and ends. At one point, Luka stood in her kitchen with his arms outstretched. He could touch one of the windows and the entry hallway at the same time. I don’t want to show up on her doorstep in the middle of the night and ask if I can crash. Especially if she already has Luka there.
“Thanks for that,” I say. I have absolutely no intention of driving up to Lovelight tonight. Not until I have a shower, a fresh coat of lipstick, and a serious pep talk. I’m not anxious to see Beckett again, I’m just—
I don’t want him to see me and think I’m—that I’m asking for anything. I didn’t come here for him.
I came here for his fields. I want to sit in the tall grass and stare up at the sky and try to find the place within myself that's locked up or rusted over or whatever the hell that's been going on with me lately. I want to fix it. I’m tired of feeling like this.
I came here for a break. I want to sit in the quiet and do nothing. I have seventeen emails in my inbox from right before I left—courtesy of Sway—and I haven't looked at a single one. Anxiety grabs me by the throat every single time I see the little red number on my screen. I turned my phone off the third time I reached for it and buried it at the bottom of my bag. Maybe I’ll get a burner while I’m here. Really lean into the whole off the radar thing.
I thank Jenny for her time and assure her another four times that everything is fine before slipping out the front door and down the marble steps to my rental parked at the curb. A gust of wind lifts my ponytail and the edge of my coat, bringing with it hints of honeysuckle and jasmine from the flowers twisted around the light pole. I eyeball the back seat as I stand at the driver’s side door.
I’ve slept in my car before—during long road trips and last-minute ones. Once when I was driving through Colorado, my rental car kicked it in the higher altitudes and I had to push it halfway off the road and wait until morning when it was safe for a tow to come and get me. I had slept fine in the backseat, only slightly terrified a bear was going to come careening through the windshield.
I’ll have to find somewhere slightly private. Somewhere Jenny won’t see me. Or the Sheriff. Or anyone who might call the Sheriff. I don’t exactly want to start my trip here with the town gossip mill rolling about Evelyn St. James sleeping in the backseat of her car.
I also don’t want a picture of me going viral, curled up in the back and using my sweater as a blanket.
I bite at my bottom lip. Maybe not such a great idea after all.
I’m still debating my choices when I hear footsteps on the pavement across the street. I glance up at the same moment Beckett glances across, and it’s just like that night in the bar, when he elbowed his way through the front door and looked right at me, those damn eyes of his sweeping across my face and down my shoulders. A glance like a touch, a fingertip at the hollow of my throat.
He’s frozen across the street, half on the curb and half off of it. Corduroy jacket. Open flannel beneath. Dark jeans and heavy work boots. He has a box from Ms. Beatrice’s bakery in his left hand, plain white with a thin piece of string in a pretty little bow on top. I focus there instead of his face, and watch as his hand tightens around the box.
I could laugh. He looks like every decadent thing I’ve ever indulged in. Flannel and scruff and a box of baked goods in his hand.
It makes sense that I’d run into him like this—an abandoned street with just us and the flower petals, my back breaking under the strain of all my exhaustion. It’s like this with Beckett and I, I’m starting to figure out. We keep hurtling into each other.
“Don’t tell Layla,” is the first thing he says to me. His voice is a low rumble, as rough as I remember. I bite my lip against a smile and his eyes roll up to the sky like he’s frustrated with himself before slanting them right back to me. He steps the rest of the way off the curb and strolls across the street.
I look at the box in his hand. “Only if you share.”
He huffs and clutches the box tighter. “I don’t think so.”
“You are not in a position to negotiate.”
“We’ll see.”
I press up on my tiptoes and try to get a peek through the thin plastic on top. “What does Ms. Beatrice make better than Layla anyway?”
He looks supremely uncomfortable at being caught. Or maybe that’s just the surprise of seeing his one-night-stand suddenly appear, again, in the place he lives. I wince.
