“So you’ve fallen for me too?”
“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” She shook her head, trying to get rid of the words that were confusing her so she could find the right ones.
“So what is it?” He asked, his voice lowering to a whisper.
Maizie took him in. His kind eyes, his concerned stare. Maybe they could handle a long-distance relationship. It could work. But what about the other part? What about all of the terrifying parts?
“You’re leaving,” she said.
He shrugged. “Yeah, but not for a few more weeks.”
Her temper flared, he didn’t seem to understand that this was a big deal.
“I’m not some summer fling, Christian. I won’t fall in love with you only for you to leave me.”
Thirty-Two
Christian’s mouth dropped open. That’s what she thought he wanted?
“I don’t want a summer fling. And I’ll stay here if that’s what it takes to prove it to you,” Christian said.
“You can’t stay here.” She backed towards the house.
“What do you mean I can’t stay here?” he stomped toward her.
“You just can’t,” she said, walking away from him.
No. She wasn’t getting out of this that easy. He deserved an explanation.
“Why can’t I stay here?” He reached for her arm and pulled her back around. “Why can’t I stay, Maizie? Tell me. What’s holding you back from us?”
A single tear fell down her right cheek. “I’ve watched everyone in my family get hurt on this farm. I’ve seen Mitchell fall off a haystack, my dad roll a tractor, my grandpa nearly get his hand cut off, and Mack . . .” She didn’t need to finish.
He fell back a step. That fear came from the deepest wound in her heart, the same wound he carried with him every day. His hand fell from her arm, and she turned away.
“I can’t watch you get hurt too,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
He thought of the moment they had flown off the four-wheeler, how he’d purposely pushed her to the side so she wouldn’t get smashed. Knowing she had been hurt had killed him. Death wasn’t a friend to him either, but he couldn’t change its inevitability.
“That’s not going to last forever,” he said.
“What?” Maizie stopped at the door and turned back to face him.
“You can’t hide from your feelings forever. What happens if you fall in love with someone else?” Even the thought of that caused his stomach to twist into itself.
Maizie bit her cheek. “Then I guess I’ll never fall in love.”
“I think it’s too late for that,” Christian said.
Instead of responding, she opened the door and shut herself in the house.
If all the lights in her house weren’t off, he would have banged on the door until she came to talk to him. But what would he say? He understood why she was scared, but what hurt the most was that she wouldn’t even try. Had he not shown her that he cared?
What more could he do?
He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and started walking back to the farmhouse.
Cows scattered as he walked past the pasture. Some mooed, but mostly, it was silent, the most silent night he could remember. When he had come here for the summer, it had been for a purely selfish reason. To escape the pain his home reminded him of, the person he grieved. But he’d found more here than he had ever thought possible. He’d found a place where his work meant something, where his life meant something. He’d found a woman who had replaced his heartache with joy. Even if that joy came from teasing her and fighting with her. He had no clue what he wanted out of life except her.
