“And two,” she continues, ignoring me. “Stop trying to change the subject. You forget how well I know you, Kade William Archer. You forget that you were once my best friend.”
The ache in the pit of my stomach spreads to my heart.Once my best friend. I know we’re older, and there’s a world of differences between us now, but the stark realization that so much has changed in the last decade hits harder than I expected.
Hazel and Iwerebest friends.
Like she said, we were born just eleven months apart—Irish twins. With Gemma a few years ahead and completely disinterested in the farm life we were raised to embrace, the daily grind often fell on us. Colby and Clementine, the actual twins in our family, were way too young to be helpful. Hazel and I picked up the slack, but it never felt like work when we were side by side. We were inseparable.
Now, I can’t recall a single detail about her life beyond what I knew back when we were kids.
Fuck.
I drag my fingers through my beard, contemplating the words I should, but can’t, say. After a long pause, the best I can come up with is a gruff, “What’s your point?”
“The point is, you need to get over your shit and step the hell up!”
“Step up?” I snap. “What the fuck does that mean?”
I did step up. I served my fucking country. I nearlydiedfor it. And I did all that after spending over a decade working my ass off on my family’s farm. Early mornings before school, late nights after homework. Sunup to sundown when I wasn’t in school.
I broke my back for Honey Bea Farm—and for what? It’s nothing but dirt and bad memories.
“It means,prickhole, that it’s time for you to get over whatever issues you have with us and help out. The farm is going to shit. Mom is struggling to handle things by herself, and I can only do so much.”
My spine snaps straight. “What do you mean the farm is going to shit?”
“Exactly what it sounds like!”
I shake my head, tugging on my hair that apparently fell out of its weird updo somewhere between upstairs and here. “Thatdoesn’t make any sense.” I say the words, more to myself than anything, but she hears me just the same.
“Are you seriously that dense? It’s just mom and I running the entire operation now that Dad’s gone. What did you expect? Money is tight, which means the ranch hands have no incentive to stick around. Things are changing, especially with that new—”
“What about Ridge?” I interrupt, my heart slamming against my rib cage as the need to run so fucking far away from this conversation fills my veins.
Guilt is eating me alive with every brutal word she tacks on, but all I can see are sunflower fields, and white picket fences. All I canhearis the sound of Dad laughing as he chases the twins around the yard, while Mom cheers him on from the porch.
“Hell, Kade. You’re so damn detached from our lives, it's not even funny,” Hazel mutters, sounding exhausted and so much older than a moment ago. “Clearly, you lost more than Marlee when you shipped off to God knows where and forgot all about your family.”
I freeze.
She goes silent.
Everything goes still.
“Holy shit!” my sister cries, immediately backpedaling, but it’s too late. “I’m so sorry, K—”
I hang up.
She calls again.
I send her to voicemail.
Again and again. Unmoving, I stand in the middle of Mrs. Whittaker’s shitty garage, beneath her shitty apartment, filled with shitty things, and I feelshitty.
It’s not the mention of Marlee that guts me. Not really. I mourned that love story—and the way it ended—a long-ass time ago.
It’s everything that cameafter.
The choices I made because of it.