“Sorry, never mind.” I rub at the headache that’s starting to form between my eyebrows. “Listen, I should have—“
“Shortbread cookies,” he tells me. He stops about three feet away from me and studies my rental. His eyes dart over my shoulder to the bed and breakfast, and then back to the car. He zeroes in on me with that singular intensity he always seems to carry, whether he’s licking a line of salt from my wrist or changing the tire on a tractor.
I swallow hard. Neither of those imagining help with the sharp pulse of heat low in my belly, a single forceful beat.
Beckett looks good.
He’s always looked good.
“She’s been making them for me since I was a kid. Layla’s don’t come close.” His eyes narrow into slits. “If you tell her I said that, I’ll deny it.”
I give him a solemn nod while fighting my grin. “Alright.”
He nods. “Good.” He considers my car again. I wonder if Jenny is watching from behind her desk and if this constitutes a phone tree emergency. I saw how this town handled Stella and Luka together. I’d bet this rental car they were the subject of several phone tree discussions. Beckett raps his knuckles once against the hatchback. “You’re in town?”
I nod. “Yep.”
“Stella didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“It would have been difficult for her to,” I say quietly. So much for easing into it. “Since I didn’t know I was coming until this morning.”
“You got a thing close by?”
By thing, I assume he means a profile or small business highlight. I do not, and I don’t especially want to get into my recent issues out here on the street. I certainly don’t want to get into them with Beckett, of all people. He already thinks my job is stupid, and I don’t want him thinking I came here as an elaborate excuse to see him.
I didn’t.
I shake my head and rub my hands over the outsides of my arms, wishing I packed a jacket that was a little bit thicker. I forgot March on the East Coast is just starting to creep out of winter, the mornings and evenings carrying a whisper of it still. I pull my thin wool coat a little tighter around me and rock back on my heels. Beckett’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t say anything, the box in his hand creaking in protest at the way he’s gripping it.
“You need help with your bags?”
“What?”
“Your bags,” he says again, nodding towards the bed and breakfast. “You need help bringing them in?”
“Oh, no. Um,” if Jenny is watching right now, she is getting a master class in awkward and uncomfortable interactions. I hitch my thumb over my shoulder. “Jenny is full for the night. Apparently there is a kite festival down at the beach.”
Beckett’s brow furrows into a heavy line of confusion. “Kite festival? They have festivals for kites?”
I snicker. I thought the exact same thing. “Yeah, apparently.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“What?”
He heaves another deep breath to the sky, his exhale a cloud of white that the wind carries away. I am exhausting him.
“Are you gonna stay down by the beach?” Inglewild is about a twenty-five minute drive from the coast, a long stretch of highway between here and there. More farmland, some outlet shopping, and a custard stand that I’ve had several recurring dreams about.
“I was—” I cannot tell him I planned on sleeping in my car in the alley behind the cafe. I look for an alternative, appropriate explanation of my plan. A plan which does not exist. “I was going to figure something out.”
He considers me quietly. I still can’t get over how different he is here compared to the man I met in Maine. He had been loose and comfortable, quiet but charming. His smiles had been easy and frequent. Here, now, standing a perfect three feet apart on the sidewalk, the streetlights and the moon paint him in shadows. He seems stiff—frozen and uncomfortable. He’s got a frown on every line of his face from the set of his eyebrows to the downward tilt of his full lips.
I wonder how much of that is my fault.
“You don’t have a plan.”
My chin falls to my chest and I keep my gaze on his boots. He’s got a bit of mud clinging to one, right at the toe. I think of him out in the fields, hat on backwards and sleeves rolled to his elbows. It loosens something inside of me and lets me be a little honest. I press out a sigh.
“This trip wasn’t … planned. I came here on a whim. Josie, my assistant, she asked me the last place I was happy and, I don’t know.” I shrug, feeling silly and small, out here on the street with a man who probably never gave me a second thought.
“It was here,” he offers.
It’s not a question. I blink up at him and my shoulders slip from my ears when I see the way his face has softened, a lightness to those sea glass eyes of his that I haven’t seen since there was a bottle of tequila on the table.
