It’s been four days since we spoke. Four days since I’ve touched her, smelled her, tasted her. Four days of torture, spent watching her working in her garden and walking her property with her vineyard manager and riding her bike to town looking cute as fuck in a fuzzy orange hat and a matching scarf that trails behind her in the breeze as she rides.

Four days of radio silence during which my phone has not received a single call or text. And yeah, I haven’t reached out, either, but I’m the one who apologized and begged her to stay at the harvest parade. I’m the one who rolled over and showed his underbelly and was told “see you around, I need space and time.”

The ball is in her court. If she decides she’s done playing, then that’s it.

It’s over. Done. Finished.

I let out a string of obscenities, barely resisting the urge to hurl the hoe I’m trying to reattach to its handle out the barn window and then kick the fuck out of the broken lawn mower for good measure.

“Easy there, son.” My dad’s voice comes from the hayloft, making me flinch.

“Shit, you scared me.” I turn, glancing up toward the roof of the barn, where my old man is sitting in a makeshift throne of hay bales, whittling. “How long have you been lurking up there?”

“I’m not lurking. I’m enjoying some peace and quiet.” Dad casts a glance down his nose. “Or I was until you had your temper tantrum.”

“I’m not having a temper tantrum. I’m just fucking sick of broken things.” I toss the hoe onto the dirt floor by the shovel the boys ran over with my truck on their way to school because they refuse to put things back where they found them.

“Aren’t we all? But broken things are a part of life, and bitching doesn’t help them get fixed any faster.”

“Someone’s philosophical all of a sudden,” I mutter, digging through a box of old engine parts, looking for something I can use to patch up the lawnmower for a few more runs. It’s almost time for the grass to go dormant. If it can limp along another few weeks, I’ll have three months without pasture mowing to save for a replacement.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been doing some thinking lately.” The sound of Dad’s knife softly snicking at the wood fills the silence as he pauses for a long moment. Long enough that I’ve almost forgotten what we were talking about when he adds, “And I’ve been seeing that lady my doctor said I should talk to. The one with the office in Sebastopol.”

My hand goes still and the record of grievances playing in my head screeches to a stop. I stand, propping my hands on my hips as I give my old my man my full attention. “Seriously? The therapist? You went?”

He nods, his gaze still fixed on his work. “I did. Twice. And going back again next Wednesday.”

I blink. “Wow. Well, good… I’m glad, Dad. I know you’re tough as nails, but coming back from cancer is hard. I’m glad you’ve found something that’s helping.”

“It’s not just the cancer,” he says mildly. “It’s other stuff, too, things I’ve been going about the wrong way, maybe. Certainly not the best way.” He pauses again, letting his work drop to his lap as he meets my gaze. “I’d like to apologize for being so hard on you, Dylan. You did the best you could, and you provided for the family when I couldn’t. I’ve been looking for someone to blame so I can stay angry instead of admitting that life as I knew it is over and moving on. I’m sorry.”

I’m pretty sure my eyes are bulging out of my head at this point, and I certainly have no idea what to say to this man who is speaking at a reasonable volume and talking sense.

So I just nod and mumble, “S’okay, Dad. We’re good.”

“I hope we are,” he says. “Because I love you, and I’m proud of you.”

I take a deep breath and hold it, shocked by the wave of emotion rushing through me. I want to say thank you, but I’m afraid if I talk I’ll do something embarrassing like get all fucking teary about my old man telling me he loves me. I know that he loves me, I’ve always known it, but after all the shit he’s been shoveling my way the past few months, it sure is nice to hear.

“And I want you to forget about the pumpkin patch,” he continues. “I’m too old to be planting new vines, anyway. No need to put the family deeper in debt to get more land, when what we’ve got is working out just fine.”

My breath rushes out with a sigh. It’s feels like someone kicked the chopping block out from under my head and reached a hand down to help me up. “Thanks, Dad. Seriously. That’s…a load off.”

“But that doesn’t mean you should stop seeing that girl,” he adds. “In fact, I think you should drop what you’re doing and go pay her a visit right now. You were a lot more pleasant to be around when you were sleeping over at her place.”

“Maybe I’ll go see your therapist instead,” I deflect, not wanting to talk about Emma with Dad, not when I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy and in the mood to forget how Pop’s lax attitude about getting women pregnant negatively impacted my life.

“I can fix the lawnmower,” he says, ignoring my jab, “and grab a hoe when I’m at the hardware store later. Go see your lady. You’ll both feel better after, I’m sure.”

“She’s not my lady.” I cross my arms over my chest as I rock back onto the heels of my work boots. “And I can’t go see her. She wants to take a break.”

Pop frowns hard. “Why on earth would she want to do that? You weren’t being selfish in the bedroom, were you? I thought I raised you boys better than that. She comes first. Always.”

“I’m not going to talk about that with you,” I say with a hard eye roll. “But no, I wasn’t being selfish. That was…all good. She just changed her mind about having a child who will never know his or her extended family, I guess.” I shrug, pretending getting cut off from Emma doesn’t feel like banishment to the shittiest level of hell. “Which is probably good. It was a weird arrangement, anyway.”

“What was weird about it?” Pop huffs. “You were falling in love while trying to make a baby. Sounds like the most natural thing in the world to me.”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t like that. We’re just friends. That’s what she wanted, so…that’s what we are. Or were.”

He grunts, lips turning down. “Well, then. Guess I misunderstood things.”

That makes two of us. I suspected Emma and I weren’t on the same page emotionally, but I never imagined she would be able to walk away from me, just like that, no looking back. It makes me doubt my own sanity. Did I imagine all the fun we had? The way we laughed and talked and made love until I felt so close to her I believed I could tell her anything? Confess all my secret hopes and dreams—with the exception of one, of course.

And thank God I held that one back, or I’d be even more ashamed of myself than I am already.

“But I will tell you this…” Dad adds as he holds his piece of wood up to the light, studying his work. “Both of the women I married were friends first. There’s no better recipe for love that lasts than friendship mixed with a healthy dose of chemistry. If Nancy and I had been as good at fidelity as we were at fornicating and being friends, you, Rafe, and Tristan would never have been born.”

I shove my hands into my back pockets. “I didn’t know Nancy cheated, too.” Dad doesn’t talk much about his first wife, Deacon’s mom.

“She did,” Dad says mildly, clearly no longer upset about it. “She cheated first, then I had my revenge plus a couple of free passes I thought I deserved, and the trust spiraled down the drain from there.” He nods my way before resuming dragging his blade across the wood. “But you’re not me. And Emma isn’t anyone but herself. And it sounds to me like the two of you have something worth hanging onto.”

“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?” I ask, suspicion blooming in my brain. “You were never on board with the ‘knock her up and send her on her way’ plan. You wanted me to get hooked on this woman.”

Dad’s squints down at the wood in his hands. “Oh, I don’t know about hooked. When Stroker and I met her that first weekend, right after she moved in, we might have noticed that she was cute as a button, as sweet as all get out, and seemed almost as lonely as you’ve been the past few years. But we had no way of knowing you two would hit it off this well…”

“So, Mr. Stroker’s in on this, too?” I pace across the dirt floor and back again. “He was never considering selling to Emma, was he? He was just dragging it out to throw the two of us together.”

“Well, guess you’re as smart as all your teachers said you were, aren’t you?” Dad makes a half-hearted attempt to hide his smile, but he’s too damned proud of himself to do a decent job. “Sorry again about giving you a hard time about the pumpkin patch. I wanted to make sure you stayed invested, but I didn’t mean to be a thorn in your side.”

I huff and pace faster, not knowing whether to be pissed that I was so easily played or…grateful.

Grateful that someone stepped in and saved me from my bad habit of pushing people away before they can complicate my already complicated life. If Pop or anyone else had tried to set me up with Emma, I would have had my walls up so fast there would have been no way in hell even someone as amazing as she is could have tempted me to drop a drawbridge.

But throwing us together in competition over a piece of land, making me notice her as a rival first…

Well, I guess it says something about me that I’m more open to intimacy with someone who’s messing with my well-laid plans than a woman I think I could fall for. Something not great.

But now the woman I couldn’t stand has become someone I can’t stand to lose. The thought of never fucking her again is torturous, yes. But the thought of never having an adventure day with her, or sharing a meal with her, or hearing her laugh that wild giggle I’ve only heard when she’s with me—all of those things hurt just as much. More.

In just three weeks, she’s gotten under my skin, in my head, and oh-so-close to my heart. And the world hasn’t come to an end. I’m not any more or less trapped in this life I’m ready to change than I was before.

Suddenly my refusal to consider a serious relationship—or even date the same woman for more than a month or two at a time—seems ridiculous. Falling for Emma isn’t going to put a wrench in my plans, not as long as I can convince her that I’m worth putting some of her other plans on hold.

I stop dead in the middle of the barn, squinting at the “I like big cows and I cannot lie; you udder brothers can’t deny” poster the twins hung on the wall above Moo-donna’s stall, as if the answer to the burning question setting fire to my thoughts will be found in the calm brown gaze of the steer staring into the camera.

“If you’re wondering how to apologize to a woman,” Dad pipes up, still scratching away, “then I’m your man. My marriages both lasted years longer than they should have, and I credit that to my skill with an apologetic turn of phrase.”

I shake my head. “Thanks, but no thanks, Dad. I’m good with apologies. I need something more than that. I need—”

“You need to sweep the lady off her feet,” Rafe says from the entrance to the barn, grinning as he nods back toward the house. “Come with me, grasshopper. Allow me to instruct you in the fine art of romancing the fuck out of the fairer sex. I’ve got some other stuff I wanted to discuss with you, anyway.”

“But keep it genuine, Rafe,” Dad calls after us. “This is the real deal. Dylan doesn’t want to let this girl get away.”

I smile, knowing better than to deny it. Not to Pop, not to Rafe, and not to myself. No more keeping quiet or letting Emma walk away without a fight. Time to be that knight on a white horse she was tired of waiting for.

Because I’m tired of waiting, too.