“It was here,” I confirm.
His lips tilt up at the corner. Just the slightest bit. I wouldn’t have noticed if we weren’t standing directly below a streetlight. I cock my head at the change in his expression, immediately curious.
“What’s that look for?”
He shakes his head and switches his box of shortbread cookies to his right hand. “Nothing, just something my dad said tonight.” He holds his hand out, palm up. “C’mon.”
I stare at his hand like he uncurled his fingers and revealed a tiny baby cobra in there. “C’mon, what?”
He jerks his head behind him and I can barely make out the bed of his truck parked at the corner. “I have three extra bedrooms. You can crash in one until you figure out what you’re doing.”
That seems like a … monumentally bad idea. The last time I was here, we could barely look at each other. I think the longest amount of time we spent together—just the two of us—was that morning at the bakehouse where he told that stupid joke about the strawberry fields. We didn’t talk much beyond that. He commented on the weather. I asked him some questions about the trees. He considered me quietly while he slowly ate his zucchini bread, flipping his fork around and offering me a bite, nudging the plate across the table with the back of his hand.
That was probably twenty minutes of peaceful coexistence. I’m not sure shacking up for the immediate future is good for either of us.
“I don’t know,” I shift on my feet and curl into myself further when the wind picks up again. Beckett’s frown deepens. “Won’t that be awkward?”
“Doesn’t have to be,” he mutters. “It’s a big cabin. And we’re both mature adults.”
I raise both eyebrows at him, remembering how he showed up at this same bed and breakfast a couple of months ago and basically accused me of being a flake with a stupid job. He flinches and scrubs his hand against the back of his head. “At least I think we can both be mature adults,” he amends.
I huff a laugh through my nose, but make no move to take his hand. After another moment of indecision, he pulls it back, curling those long fingers back around the edges of the box. The cardboard gives slightly under his grip, like it's barely hanging on. That poor box.
“We could start over if you want,” he offers. He swallows, and I watch as frustration tightens everything on his face—the strain in his sharp jaw, the tilt of his lips. He really is handsome, even when he’s making a face at me like someone stuck a lemon in his mouth. “We could—if you wanted, we could pretend this is the first time we’re meeting.”
“And you’re inviting me back to your house on an isolated stretch of farmland? Okay, serial killer.”
A smile twitches at his lips. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Not to mention I’m not sure I could forget Beckett if I tried. There’s no pretending between us, not anymore.
I avert my gaze back to the flower vines twisted around the light pole. Green and white and yellow and the palest purple I’ve ever seen. I want to touch each bloom and feel the softness, press my nose into the petals. When I was a kid running through the woods behind my parents house, I used to pluck honeysuckle blossoms from the bushes, tear the stem and lick at the nectar. Pure sticky sweetness, petals in my hair. Mud on my knees and hands and everywhere in between.
It would be convenient to stay on the farm. I know Beckett’s house at the edge of the property is bigger than Stella’s. I saw it once while I was exploring during my last trip. The large stone chimney, the wraparound front porch. It’s a gorgeous house. Stella said his place had been the lodging quarters for whatever hunting retreat Lovelight used to be. I could stay in one of his spare rooms tonight and see what the phone tree turns up tomorrow.
With his schedule, we probably wouldn’t even see each other.
I look back to Beckett, my gaze snagging on the jut of his collarbone, barely visible through the opening of his shirt. I remember sinking my teeth into exactly that spot, tracing my thumb over the marks I left behind.
I drag my eyes back to his.
“You sure it’s alright?”
A beat of silence pulses between us. He doesn’t look away. “I am. You?”
I think about it for a second, and then slowly nod my head. It feels like a bad idea, but I’m fresh out of options.
The wind whistles through the old picket fence that lines the gardens by the road. A lock of hair falls over his forehead and he smoothes it back with his palm. I glance at the box in his hand.
“Are you going to share the cookies?”
He turns on his heel and heads towards his truck. “Absolutely not.”